Report on Africa Source II by Pambazuka
"When the rules of the game change we have an opportunity to change our
circumstances" – with these words Mark Shuttleworth, the first African
in Space, addressed the 140 participants at Africa Source 2 which was
held in a beautiful location at Kalangala, on Uganda’s Ssese Islands.
The event was intended to provide NGO activists, educators and
technologists space to get hands on experience with Free and Open
Source Software, but the participatory and enabling environment meant
that participants returned home with more than a handful of free CDs.
The three tracks of Migration for Education and Resource Centers,
Migration for Non Profit Sector and Information Handling and Advocacy
showed how participants from these sectors might use open source tools.
What was revelatory was not only the fact that the everyday tools we
might use for our work have robust free alternatives but that each and
every one of us have skills and experiences that are useful for us to
share.
In the information handling track some time was spent exploring
collaborative software. An introduction to Wiki’s showed how they might
be easily set up through sites like
http://www.wikispaces.com/ and
prove valuable in an educational context. Content management systems
(
http://www.socialsource.org.uk/pmwiki.php/IssuesAndResources/
ContentManagement) were demoed and compared as well as tools for the
use of SMS in activism and human rights monitoring such as Txtmob
(
http://www.txtmob.com/) and Asterisk (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/).
Activists from Egypt discussed the importance of blogging in recent
political campaigns (http://www.manalaa.net/egblogs) and how RSS feeds
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29 ) were a vital tool
in mobilising participation.
Other sessions saw the concepts of open knowledge explored in greater
depth. An introduction to copyright and the creative commons movement
( http://www.commons-sense.org/) showed how the burgeoning digital
commons can benefit Africa and how adoption of creative commons
licenses (http://creativecommons.org/license/ ) can actually be a smart
business model.
Yet computers can only serve to empower communities if they are adapted
for local needs. Africa Source provided an opportunity for the
localisation (
http://translate.org.za/, http://translate.or.ug/) of
popular software such as Open Office and showed how others might go
about localising into their language.
The empowerment of disabled computer users was also addressed – Arun
Mehta called help for the visually challenged from geeks -
(
http://wiki.africasource2.tacticaltech.org/post/main/
02mAzpaeWZNprwBC). He would like to see open source screenreaders to
help blind and illiterate computer users – the proprietary Windows
software costs in the region of $900.
Throughout Africa Source 2 participants were encouraged to offer their
skills and experiences to benefit others. Most technical environments
offer a strict division between ‘techies’ (usually male) and non
techies yet the atmosphere at Kalangala encouraged those with any
skills or experience to share them with the group.
Africa Source 2 also saw major progress in the development of the
African Linux Chix community. Women from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Zambia, Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda,
Sierra Lionne, Guniea, and Egypt got together to discuss how they might
advocate for open source amongst women. Mentoring for school-age girls
to get them to consider information technology as a career was seen as
a top priority. The openness of the FOSS community was seen as a great
opportunity for learning and participation by women. To join the
mailing lists in English and French visit the site at
http://www.africalinuxchix.org/.
Tags: Open Source Technology Africa
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One disappointing aspect of the this gathering was the missed opportunity to promote blogging in the African community by holding at least one blogging workshop.