TORONTO, Sept. 20 -- IT sounds almost comical now, doesnt it? In an age when every cough in Kinondoni is live streamed, every soda spill on Sam Nujoma Road is immortalised as a meme and every sneeze in Kariakoo is blessed with three Instagram filters before the tissue even makes contact, to think that Tanzania once had no online news voice at all. A digital silence.

A gaping hole. And not just silence at home, but an even crueller one abroad, where the diaspora hungrily longed for updates.

Back in the early 2000s the world was marching into the digital age with uncharacteristic haste. Nairobi was buzzing, Kampala was flirting with digital forums and Lagos was already trying to crash the internet with sheer exuberance. Blogs sprouted lik...