Wildnet Africa http://www.wildnetafrica.com
Africa is a very big place, so you might expect an Africa-dedicated website to be big too. Wildnet Africa certainly doesn’t let you down on this one - it’s vast, and its 10,000 pages are packed with just about everything an Africaphile could possibly ask for.
As it says itself, this is not really a website in the usual sense - it’s a broad collection of sites, bringing together different areas of interest and letting you access them all from one place. After a bit of investigation, you’ll find that you can get to each of them directly, or follow the three wildnet ‘portals’: wildlife, travel, and general Africa info, which more gradually channel you in whichever direction you’re after.
For example, it’s just a short click away to South Africa’s National Zoological Gardens, as well as numerous conservation organisations like Campfire, the Rhino and Elephant Foundation and the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
For younger visitors there’s a separate kids section - which, as kids sections go, is really quite good - and on the travel front there’s links to reserves and expedition groups galore, so you can plan your pan-African adventure from the comfort of your own home. To give you a taste of what you’re missing in the meantime, go to one of the various photo archives, or find the Africam site, where you can see live images from webcams at waterholes. Some of the areas are a bit slow, and some areas need plug-ins to work properly - the clickable map in the travel area, for example. But if you don’t mind the wait, it’s all cleverly done. So polish your pith helmet, grab your machete and blaze a trail through this jungle of a site.
Richard Northover