[Editor's Note: This is a Guest Post from Patrick Cushing of Enter Venture . The post was initially published here and has been reposted here on StartupsNigeria.]

Ever since I started the international startup series on Enter Venture, I’ve been hearing about the African startup scene. A few of the sites in this post kept popping up in blogrolls across the web so it’s been a thrill to finally dig in. So far, I’ve covered Asian, Middle Eastern, European, and Australian web startups. The sites coming out of Africa are just phenomenal.

These types of sites — these hidden gems — are why I started this international startup series over a month ago. I wanted to see and demonstrate the way that the global startup climate was evolving, or in some cases, being created before our eyes. From where I stand in the U.S., I must admit I rarely hear about African startups. From the looks of things, that is / will be changing soon! Check out some of these great sites:

Startup Africa

Startup Africa covers the African technology and startup scene, with a particular focus on startup events. From a glance at the tag cloud, Ismail Dorat’s blog tends to focus largely on events and startups coming out of South Africa. If you’re ever doing an Enter Venture-like startup review, the site’s sidebar is extremely useful with a breakdown of startup news by African countries — there aren’t too many posts outside of South Africa, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

StartupsNigeria

Loy Okezie’s blog reviews web startups and web trends specific to Nigeria. This includes everything from Google maps’ Nigeria coverage to Nigerian entrepreneur interviews, Nigerian startup reviews, and even an assessment of the Nigerian VC environment. If you’re looking to brush up on Nigerian web trends, this is the place.

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I’ve been thinking of a better way to show appreciation to blogs that have done a review about StartupsNigeria. Here’s a new feature called ‘Quick Hits’ that will be highlighting blogs that gave us a review around the blogosphere.

Appfrica, a web portal for the latest news related to African innovation, education and entrepreneurship in technology by Jonathan Gosier made an interesting list of 10 blogs that focus on African tech in this post: Who’s Blogging About African Tech?

On this list, StartupsNigeria was described in Jon’s own words as:

…similar to some of the other sites on this list, and like the title suggests, SN covers web and mobile startups in Africa with an intentional focus on Nigeria.

Enter Venture, a blog about early stage web entrepreneurship by Patrick Cushing, which recently started covering international startup sites, included StartupsNigeria in the post: International Startup Sites - Africa.

In Patrick’s own words,

Loy Okezie’s blog reviews web startups and web trends specific to Nigeria.  This includes everything from Google maps’ Nigeria coverage to Nigerian entrepreneur interviews, Nigerian startup reviews, and even an assessment of the Nigerian VC environment. If you’re looking to brush up on Nigerian web trends, this is the place.

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This is a quick post to announced that StartupsNigeria was profiled on TechMASAI, an African blog that monitors and criticizes web 2.0 sites and start-ups with special emphasis on Africa.

The blog has been covering african tech scene and has also reviewed sites and services such as Zoopy, Mpesa, Myvideo, Blueworld amongst others.

We appreciate your support!

Justin Hartman of Afrigator has just compiled a list of the Top 45 Female African Bloggers, and I thought I should share it here. The list includes only 3 female Nigerian bloggers, namely Blacklooks, Ladybrille and Ore’s Notes.

See the full list of the rankings on Afrigator’s Blog.

My guess is that the criteria for the rankings are based on the blog’s audience reach and following as well as Afrigator’s unique ranking system which takes into consideration page views, unique visits, links from blog posts and finally links from blogs.

I personally follow Black looks and have reviewed Ladybrille here on StartupsNigeria. I’m just discovering Ore’s Notes and will check it out. Again, I’m surprised that the most popular Nigerian celebrity and fashion blog, Bella Naija did not make it to the Top 45 list. Perhaps, the blog is not listed on Afrigator. Meanwhile, StartupsNigeria is currently ranked 67 in Nigeria and 1420 in Africa.

If you are following any of these Nigerian blogs, tell us what you think.

It seems that Bella Naija has felt my nudge or should I say my tease, as I got the scoop yesterday that the most popular celebrity and fashion site in Nigeria has rebranded into a full-fledged celebrity news site for Nigerian entertainment fans. I reviewed the site here on my Blog Day 2008 post.

Bella Naija is a Nigerian celebrity blog that passionately publishes fashion & entertainment news, info, gossips and gists as well as profiles Nigerian & African celebrities around the world. The site aspires to become Africa’s Number 1 music, style, movie, tv and beauty website.

The site which started since July 2006 as a blog (with a blogspot sub-domain) has become the most popular celebrity, fashion and entertainment news site for Nigerians in the diaspora and back home.

The new Bella Naija site was designed by Antigravity Inc., a leading web development company based in Atlanta, Georgia with over 100 clients including organisations and individuals.