Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups

Douglas Hunter writes "Africa Source 2004 has wrapped up and the last of the stragglers have packed their bags and headed home. Africa Source 2004 was a gathering of pan-African Free and Open Source software developers held in Okahandja, Namibia. Organized by Tactical Tech, All Africa and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Africa Source was a mixture of structured and semi-structured discussions with loads of good 'ole hacking thrown in to boot. With workshops ranging from i18n to wireless hacks to running a MOSIX cluster, there were plenty of hands-on sessions for folks to attend. The first ever Kiswahili spell checker was developed and released during the conference, a testament to the activity of those involved. For more information about Africa Source 2004, visit one of the blogs."

Comments

Insightful? Hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

If only open source could produce food... hmm.

Because as we all know, Namibia is suffering a huge food shortage. I have lived in the Southern African region for a long time (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana) and know of no such food shortage. (Ok, Zimbabwe is now an exception, but that is a man-made problem and also a fairly recent problem, historically Zimbabwe/Rhodesia has always had a large food surplus).

Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships.

[zakezuke]

I have a friend who was part of peace coups in Namibia. Part of his duties did involve HIV education. From what he said I infer that it was difficult for some guy to convience his students about something deadly they couldn't see. I imagine we had the same problem here in the western world when Aides was new.

"We are not clear what AIDS is. We have seen many people suffering from headaches, stomachaches and diarrhoea, and only after they are dead do we hear rumours that they had AIDS. Some lose weight, and only after they are dead, you hear talk that they had AIDS. We do not know what AIDS is." --http://www.fao.org/SD/2001/KN1201a_en.htm

I do believe access to the net could be used as a tool to promote education and the sharing of information... esp on the issue of agriculture. I'd have to hunt up a reference, but there was a connection with HIV and the early death of elders of family farms, and not passing down trade. Modern agiculture is all well and good, but documenting local agiculture I would consider to be paramount.

A recently published FAO report, HIV/AIDS and the commercial agriculture sector of Kenya: Impact, vulnerability, susceptibility and coping strategies, shows that the disease is affecting not only small family farms but also large agricultural estates. Kenya's commercial agricultural sector is losing a significant number of skilled workers, and companies are spending increasing amounts of money on medical expenses and employee retraining. --http://www.fao.org/news/1999/991006-e.htm

Re:Corporations vs. Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Where a megalo-corporation would do it's best to stay away from a possible African market

This is not entirely true. Companies like Microsoft have a strong presence in the African market. Finding open source companies however is close to impossible

Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships.

[WegianWarrior]

Off course it won't. But by learning to work together, people may stop having civil wars, which means peole have more time to grow food (and not having it stolen by "freedom fighters") and get an education, which in turn leads to (hopefully) a cure for AIDS and a democracy that grows from the bottom up.

When you're trying to bring the better part of a continent out of the dark ages and into the bright new future, you has to start somewhere - and learning to work together seems like a bloody good place to start for me. But, hey, thats my point of view, right?

Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

" Africa is a big country. "
No, it's a continent with quite a number of quite different countries.

I was there...

[nicc777]

...to present the clustering workshop :)

We actually played with ClusterKnoppix and CHAOS. I have made my presentation and other notes available at itfirms.co.za for those interested.

I just want to say thanks to everyone for making it a great experience. I made a lot of new friends, and I look forward to the next event.

Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking

[tupambao]

There are different dialects in Kiswahili. the pronounciation differs from region to region for example the Kenyan pronounciation differs from an East DR Congo (Zaire) resident or Tanzanian pronounciation. If everyone wrote what they spoke... "l"s and "r"s are mostly interchanged... reading such documents is time consuming for the different parties involved. I think the next best step would be too introduce regional versions of the dictionary.

Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships.

[Anonymous Coward]

We Africans do not "have civil wars" like Americans have barbeques. We are for the most part victims of well-funded acts of violence and looting orchestrated by evil men with their eyes on the money. Look at Ghadaffi's 10 year plan to destabilize West Africa and his support for Zimbabwe today. No-one in Sierra Leone chose to get their arms chopped off at the elbows - this was the work of a small band of well-financed hooligans who's mission it was to turn the place into a hell-hole so that it would be easier to install a compliant government and steal the diamonds.

What we Africans need are ways to resist this kind of terrorism, i.e. our strong traditional society and support from the outside world. It has to be asked whether open source would support this, and I think that yes, if we can get computers running in our tribal languages, we will be able to reinfirce the traditional lifestyles that are our heritage and strength.

If I sound angry about this it's because I lost several relatives in Sierra Leone. It is so unfair to imply that we asked for this war. Most wars in Africa hve been over resources, with heavy support from external parties who want control over the wealth.

Re: a better life through access to information

[andyr]

You might want to check out our project :-

Wizzy Digital Courier

Bypass the monopoly Telcos with a uniquely African solution.

Cheers, Andy!

Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking

[chris_notts]

Not necessarily... to take the example nakisoma "I read it", if the dictionary listed only the verb "soma" and the affixes "na" and "ki" separately, and didn't contain any information on how they were combined, then it would be fairly useless, since it either wouldn't recognise "nakisoma" as correct (since it doesn't know they can be glued together) or it would also recognise "kinasoma" which is meaningless (since it wouldn't know the rules about the order things can be fixed together). Any spell checker must also know derivational rules (and thus some grammar), such as in english any regular verb takes -s in the 3rd person singular, unless you list every possible derivation in its word list (difficult in swahili, less so in english).

Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity

[CvD]

Its also a lack of willingness to use condoms. Even in areas where people have been educated, condoms are cheaply available, they still refuse to use them for various reasons, from religion to saying they reduce feeling.

Another is the adherence to old customs. For instance where if a man dies, his brother will "inherit" his wife and children. So if the man dies of AIDS, his brother will have it pretty soon too.

Of course this is not the way it is everywhere in Africa. But in the regions where AIDS is most prevalent, lack of education and cheap condoms really isn't always the cause.