CodeZed

Linux Fund and the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) have pledged to work together to promote Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Africa.

In a Press Release, Linux Fund and the Free Software and Open Source Foundation of Africa (FOSSFA) have signed a landmark agreement to promote Free Software and Open Source in Africa. This historic engagement between two Foundations speaks to the success of the Community Summit and Foundations face-to-face meeting at this year’s Open Source Conference (OSCON) which was held in San Jose in Silicon Valley.

Within the framework of the agreement, David Mandel of Linux Fund emphasizes that “Linux Fund will work to raise money to help fund FOSSFA projects and events that expand the use and development of Open Source software, documentation, data, and education in Africa. Linux Fund will also add information about FOSSFA to promotional fliers and other literature that Linux Fund uses at conferences and for direct appeals to potential donors”.

Nnenna Nwakanma of FOSSFA says she believes that Linux Fund support has come at a good time when FOSSFA has engaged in the ICT@INNOVATION project in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Kenya http://www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net and the FOSSWAY (http://fossway.fossfa.net ) project that sweeps across the whole of West Africa and Central Africa promoting and building FOSS capacities in those 18 countries. She also believes that the upcoming projects of FOSSFA on Policy Support to Governments, Management of Internet Resources, Open Source Certification, Resource/Competence Centers and Open Source Solutions for Governance will also benefit greatly from this collaboration. Finally, she believes the upcoming Fourth African International Conference on Open Source and the Digital Commons (Idlelo 4, Accra, Ghana, May 17 – 21, 2010) will be an important event to showcase results of this partnership.

Both organizations will disseminate information about each other’s activities, initiatives, and operations on their web sites, at conferences, meetings and events. FOSSFA and Linux Fund are committed to expanding their partnership beyond funding to include joint projects and events plus strategies for information exchange between their diverse communities. The development of a system that would allow Open Source experts visiting Africa could be linked with speaking opportunities or short volunteer consulting projects during their trips is also under consideration.

About Linux Fund

Linux Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides financial and advisory support to the free and open software community. Linux Fund has given away over $750,000 to open source events and development since its founding in 1999 using funds raised through its line of credit cards and direct donations.

http://www.linuxfund.org/

About FOSSFA

FOSSFA is the premier African FOSS organization, and was founded under the auspices of the Bamako Bureau of the African Information Society Initiative within the mandate given by African Governments in 1995 to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The Vision of FOSSFA is to promote the use of FOSS and the FOSS model in African development. FOSSFA supports the integration of FOSS in national policies and also coordinates, promotes, and adds value to African FOSS initiatives, creativity, industry, expertise, efforts and activities at all levels. FOSSFA partners with development organizations who share these goals towards a participatory and gender-mainstreamed sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. The Foundation is already working with the African Union, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the State Information Technology Agenca of South Africa (SITA), the German Capacity Building International (INWENT), the Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) and the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE)

BarCamp Lusaka is gathering of people with the passion, creativity and excitement for all things geeky to connect with each other and exchange their knowledge.

BarCamp Lusaka is a free event. Please indicate your attendance at the event page so that appropriate arrangements can be made.

Event: BarCamp Lusaka ”State of The Nation Online: Content, Design, Standards”
What: Informational Meeting
Start Time: 19 December at 09:00
End Time: 19 December at 16:00
Where: Long Acres Lodge, Lusaka

To see more details and RSVP, please visit the event page.

Suggested Agenda

There will be keynote presentation and then many breakout sessions running parallel.

• Google’s workshop sessions :
  • Google Geo Tools  : Our effort to Map africa on Google maps is based on the premise that this will provide a great platform to create local content.  This session will be focus on using our Map API to integrate location based service in website but will also be about using MapMaker to help improve the maps of Zambia.
  • Google AppEngine : a session on this very useful plateform that allows developer to leverage Google infrastructure and deploy application that can immediately scale to millions of users.
  • We can also present on more general topics such as  : Cloud computing, Monetizing local content, …etc
• Other presentations suggestions :
  • Most technologies usefuls to go online can be self-learned but taking people through 101 session will jumpstart the learning process. think about Python 101,
  • web entrepreneurs and successful ones too. Sharing your experience is a great way to build developer’s enthusiasm. one or two Keynotes on this.
  • Developers will be shy if the barcamp culture is new around. And some keynote speaker will be quite intimidated to add to to this. So they might tend to just en listen. Scheduling an open session where people can have the floor for 15 mn presentation of their work has proved a good way to get them to share.

Training farmers who have never used computers to embrace web 2.0 tools has been a great challenge for me here in Monze.

The worst thing was that i could not even speak their language Tonga of which i beat that barrier by asking a good Samaritan to translate for me during the workshop.

I was amazed by the zeal these women farmers had when they expressed interest in knowing what web 2.0 tools were and how they could use them as farmers.

The women farmers confessed that they were not going to use web 2.0 tools but however said that they would use mobile phones to send text messages to technical officers an alert them on whatever was happening in the villages.

The issue of language is an issue as these farmers as they would like to blog the internet in Tonga.