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Metissacana Closes its Doors

One of the pioneers of the Internet in Africa, the Senegalise provider Metissacana, is closing its doors in Senegal: Oumou Sy and Michel Mavros, founders of Metissacana, will explain why during the Ars Electronica Symposium.

Metissacana is a private limited company founded in Senegal in the early days of the Internet in Africa by fashion designer Oumou Sy, Michel Mavros and Alexis Sikorsky. br>
Metissacana delivers the entire range of Internet services, from Internet access, web site design and hosting, development of specific applications, training and consultancy and hardware sales to full network integration.

Metissacana was launched just two months after the Internet first came to the Senegal, at a time when South Africa was the only African nation with full connectivity. Metissacana is in many ways a pioneer: it opened the first cybercafé in Africa (outside South Africa), it was the first operator in Africa to broadcast live radio programmes on the Internet (Sud Fm, followed by Radio Nostalgie Dakar, 1997) and developed a free email address service which can be consulted and created from the Metissacana home page (1999).

During the 2000 presidential elections, Metissacana conducted the first experiment in African online democracy in conjunction with Sud Fm, (live debates between candidates, internauts and the public, online polls and surveys, publication of election results, etc.) Metissacana jointly produced the very first concert to link up Africa with another continent via satellite by broadcasting from its terrace venue to the Montluçon Festival in France. And in 2000 the first e-commerce venture in Senegal was launched in the form of Oumou Sy’s online boutique (2000).

In collaboration with the French radio station Skyrock, Metissacana ushered in the age of the *chat visio-phonique* with artists Wock from Saint-Louis and Dizis la Peste, Franco-Senegalese rappers, in 2001. In collaboration with Radio France International (RFI), it organised the second live chat with a head of state (the first ever was with former US President Bill Clinton) with Me Wade in the same year.

Some weeks ago the founders decided to stop all Internet activities in Senegal and to work on a panafrican level in the future. The reasons for their decision: After the privatisation of the Senegalese telecom operator Sonatel and the involvement of France Télécom the situation in Senegal is too uncertain.

Metissacana will be looking for partnerships in countries where there innovative projects will have more chances to be realized. It will focus on projects of rural connectivity, as it is doing with the 'Pesynet'-program.

Oumou Sy and Michel Mavros will explain the reasons for this decision during the Ars Electronica Symposium.

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