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I was a volunteer in 2000 for GeekCorps. And I can affirm most of what this guy was talking about is true. My job was to teach one guy how to code in Perl or PHP in 3 months. No problem, right? Heh.

For one thing the educational system in Ghana is completely based on rhote memorization. In programming you never see the exact same thing twice. Oh, you might see something similar, but never the exact same thing. Well, my Ghanian counterpart would sit there in front of a problem and just blindly try to apply the last thing I taught him. It took a lot of drawn out silences and lots of me sitting on my hands to get him to be a beginner programmer. But this was a success story, a year later he got into an American university for CS. And this year competed in an ACM contest. Wow.

Other things that the article doesn't really go into are aspects of doing business w/o contract law, not getting paid for 4 months, and often work only comes if you're aligned with the political party in vogue at the moment.

And getting a straight business plan or a requirements document out of Ghanians is impossible. These people want to do video conferencing via 14.4k modem, real-time purchases w/o credit cards, and door-to-door shipping when no place has a street address.

but don't get me wrong, best 4 months I ever spent. I'd go back in a second.

If you want to know more about it, check out: Geekhalla.org.

-j

It is a volunteer driven organisation where you help them close the "digital divide" gap.

How about Geeks in Ghana? -Dave

There's a volunteer project that sends geeks to Ghana to help businesses. You can read about it at geekhalla. I'm pretty sure /. has even had a story about it at some point in the past.
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Even though I am 99% sure that the Urban Existentialist is a troll based on previous posts, I have to respond to this one since it currently rated + 5 insightful implying that this is what the Slashdot community thinks of Geekcorps and Geekhalla.

It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. I've looked at the projects page at Geekhalla and I am impressed by what they hope to achieve. Instead of being like most Westerners whose only thoughts of Africa occur when they guiltily switch the channel whenever one of those commercials asking for money to feed starving children who can be fed for less than $1 a day shows up, these people are contributing something. It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need.

Frankly I'm glad they're doing this, with the advent of the Net I've kept in touch with friends I left behind via ICQ and email whom I thought I'd never talk to again due to the prohibitive costs of calling or locating them after they moved. Anyone who is helpingwith the proliferation of the Net in Africa has my thanks and undying appreciation. Oh by the way, for all the other people who are bashing them for going to Africa to make web pages and teach OO programming What the fuck are you doing for the poor and starving of the Earth.

PS: I just spoke got an email from a friend I haven't seen since 1997 who lives in Nigeria and he told me he has a job writing VBA applications for a local company and he is brushing up on his COM and C++. Hope that makes some you guys think before you rate this kind of jingoistic claptrap up.

Grabel's Law

THarris from Geekhalla writes on their site: "The air-conditioned expatriate havens - I've seen a few now already in my week here - annoy me. As I see fat, rich people inconsiderately acting as they wish with no regard whatsoever for the people around them it just makes me want to SPIT!(This is accepted here, I've heard so I hock a loogie now in honour of all those kind and gentle people who make the effort.) Cheers my comrades. We can make the difference. Not all of us are ignorant, obnoxious buffoons. We know it's true. See you at the street-stalls and market places.

I'll see the rest of you in HELL!!"

It seems presumptuous to be in foreign land for a week and decide that the fat "ex-pats" are all ignorant, obnoxious buffoons. It's particularly surprising given Tim's well-traveled upbringing. Such aggressive language seems ill-considered from a group that would do well to bring the local community together, rather than broaden its divisions.

Geekhallans may not have talked to those they demonize. In many cases white Africans have been there for generations, so if they're pre-judging national origin of these so-called ex-pats based on skin color, they may be surprised to learn family histories.

If the wealthy seem fenced off from their community, or neighborhoods seem racially segregated, here's an article from Salon that may broaden your perspective: Rape, robbery and anguish in the new South Africa. Ghana is certainly very different from South Africa, but there are examples across Africa of racial intolerance that can lead to such divisions. For that matter, "fat, rich" Americans usually live very separately from their less fortunate fellow citizens, as well.

To condemn a group of people as ignorant without understanding their perspective is ironic.