Sunset Commerce --A South African business woman is working on a way to bring rural African areas into the social networking circle so prevalent in wealthier industrial countries such as japan and the United States.

Dorette Steenkamp, executive director at Uthango Social investment, a nonprofit agency, calls her project Virtual Africa, and is talking to companies in South Africa to secure sponsorship.

"To take the narrow view that Africa will never be able to participate in a global virtual world environment, is to sadly perpetuate the digital divide and to exclude Africa philosophically from being an active player in the next Internet revolution," Recreant explains.

Uthango has established a Second Life home base for philosophical debate and conversation. The non-profit agency's mission is to connect SL's professionals and educators with those in Africa to discuss Africa's development strategies. Its mission is to advocate real-life projects by creating awareness and hosting events for raising funds for implementation. Focusing on South Africa, where broadband is costly but more readily available than in other African countries, Uthango tries to get communities wired to create a network of support. "As civil society, we should be advocating for change and innovation, whilst celebrating success stories in overcoming challenges," Recreant says. This is the vision with which Uthango embraces Second Life.

Some critics say running poverty and development projects in Second Life are not effective because they are run on an "expensive platform" that is not accessible to everyone. Ethan Zuckerman, a self-declared metaverse skeptic at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, and a frequent traveler to Africa, runs blogAfrica.com. He believes in the African effort but contends, "Compared to roughly one billion using the Internet as a whole - I suspect people trying to call attention to global issues are better off making a Web site than a 3D space. "

Recreant replies, "We can create solutions in Second Life with mobile technology."
Recreant says that because of the lack of infrastructure in central Africa, people rely on cell phones out of necessity. Mobile operators are responsible for 70 percent of the communication infrastructure. Farmers in outlying areas use prepaid phone cards. Devices made by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung are the most prevalent with Samsung offering Web enabled telephones like the Blackjack. Farmers use their mobile phones to get advice on agriculture, business, where to find a distributor, and health information and medical advice, since the nearest hospital could be hundreds of miles away. Recreant says some applications have been compressed into Java applets and can be downloaded on a mobile phone for a fraction of the cost.

Fiber optics, satellite and