{"id":1065,"date":"2009-07-06T00:39:42","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T08:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/?p=1065"},"modified":"2009-07-06T11:43:25","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T19:43:25","slug":"foss-resources-and-articles-related-to-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/06\/foss-resources-and-articles-related-to-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"FOSS resources and articles related to Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spent a little time over the weekend gathering information about free and open source software in Africa, and found at least one active pan-African FOSS organization (FOSSFA), and several interesting articles about governments in Africa using FOSS to open data, and make government more accountable.  It seems that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shuttleworthfoundation.org\/\">Shuttleworth Foundation<\/a> sponsors projects, although it wasn&#8217;t clear to me whether that sponsorship was primarily for South African projects. <\/p>\n<p>If you know of user groups, other active FOSS organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, or want to suggest interesting research or articles &#8211; please leave a comment!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve collected everything as PDFs and uploaded it to <a href=\"http:\/\/drop.io\/fossinafrica\">drop.io\/fossinafrica<\/a>.  I&#8217;m also going to link the original sources below.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/fossfa.net\/index.php\">Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa<\/a>, organization that has been very active the last few months (2009).<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cipesa.org\/153\">Free\/open source software (FOSS) policy in Africa: A toolkit for policy-makers and practitioners<\/a>, PDFs of a report and resources at bottom of the page<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2007\/mar\/08\/freeourdata.southafrica\">South Africa&#8217;s freedom includes its data<\/a>, article on South Africa releasing GIS data<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/w3sli.wcape.gov.za\/\">Chief Directorate Surveys and  Mapping<\/a>, Mapping resource for South Africa with some map data freely available<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/whiteafrican.com\/african-tech-events\/\">African Tech Events<\/a>, list of tech events including an upcoming Maker Faire in Accra, Ghana<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/fossfa.net\/index.php?q=node\/67\">Presentation on FOSS in Africa<\/a>, from LinuxTag 2009 (June 22-26, 2009) presented by FOSSFA<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ejds.org\/meeting2003\/ictp\/papers\/Gideon.pdf\">FOSS in Africa<\/a>, academic paper on state of FOSS in Africa around 2003<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are some articles about Microsoft Windows and Linux competition in Africa: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/whiteafrican.com\/2009\/05\/17\/microsoft-vs-the-open-source-community-in-africa\/\">Microsoft vs the Open Source Community in Africa<\/a>, commentary on Microsoft&#8217;s involvement in Africa<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB122332198757908625.html\">Microsoft Battles Low-Cost Rival for Africa<\/a>, Tip: search directly for this URL in Google and view the cached version to get the full text.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/technology\/8047514.stm\">Hi Tech Battle for Africa<\/a>, from the BBC. Talks about a disaster response initiative from Microsoft that sidestepped  Ushahidi.com, an established and African-developed disaster response network.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The most disturbing thing I found was a <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB122332198757908625.html\">Wall Street Journal article from October 2008<\/a>. The WSJ investigated reports that Microsoft had used relatives of government officials to try to get Windows onto government purchased laptops, and also chronicled the failure of a windows-based lab made of refurbished machines that was essentially abandoned, with only 1\/3 of the promised computers installed and little or no training for the local staff to maintain the machines and software.  Sad and frustrating story.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also a recent blog post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensource.org\/node\/445\">about Brazil and open source from the OSI<\/a>. That report is anecdotal, so I&#8217;m taking it with a grain of salt. Still, it is disappointing.<\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in sponsoring travel for an African government official to Open Source Bridge next year, please get in touch. I have met several technologists here in Nigeria who are interested in sharing their experiences implementing free and open source software in Africa. I am encouraging them to also attend open source events in West Africa, but as it turns out, travel inside of Africa is still quite difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent a little time over the weekend gathering information about free and open source software in Africa, and found at least one active pan-African FOSS organization (FOSSFA), and several interesting articles about governments in Africa using FOSS to open &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/06\/foss-resources-and-articles-related-to-africa\/\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[658,66,259,258],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","tag-africa","tag-foss","tag-opensource","tag-reference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}