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Kyrgyz Politics: Exiled Reformer Returns Moscow Bombings: Online Radio's Raw Response Haiti Quake: Keeping Haiti's Internet Alive Haiti Quake: Improvisation Amid the Chaos Bolivia: Back on the Road With Evo Reflections: The End of a Divided Germany Peru: Kiva's Web-based Microfinance Growing Up Honduras: Standoff at the Embassy
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August 27, 2009
Swaziland: The King and the Web Swaziland is a country of haves and have-nots. King Mswati III (the country's absolute monarch) has 13 wives, 20 armored Mercedes and his net worth is estimated at more than $200 million. Meanwhile, his subjects are among the poorest in the world (more than 60 percent of Swazis earns less than $1.25 per day) and plagued by a huge public health crisis. The tiny southern African nation has the world's highest per capita rate of HIV/AIDS. Swaziland is also not particularly tolerant of dissent. Anti-sedition laws and self-censorship make criticism of the king rare. So, we wondered, what happens when the Twitter revolution comes to town? Last month, the latest in a series of Africa-focused "BarCamp" conferences, aimed at encouraging the proliferation of mobile and web technologies, was hosted in Swaziland. iWitness spoke over webcam with two of the participants -- a self-described geek who flew in from Los Angeles and a Swazi web and music entrepreneur -- to get their take. | |||||||||||||||||
