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Starting from July 20, 2002, Africa Almanac will regularly review the Internet to select the African websites that capture the essence of
a good online presence --- a website's role as part billboard and on-screen advert, part artistic expression of corporate image, part brochure, workstation and front office. Africa's 50 Best Websites
1. M-Net
Type
Pay television network
Country South Africa
Address www.mnet.co.za Features Excellently designed, it is a rich, sophisticated website with sharp
high- resolution images and what look like inter-twining sheets on the homepage, conveying a sense of deep, dark space, and an almost futuristic feel of blue objects immersed in a liquid nitrogen tank.
Each inner section of the website --- be it the 24-hour music Channel-O or the Egoli soap opera channel --- are beautiful variations of this excellent website. The brightly coloured series channel and
the children's channel KTV pages depart from the general dark background of the rest of the site, but are nonetheless consistent with the overall high quality of the site as one of Beauty and the Best in TV.
2. Nederburg
Type Wine maker
Country South Africa
Address www.nederburg.co.za Features Rich in texture, this green-coloured site blends low-key graphics with imaginatively conceived and laid-out vintage memorabilia --- a typewriter, compasses, a clock, an old
house, a world map globe, a coat of arms. Also as a fine concept, are the admission tickets as a link to enter the site. The Nederburg website has enough about it to be a historical society site. 3. MTN
Type Mobile phone company
Country South Africa
Address
www.mtn.co.za Features South
Africa's second-largest mobile phone company presents a website that is spacious and almost plain in graphic layout, has a feeling of lightness and fun about it, and carries images of several young people conveying the
mood of one big happy family. The website is one of the few by an African phone company to clearly send out the message that people --- happy, upwardly mobile people --- are at the centre of the mobile phone
revolution. The website almost suggest that fun, rather than making money, is what MTN is all about. 4. Nedbank
Type Commercial bank
Country South Africa
Address
www.nedbank.co.za Features Like the MTN phone company website, Nedbank interacts with ordinary society in both its design and attitude,
making it seem as if attending to and reflecting people and their needs, dreams and lifestyle is the sole purpose of the company. To use a cliché, it is a people-friendly website. The Nedcor website conveys the
feeling that its business is not the making of money and accounting to shareholders and a board, but rather fun, health for all, and the making of life worth living. You the shopper, you the woman, you the artist,
you the happy, carefree young person, you, you, you and your betterment in small, ordinary matters, is the theme of the website. It could pass for Reader's Digest
magazine, with its emphasis on something useful and wholesome for everyone. 5. KWV
Type Wine maker
Country South Africa
Address
www.kwv.co.za Features For most of the year, this website was a somewhat over crowded assortment of images that tended to come across
more like a magazine than a wine company. Re-designed in the week ending August 10, 2002, KWV's new look was worth the effort. Now much less crowded and better laid out, it reflects the imagery of winery --- the
left-hand margin, a pale yellow and maroon shade, which seen at a distance looks like a wine bottle. 6. Steinhoff International Holdings
Type Furniture maker
Country South Africa
Address www.steinhoffinternational.com Features
The left margin of this website features strikingly beautiful, multi-coloured amber-shaded section bars, into which are built further information links to the site. The well-designed map indicating the company's regional branches, enhances its international look.
7. Cape Grace Hotel
Type
Hotel
Country South Africa
Address www.capegrace.co.za
Features
An inviting suggestion of refinement targeted at what the hotel industry terms as the "discerning" crowd, can be felt on this website, which projects a certain degree of reflectiveness and reserve. No wonder: it was voted the Best Hotel in the World by the American travel magazine
Condé Nast Traveler, in the 2000 Readers' Choice Awards. The design speaks volumes about what any sojourner would expect to find at the hotel --- a feeling of being given exclusive hospitality and attention.
The left margin is coloured after grapes, a light green and something about the site seems to point to an opening date in the heydays of the Victorian era. 8. Sunday Times
Type Newspaper
Country South Africa
Address www.stimes.co.za
Features One of South Africa's best-selling newspapers and on the Web, perhaps the one with the most disctinctive personality. Its best-known and most debated
feature in the country is the listing of the country's 100 best schools. The online version is a faithful replica of the print edition. 9. SABC
Type State-owned national broadcasting corporation
Country South Africa
Address www.sabc.co.za
Features For an African state-owned broadcaster, SABC does well in its endeavour to convey the "Pulse of Africa's Creative Spirit". Well illustrated are the sections, with animated cartoons and various
artwork, schedules, and background material, with past episodes well catalogued. The SABC website achieves that which makes a good website --- separately from the radio and television services, the website itself is a
good read and browse. 10. Business Day
Type Financial newspaper
Country South Africa
Address www.bday.co.za
Features
Some serious website, this is. Precise in layout, detailed in amount and scope of business news delivered. No other way to explain this upmarket website --- good and one of Africa's 50 best.
11. Glenwood High School
Type
High school
Country South Africa
Address www.glenwoodhighschool.co.za
Features One of the better school websites in Africa, it is set in a shade of luminous green colour, with subject bars to the
left-hand margin that turn a pale red on contact with the mouse's pointer. The website's culture section also offers a timeline of achievements by the students, while the sports page outlines the school's past success
at sports. Overall, it shows both in design and scope of content that it can do better on the web than many business corporations listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, in its presentation of the full picture,
past and present. 12. South African Airlink
Type Domestic airline
Country South Africa
Address
www.saairlink.co.za
Features At last, an African airline website that is well designed, including the imaginative use of minicule plane
models as subject bars in the left margin. Copies of the company's in-flight magazines are placed on the website, as is a map of southern Africa, photos of part of the airline's fleet that occupy real-life space.
This, plus interspersed photos of birds flying free, so that altogether the website creates the impression that flying with SA Airlink is fun, involves you, and you will probably have a pleasant flight.
13. MoneyWeb
Type
Business news website
Country South Africa
Address www.moneyweb.co.za Features
A solid, market and investment analysis website. Apart from reporting the general financial news of South Africa's business world, the website features interviews with key chief executives. The theme of the
interviews is their tendency to probe the executives for glimpses into their personal lives and how their personalities influence their business success.
14. Nedcor
Type Commercial bank
Country South Africa
Address www.nedcor.co.za Features At first glance, the Nedcor website hardly seems to be a commercial bank
site. For a website, this is a rare colour choice, with an all-grey, fluid aluminum look, it could pass for a scientific research institute's website. Sober, spare, exact, and streamlined, it is one of the best websites
in Africa. 15. De Beers Group
Type Diamond company
Country
South Africa
Address www.debeersgroup.com Features Simple elegance marks out this website, with its blue-black background colours and a spacious home page beautifully enhanced by real-life, graphite- looking
diamonds. However, for a company that is the world's largest diamond dealer, De Beers surely could have done more to publish the rich history of the diamond industry in South Africa on its website. 16. Max Models
Type Modeling company
Country South Africa
Address
www.maxmodels.co.za Features
The home page is an austere blue-grey image, punctuated by the unsmiling models. Once inside, the inner pages break into warm colour photographs of the various models, to each their own biographical background, photo
gallery, and specifics of measurement. 17. SAInvestor.com
Type
Share trading website
Country South Africa
Address www.sainvestor.com Features It features detailed information on the daily performance of South Africa's leading companies, including updated data on trading on the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Share prices run slowly across the screen and graphs are published, giving it a feeling of authoritative, real-time trading and financial reporting. 18. The Pam Golding Group
Type
Real estate company
Country South Africa
Address www.pamgolding.co.za Features The Pam Golding website, newly designed in the week ending July 27, 2002, it has replaced its former colours of cream and green, but retains its
up- market look, complete with stylized lettering. The previous design's dominant green colour was more striking than the cream of the new design, but none of the changes drastically alter the quality of the site.
19. Super Sport
Type Television sports channel
Country
South Africa
Address www.supersport.co.za
Features As action-packed and exciting as the TV channel itself. 20. If I Were The President
Type Public affairs discussion website
Country South Africa
Address www.ifiwerethepresident.co.za
Features This is one of the most innovative of websites on the continent. Essentially a discussion board an chat room rolled into one, it is well-designed. Its strengths, however, come in its main role --- as a
go-between the South African head of state and the public, as well as serving the role of interactive public forum for the voicing of national concerns. It plans to expand into mainstream media ventures like television
and radio. 21. Johannesburg Stock Exchange
Type Equities market
Country
South Africa
Address www.jse.co.za
Features A mildly textured website, it has a platinum tint and neat lines, including the blue octagon function buttons; much less cluttered than would be expected of a stock market website. Filled with shares and
trading data from Africa's largest stock exchange. 22. Vinoteque
Type
Wine distributor
Country South Africa
Address www.vinoteque.co.za
Features
Looks ood at a first and second glance, with fine, soft lettering and an atmosphere that suggests evening relaxation. Best features of all are the dreamy photographs that form the left margins --- the South African wineyards close to dusk (About Us), the cellar on which sit several wine bottles wit soft lighting from above (Contact Us, Maturation Charts) and the living room calm and elegance, with a hand held wine bottle (Vinoteque Collector).
23. University of the Witwatersrand
Type University
Country South Africa
Address www.wits.ac.za
Features One of the most serious
academic websites in Africa, well detailed in the amount of information it provides about the university, this website presents a full picture of the famous university, including a peek at the planetarium. 24. SA Rugby
Type
South African Rugby website
Country South Africa
Address www.sarugby.co.za Features In mid August, the SARugby website introduced a password entry feature that will block out the casual web surfer from its fine design. It is a
mixture of the orange and green colours of the South African national Rugby team, the Springboks. Pages are also well designed and background information and scores aplenty. 25. Westville Boys' High School
Type Secondary school
Country South Africa
Address www.wbhs.co.za
Features
Filled with details about this school, located in Natal, the website packs more information than do many websites of African universities, sometimes even appearing more like a sports website than a school website. It is well designed, too, with a colour combination of navy blue and dark red.
26. St. George's Grammer School
Type Primary and high school
Country South Africa
Address
www.wcape.school.za/sggs
Features Without question, eye-catching yellow/black-framed sections are its most noteworthy feature.
These are solid and yet appear like clean, blank plaques. Also noticeable are the four photographs on the homepage, the top two capturing the school's scenic location, the lower two the sense of innocence of the pupils.
In total, the life of the school. At the top of each section is a beautiful rectangular bar, presented in yellow, italicized, calligraphic lettering and set against a shiny smooth black solid block. 27. Paraa Lodge
Type National park lodge
Country Uganda
Address www.paraalodge.com Features One of the best travel industry websites in Africa, the Paraa Lodge site looks exactly what it should be --- more like a travel brochure than an Internet-
based advertising medium. An imaginatively conceived left-hand margin with the suggestion of a map's coordinates is enhanced by the main central area, a rocky background, decorative lettering, a photograph of the
Murchison Falls on River Nile, beautifully encased in a golden frame. The reservations form is not left plain, and it too is cut out from the cloth of the brown-ish rocky surface. The guestbook could have done with
more imaginative crafting, though. 28. Mobitel
Type National mobile phone operator
Country Tanzania
Address www.mobitel.co.tz
Features
A pleasant navy blue and dark yellow colour meets the eye. There are the happy subscribers chatting away. By not becoming too dramatic, the website makes its case, speaking for the company it reflects. It carries an interesting yellow map of Tanzania that is as plain as is necessary to point out Mobitel's outlets; its almost looks like omelette on a plate.
A little difficulty is exprienced, however, in opening the section on rates. But the idea is there. 29. Ministry of Education
Type Government education ministry website
Country Ghana
Address www.Ghana.edu.gh Features It is not often that good
quality websites come out of West Africa, the best being concentrated in South Africa and a few East African countries. But this website of the Ministry of Education in Ghana makes a statement in artistry (remarkable,
considering that this is a government website, many of which are well known for their blandness).
The homepage is the most easily identifiable school symbol --- a writing pad, the familiar red line in the left margin, the spiral bind. This website departs from the standard design format and leaves both left and
right margins of the page blank, the information centred instead. How much nicer it would have looked if it had, say, a child's scrawling somewhere on the white ruled paper. 30. Gold Reef Casino Resorts
Type Games resort
Country South Africa
Address
www.grcresorts.co.za Features
A neat feel about it and to its credit, not strewn with kaleidoscopic colours, typical of casinos. 31. Nando's
Type Fast food restaurant chain
Country South Africa
Address www.nandos.co.za Features A fun web site with a homepage humorously mapped after the
Microsoft Windows 98 software programme, complete with "Nando's Explorer" and "Bird Perfect." 32. African Lion
Type Coffee and tea online auction website
Country Kenya
Address www.africanlion.com
Features
In principle, what the African Lion website stands for is noteworthy --- the idea of trading across the Internet, in Africa's main cash crops like tea, coffee, cocoa, and coffee. However, having once stated that
for a mission, the website never ventures into the creation of a truly broad, African coverage, restricting itself largely to its Kenyan base. In its "About Us" section, it spells out this desirable goal
("The emerging business models of the digital age are founded on the notion of community…") without making a convincing example of what that entails. |
