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.

Appfrica

Appfrica is an African developer / entrepreneur’s heaven. The blog covers a wide breadth of African IT news and culture topics. Their Afridex is a Crunchbase-like African startup index. They feature African tech interviews. Web trends. Mobile trends. Conference coverage. A forum. A wiki. Mix in a great, clean design and this site is nearly homepage worthy.

Bandwidth Blog

Bandwidth blog is the South African and global internet startup news blog, which means, they cover just about everything and some of their posts happen to be about South Africa. You’re just as likely to find a critique of FriendFeed as you are the latest news about Afrigator. They also have one of the coolest sections on any blog that I’ve seen with their series of office photos from startups all over South Africa..

TechMASAI

TechMASAI looks like the most low tech of the African startup blogs with a basic, hosted WordPress theme, but what it lacks in design aesthetic, it makes up for in a devotion to startup profiles. TechMASAI has the most singular focus on startup reviews with roughly 4 of 5 posts focused on profiling new startups.

Also worth checking out are ITNewsAfrica, Startup Kenya, and Timbuktu Chronicles.

Now, it’s time to double back to Australia. It breaks up the westward path we were charting, but for some reason, with Australia, that feels fitting.

TechNation Australia

TechNation Australia is something. They cover everything related to startups in Australia from interviews, events, new startups, top Australian sites by traffic, etc. “If it’s to do with technology and Australia then we’re on it.” What’s more amazing, the site’s ostensibly a labor of love by a group of dedicated contributors — there’s no advertising to be found. (Which, also, partly explains a design that is far surpassed by its content.)

VS Consulting Group

Vishal Sharma’s startup blog is an excellent place to start any review of the Australian tech scene. The site features Australian startup reviews, trends, and interviews with Aussie entrepreneurs. The blog has been a bit quiet as of late, but it’s well built for longer lasting content. There’s a comprehensive list of Australian startups, Australian research and analysis, and interviews accessible from the header.

Tech Events

Tech Events is a user generated Australian tech events site. It’s not a calendar service — nor is it meant to be. It’s a group of people interested in sharing technology events in and around Melbourne with new events posted in a blog-like format.

Phil Morle’s Technology for Humans

Phil Morle’s Technology for Humans is just a damn, great blog. Phil covers Australian startups and tech, but what’s really great about his blog are his usability insights and future of the web discussions. A few of my favorites are Web App Goal #2: Don’t Try to Change the World and Can Everyone in Your Startup Answer These Questions?

ITnews Australia

ITnews Australia covers both Australian and global IT news. There’s more of a focus on enterprise companies and gadgets.

Builder AU

Builder AU is a great resource by developers, for developers — regardless of whether they come from Australia or not. A series of blogs cover everything from Python tips to Design Principles, with a bit of Australian startup news mixed in.

Also worth checking out are BlogPond with its list of the 100 top Australian blogs as well as Scott Middleton‘s blog.

Again, if you know of any other startup sites that I’m missing (especially non-English sites), let me know in the comments.

Europe

Arctic Startup

Arctic Startup reviews internet and mobile startups from Nordic and Baltic countries, and they’re one of my favorites on this list. The site has a great, cool blue design that is unique but still evocative of TechCrunch. I appreciate the honest way they present new startups, with a description of both the strengths AND the weaknesses of the company / application.

The Next Web

The Next Web covers anything and everything related to the future of the web, no matter where it comes from. That said, the team is largely European (largely Dutch) so their coverage gives generous play to European startups. Posts run the gamut from startup reviews, reactions, and general industry news including a recent reaction to Jason Calacanis, a Romanian music site review, the Pope on Twitter, and some great advice for entrepreneurs in this economy.

alarm:clock euro

alarm:clock euro, like it’s American counterpart alarm:clock, reports on the comings and goings of VC money in Europe with a focus on funding rounds and buy outs. Each post comes with a description of the startup, the amount they’ve been funded for, and (the interesting part) a few thoughts about why they think the investment is a good or bad one.

TechCrunch UK

TechCrunch UK is TechCrunch for startups in the UK . (I’m assuming people know what TechCrunch is.) Amazingly, it appears as if its entirely written by one guy, Mike Butcher. Here’s hoping he gets that star intern he’s looking for.

TechCrunch France

TechCrunch France covers the French startups scene as well as translates and re-posts a portion of TechCrunch’s original posts.

Startup 2.0

Startup 2.0 is a pan-European startup contest that took place last May (and presumably, will be held again). Voting takes place online for a chance to win ad space in TechCrunch, a Microsoft software pack, and Sun hardware. Personally, I would have expected a better prize than with something closer to what VenCorps offers.

Altaide Valley

Altaide Valley is another blog focusing on the connections between France and Silicon Valley. The blog is owned and operated by Altaide, a French strategic technology firm.

TigerPrises

Toivo Tanavsuu’s TigerPrises covers Estonian startups and general technology trends in the Baltics, particularly mobile. Toivo also writes for Arctic Startup.

Startupbin

Startupbin covers web startups in Finland. Timo Paloheimo is another blogger from Arctic Startup, and he’s also created Google minus Google — a Google search site without Google sites in the results.

Other European startup sites worth noting are SwissStartups.com and SomBiz (a Finnish, invitation-only Web 2.0 entrepreneur network).

StartUpArabia

StartUpArabia is another one of the blogs that made me want to write this international startup series. Mohamed Marwen Meddah’s site covers new Arab technology startups as well as general market news and information. The site covers startups all over the arab world, with recent posts covering sites or news everywhere from Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Lebanon. You can also find events (largely in Dubai) and a job board on Startup Arabia.

StartupIsrael

StartupIsrael’s design has a bit of a web 1.0 feel to it, but it seems to be largely a web 2.0 powered site. The site has an active events list, informative book list, and the authors re-post links to Israel startup news (in English) from Hebrew news sites. They also aggregate a few popular U.S. sites in one of their sections.

ArabCrunch

ArabCrunch and StartupArabia seem to overlap a lot in their coverage, and I suspect the two sites will compete for quite some time as they both have very high quality sites and articles. ArabCrunch does seem to do a better job of posting general industry news. From the looks of their tag cloud, the site stresses heavily on Jordanian news and startups.

Israel Startup News

Israel Startup News covers a variety of startups — not just web-based startups. This site really demonstrates the diversity of startups coming out of Israel with energy, medical, and web startups featured on the site. Dani Dechter’s done a great job pulling all of these different early company stories together.

TechWadi

TechWadi is a networking association for Arab Technology professionals in Silicon Valley and around the world. They host a series of events, largely in Silicon Valley.

Green & White

This Pakistan-focused site covers startups, business models, new media marketing, and usability — great! The site leans towards being more professional-focused with sections on IT, HR, Marketing, etc. They’ve also got a great, active side bar worth checking out.

VC Cafe

VC Cafe covers Israeli startups from abroad — originally from Silicon Valley, now from London. The site tends to feature funding rounds for Israeli startups, but there’s also general startup news and industry news as well. It may be last on this list, but don’t let that fool you. Count me in as a new subscriber.

Also worth checking out, TheWebsessed.

On the startup end, I think the setting is a bit different. The startup industry is astoundingly global, which is just what the internet was designed to make possible. You don’t have to create your company in Silicon Valley anymore (thank god because the world can only handle so many social thing-a-ma-jiggies). What’s different with startups, however, is that the industry isn’t as globally aware of itself, or at least not obviously so. It’s global, but it’s hardly interdependent.

With that in mind, I’ve been on the look out for international startup sites. I’ve compiled what’s hardly a complete list (especially because its limited to English language sites), but it begins to shed light on the global startup scene. If I’ve left anything out, please let me know in the comments. First up, India and Eastern Asia:

India

Pluggd.In – Pluggd.In reminds me a lot of Silicon Alley Insider. It covers new startups, funding rounds, and general industry trends. Their team reflects their diversity and depth of coverage. They have an active user community, and my interactions with their Chief Blogger – Ashish Sinha – was largely what prompted me to write this post. You can also check out their newly launched (and better designed) Ecosystem, a directory of startups, VCs, incubators, etc.

Startups.In – Startups.In has been essential to this series and has helped me identify a few of the startups on this list. The site takes an Alltop.com-like approach with aggregated startup news from China, India, Kenya, and Korea (lucky me). It’s a great international resource, but after this International series by Enter Venture, they might need to update their list a bit.

Webyantra – Webyantra reads like a mix of Hacker News and TechCrunch. It has both startup news as well as random other tidbits they pluck from the founders’ other company, SlideShare. I get the impression Webyantra is one Indian startup feed you don’t want to go without.

DesiStartups – The startup for Indian startups is small but great. The blog covers several new Indian startups a month with an approach similar to Enter Venture. The site reviews early startups with a bit of constructive critiscm included. Most of their startups seem to be extremely early stage.

StartupDunia – StartupDunia does a great job covering the Indian startup scene, and surprisingly enough, it’s author isn’t even located in India! Pranav Dharma covers the Indian startup scene from Florida — go figure.

Business India 2.0 – Business India 2.0 focuses less on startups and more on the internet at large. Their most recent series of posts provides a great breakdown of the online advertising industry.

Also worth noting from India are YourStory, Thinking Aloud, MediaNama, Alootechie, Unwireindia, The Startup Guy, VC Circle, Trak.in’, WATBlog, TechPluto, and Venture Woods

Korea

TechnoKimchi – TechnoKimchi easily has the best name in this series. Taewoo Danny Kim writes an insightful blog about the human issues behind the web. Just check out his great About section or his analysis of the meaning of ‘social’ in Asia with this post. It’s about people and technology, not just people or technology.

Web 2.0 Asia - Chang-Won Kim’s Web 2.0 Asia covers the Korean IT / tech industry with everything from events (Chang helped found Open Web Asia), new applications, and industry news. Chang’s other project (read: company) was just acquired by Google. Now, if only I could read Korean, I could explain what his company, TCN, does.

Korea Crunch – It looks like Korea Crunch went on hiatus for awhile, but now it’s back. From the looks of the snapshot on their most recent post, the blog looks to have a bunch of startups ready for review over the coming months.

Hong Kong

852 Signal – An homage to 37signals? Or something else entirely? I’m not sure, but maybe the blog’s founder, Angus Lau, will visit Enter Venture and tell us where the name comes from. In the meantime, 852 signal covers the next generation of web products coming out of Hong Kong. The blog is a great resource for finding out about new Asian startups without a lot of the noise on other sites. The site has a great, clean design and covers Hong Kong events, startup news, and anything else in the Hong Kong web tech market.

China

China Web 2.0 Review – The site focuses on interviews, search engines, social networking, and other web trends in China. As someone with little Chinese web awareness, I particularly liked their recent post, TrendsSpotting Handbook of Online China, which features a great slide deck on web penetration in China.

China Tech News – China Tech News isn’t exclusive to startups, but it covers the greater Chinese tech industry. In fact, this site seems to largely cover multinational companies and joint ventures, but like I said, I’m largely unaware of the Chinese startup scene. This seems like a good starting point for assessing the industry at large.

techblog86 – techblog86 covers the intersection of China’s mobile, tech, and startup worlds. Compared to ChinaTechNews, it’s also a sight for sore eyes. Not only does the site make use of a clean design, but it’s a lot closer to what we’re looking for in this startup site review. At least recently, the blog tends to focus on mobile web issues.

Singapore

Young Upstarts – Young Upstarts is a business and technology blog about new ideas and entrepreneurship. The blog covers Singaporean startups and events, but it’s not exclusive to Singapore. One of their recent posts features IdeaBlob, a U.S. based startup.

Project Senso – Project Senso is the Singaporean entrepreneur and founders network. The site features a blog on its homepage but the main use of the site seems to be its message boards.

Singapore Entrepreneur 27 – Singapore Entrepreneur 27 runs several tech events in a manner similar to the original Entrepreneur 27. The organization looks to be run by a group of students and early entrepreneurs.

Japan

Asiajin – Asiajin covers the Asian web industry but tends to focus on Japan. The site’s design isn’t all that impressive, and I originally underestimated the quality of its content. They do seem to have tapped into the Japanese startup scene with posts on events and a variety of different types of Japanese startups, and they feature links to a bunch of other Asian startups in the right sidebar. Check it out.

Also, notable from the inside, looking in.

Taiwan

Web 2.0 Play – Web 2.0 Play covers mobile and web applications from Taiwan. The site seems to be updated a few times a month with interviews, event reviews, and general industry news. It doesn’t seem to cover newly launched startups.

That’s all for now in this startup site series. Stay tuned for future posts as I’ll cover startup sites from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and everywhere in between.