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Despite its tremendous success, the World Wide Web can still not used by large parts of the world's population. Therefore, many people, especially in rural areas of developing countries, still do not have access to services and information that are available as a result of the World Wide Web. Given the potential of the Web in improving people's lives, a question is how it can be expanded to serve those living in less privileged conditions. Information must then be reachable regardless of infrastructure, allowing access using also interfaces such as radio and mobile phone. There is widespread use and adoption of radio and mobile telephony in Africa and thus, innovative use of these technologies could help in expanding the reach of the Web. In this paper we present three systems, based on open Web standards, designed and built to fit conditions in remote rural regions in Africa namely, a voice-based (i) trading system, using phone and radio as its interfaces, (ii) a voice-web based interactive news and blogging system and (iii) messaging system. The systems have been developed and have been deployed in Mali. All three systems together showcase the importance that innovation plays in order to make Web technologies relevant in the lives of many rural dwellers in Africa. We show the current status and usage of the systems and discuss how these systems represent our steps into bringing the Web to these contexts.

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