Brian and Curt came up with the idea for a blogging-for-others project, to be located in the southern African country of Botswana in March of last year. We wanted to do something that put blogging on the ground, that was very practical, and that helped out Africa in a non-Bono, non-Brad Pitt, non-Big NGO way.

Representatives of the University of Botswana and, later, representatives of Northern Arizona University, both indicated a lot of interest in the project. So, Brian took responsibility for writing grants and I for hitting up individuals, specifically those who had made a huge amount of money from the Internet. Two or three dozen exhausting grant applications, and two or three dozen personal communications to well-heeled Silicon Valley types later — along with half a dozen innovative fund-raising experiments (the latest being the ChipIn widget) — we’re done.

We got a grand total of $1,025.00 in donations from two people, Sokari Ekine and Evan Williams. You two are too cool for school. G-d bless you both. (Or, whatever variant of that floats your boats.) And that was in the first month.

I don’t really know why this failed to capture the imagination of people. Maybe because I’m a thundering meanie. That’s possibly true. (Though Brian is not.) Perhaps it’s because it focuses on Africans. (Mutter mutter mutter. Black people!. Mutter mutter.) Perhaps the fiction endures that Africans, all bloated children with flies dancing around on their hopeless, blank eyes, need more Carnation powdered milk and would try to eat a computer if you gave it to them. Maybe blogging is dumb. Maybe the blogging mafia still believes its difficult to change the world without the air-conditioning available in the four-star hotels where they gather. Maybe it’s a combination of all those things. Hell, we don’t know.

Thanks again to Ev and Sokari. Thanks to this blog’s readers and contributors. There’s a great group of people out there, both within and outside Africa, who how blogging can enable people to start telling their own stories. We still believe, for all the reasons we outlined, that it’s a good idea. We hope someone does it. But it’s time for us to move on.

Cross-posted from Blogswana.