There will be no lack of journalists travelling to Edinburgh over the next week, pressing inquisitive noses against against the security cordon around Gleneagles. There will also be no shortage of words written and broadcast about Africa - a top summit agenda point.
But how many of those words will be written by journalists from Africa? What will the G8 summit, the protests, the media scrum, the worthy promises of the world's richest nations (plus Russia) look like to them? The answers, or at least some answers, are found on the Africavox blog a project run by Panos, an NGO supporting independent media in the developing world.
I have to confess a personal bias here. I met the Panos team who will be reporting from Edinburgh yesterday and they are excellent people. We talked about different levels of trust in journalists, safeguarding media independence from political and commercial pressures, getting access to people with power and our ability - or lack thereof - to hold them to account. We also talked about blogging.
The Africavox blog has only been live for a few hours but it's already bringing a different perspective. Check out, for example, Maura Quatorze's appreciation for Ken Livingstone's willingness to answer questions from a TV audience. We take it for granted that our politicians readily subject themselves to a bit of public grilling - we even snipe at them on the assumption that they are cynically lining up PR opportunities, which often they are. But the thing about politicians and public relations is that at least they feel the obligation to relate to the public, which is still quite a democratic impulse.
Something to think about next time Tony Blair goes on MTV.
