PORT Elizabeth-born Jason Adriaan created the first and only South African internet directory that lists locally hosted content.
Local List is a free service that allows users to browse South African sites even after they have used up their international internet allowance (bandwidth).
“This promises to be a big development in South African internet, as it provides those who do not have access to international internet with an extensive list of alternative websites,” said Adriaan, 20.
The directory is a way to make internet more affordable, “promote local content” and increasing the number of internet users in South Africa,” he said.
Adriaan, who is studying medicine at the University of Cape Town, founded Local List in November last year.
In its first month it received 240000 site views.
When visiting the site you can expect to find links to anything from government sites and online banking to listening to radio or watching online videos.
Adriaan said international internet access was expensive, making it difficult for everyone to afford it.
“This alienates about 90% of South Africans from one of the world’s biggest educational and financial resources.”
Buying local internet access was much cheaper and had no limit on the amount of browsing allowed.
Until Local List, “users had no official indexing website which they could use to navigate the local internet and never knew which sites they could access with their local cap”.
“Many users were surprised when the site announced that popular international entertainment sites were accessible using local internet.”
Their goal is to index all South African sites and increase awareness of local-only internet.
“We are constantly updating the directory with more links to websites, validating them and removing spam.”
, will keeping an eye out 