Things The Bloggers Association of Kenya Should Improve On

BAKE (Bloggers Association of Kenya) has done a lot of good work over the years like starting and running The BAKE Kenyan Blog Awards as well as creating partnerships for bloggers to make money off their blogs and giving training to bloggers so as to improve the standards of blogging in the country. These, among other great things have been achieved in just five years.
As an active member, I have noted two things that the organization however, can improve on.

1. Inclusion
There is a lack of inclusion when it comes to bloggers. It is difficult I can understand to include bloggers who are members into decision making, but a mechanism needs to be created for that purpose. This can be in the form of a questionnaire perhaps that can ask bloggers what programs or activities they’re interested in going forward. Something as simple as this will make members feel like they have a say in the direction of BAKE.

I attended the launch of the ‘State of Blogging and Social Media’ report that was an initiative of BAKE and was surprised to find that a lot of bloggers were not invited. This is surprising as this document is specifically of relevance to bloggers. The conversations revolved around freedom of speech with Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communication and Technology, Fred Matiang’i and Victor Kyalo, CEO of the ICT Authority, in attendance. It was unfortunate to not have most bloggers in attendance and I hope that BAKE will follow up on CS Fred Matiang’i’s offer and organize a discussion between the CS and bloggers.

The general audience as well as the government believes blogging to be mostly political and most of the bloggers at the launch of the report were political bloggers. Freedom of speech is more obviously seen when discussing political issues, but it is more than politics. Also, what is politics? It can be argued that the fact that we dare to write our own stories and curate them for the world to see is in fact a political act. It is important to include as many diverse voices as possible to have a broader and more engaging discussion even as BAKE pushes to legitimize the organization and indeed blogging in Kenya.

2. Bloggers as the main thing
‘Keep the main thing, the main thing.’ I can’t remember who said this, but it’s one of those repeated sayings. The main business of BAKE is to represent bloggers’ interests. This they have done in the many ways stated at the beginning of this article. A lot still needs to be done though. At the recently concluded BAKE Kenyan Blog Awards, I noted that the sponsors sat at the VIP while bloggers sat at the back. Do nominees at the Grammys or other awards sit at the back while the sponsors occupy the front seats? Are all the speeches made by sponsors? To be fair though, this isn’t a preserve of the BAKE Awards. Kenyan corporates are special as they insist on hogging the spotlight at events and awards even when the event isn’t about them.

Difficult as it is to deal with corporates and their demands, BAKE must make sure that the bloggers are the priority. Ways this can be done is by having nominees sit at the front in their own VIP section and have sponsors sit in their own.

As BAKE grows, they must keep in mind the bloggers whose interests they represent at all times and strike a balance with sponsors and other parties. Without bloggers after all, BAKE would be a defunct organization. And honestly, we don’t blog because there’s money to be made, we blog because we have something to say and want to share it with the world.