This follows the South African High Court's approval of a bid by a consortium of investors to buy the business of AfriCam.com. The consortium, headed by original founder and Real Time Travel Connection MD Paul Clifford, also includes founder Graham Wallington, former CEO Peter Armitage, “adventurer” Alex Wills and Djuma Game Reserve owners Jurie Moolman, Pippa Moolman and Campbell Scott." ITWeb Jan 2002

Djuma is an industry leader in terms of the utilization of the Internet and it is here that Africam.com (always live, always wild; the immensely popular virtual game reserve) was born.

Background: After a sharp drop-off in internet advertising and a relatively slow take up of the 2001 subscription product, the then directors and shareholders of AfriCam decided that the business was not in a position to incur any further liabilities and the business was put into voluntary liquidation.

This saddened all those involved in AfriCam and it was especially unfortunate for the staff members and founders who had put so much time and effort into building the business. Everybody lost.

The purchase of the assets of AfriCam: As part of the liquidation of the business, the assets of AfriCam were put for sale to the highest bidders.

The danger with a process like this is that there can be a perception that the business was closed down to eradicate debts and get rid of staff. This was most certainly not the case and the management did all they could to keep the business alive, including paying the staff out of their own pockets in the months prior to liquidation. It is not the shareholders of AfriCam that have bought the business back, but rather a passionate small minority of the shareholders (+/-20%) and some individuals that did not previously have any shares in the business. We believe in AfriCam and want to revive all of the positive things about AfriCam. We have received great support from the AfriCam viewers, who just want their site back!

The way forward: The consortium that has bought the assets of AfriCam is intent on making it work. We had to pay for the assets and simply cannot afford for the business to run at a loss going forward. The days of a loss being acceptable and attractive to investors are long gone. The business has to be sustainable and we cannot let what happened last year repeat itself. In planning the way forward for AfriCam, we have decided to ask you, the viewers for input in order to make the correct decision.

AfriCam has two potential revenue streams; advertising or subscription. We would ideally like to make AfriCam a free site, to be enjoyed by millions of people all over the world. However, the reality is that AfriCam's own popularity is its biggest problem - the bandwidth cost goes up proportionately for every viewer watching the site. The only way to cover this cost is through advertising and the internet advertising marketplace is very uncertain. Nevertheless, this is our first choice and we would like to attempt to run the site this way. If this fails, our only alternative is to charge a subscription fee to those who are prepared to put a monetary value to the service they are receiving. This will mean a dramatically reduced audience base, but it is better than no AfriCam!

We have an idea which would give us the time to attempt to attract advertising and the survey will help us in assessing what our options realistically are.

Our idea is as follows: We launch AfriCam as a free site and ask for donations to the site, all of which will be used to run the site. No monies will be used for salaries to the consortium members. All donations received will go straight into keeping the site alive. We will be transparent about this and give the community an update of how long this money will last us. All donors will form part of the "AfriCam honour list" to be posted on the site. During this time we will put our best endeavours towards selling advertising for the site, in order to keep it free.

If we do not have success in selling advertising on the AfriCam site and the donation money runs out, we will be forced to introduce a subscription.

Jurie Moolman

Managing Director

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Djuma Game Reserve

P. O. Box 338, Hluvukani, 1363, Mpumalanga, South Africa

Tel: (+ 27 13) 735 5118

Fax: (+ 27 13) 735 5070