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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."
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).
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?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
" Africa is a big country. "
No, it's a continent with quite a number of quite different countries.
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.
Need an ISP in South Africa?
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.