It's the graphic that says the most... #BoT going Internet retro

Yesterday, a blog post here generated another one here.

Both dealing with the fact that Bank of Tanzania (BoT) hasn't made information regularly accessible for a good while on their website, which has lead to serious suspicions, amongst others that the bank's international reserves are drying up.

In short.

The two blog posts lead to a debate on Twitter (partly to be found under the hashtag #BOT, which is partly mixed with other agendas unfortunately), which again lead to a reaction from CCM (from Nape Nauye, posted on Facebook), and from BoT which actually then made someone upload the Monthly Economic Reviews for January and February 2012, which however presently appears impossible to download due to size.

On Twitter Mbwana tags it the 'incident' #ClosedGovtPartnership with a hint to Tanzania's engagement in the Open Government Partnership, which may be open in theory but offering little updated data to share practically.

The social media driven debate also lead to (at least) two newspaper articles, one in The Citizen and one in The Guardian. In less than what - 24 hours?

In The Citizen (on-line) the governor of the BoT is quoted for saying: “The Monetary Policy Committee used to meet monthly, however, since January it has been meeting once in two months. The change has led to delays in publishing the reports''. He adds: 'BoT would stop issuing such documents monthly and instead they would be made available once in two months. “But the reports will contain details of the two months.”

Economy isn't my strong side, I leave that to the blog posts by Zitto Kabwe and Swahili Street. However, the communication of facts, of what is being said, but also of what isn't being said, is terrifyingly interesting.

Facts are, it is a rare thing seeing something go this fast in Bongo.

However, do note the yellow/red flashing icon on the screen dump above. That's also becoming a rare thing these days. Sort of Internet retro. Graphically it is supposed to indicate change, I believe. News.

The whole thing took me to the English version of my own National Bank of Denmark. They actually have a site saying how they communicate. The Central Bank of Ireland opens up like this, and the Central Bank of Iceland, which - if any - have had a rough time, provides publications like this (in English which is a second language in Iceland).

I suppose it isn't after all that much about the graphic style or the exact way you communicate, whether you go retro or not, it may be so much more about what isn't being said and what cannot be downloaded easily.