Paper:Recommendations for a better FOSS future in Africa

From Wiki

Good to Great FOSS participants spent the final session at the event brainstorming how to better support and grow the FOSS movement across Africa. The following represents a “blue sky” set of ideas, where no constraints were placed on thinking in terms of costs or other limiting factors.

Advocacy and awareness raising: Several ideas were put forth with the goal of driving greater understanding of both the potential and the current benefits of FOSS:

• Leadership and champion development: FOSS projects and developers currently must serve as their own advocates and evangelists. Intentional efforts to recruit and train champions able to articulate the benefits of FOSS to a range of sectors would distribute some of that work away from those already trying to deliver tools, and diversify the ecology of FOSS stakeholders.

• Development of evangelism resources: Advocacy would be greatly bolstered by the availability of quality materials to support outreach work. These assets would include a list of the benefits of FOSS software, talking points for FOSS-vs-Proprietary discussions, case studies, how-to's for evangelists, and lists of relevant resources such as mailing lists and online communities.

• Success stories of private FOSS initiatives: Examples and descriptions of successful FOSS projects, both African and western, especially those not delivered under government or educational auspices would be a very useful resource to those advocating about the sustainability and potential of FOSS undertakings.

Community Building: FOSS projects in Africa often lack peer awareness, and according to practitioners, there is not a strong peer sharing ethic. The following recommendations by participants at Good to Great FOSS seek to address these issues:

• African virtual FOSS community: An online community space designed to connect FOSS practitioners in the African context would fill a large gap in connecting projects that otherwise have no common place to meet and collaborate. First, by listing existing communities and organizations and their respective areas of focus, such a hub could better connect what is already being done while providing any additional mailing lists or wikis which were needed. Second, by providing documentation and best practices on collaboration models, hiring processes, licensing, community oversight and software development, the site could lower barriers to entry for those wishing to get started or scale their FOSS projects. Third, such a community would provide a a better forum for developers to exchange ideas and solutions. While such a community would not be readily reachable by all FOSS practitioners due to connectivity issues, it would provide a starting point for a more connected FOSS community across Africa.

• FOSS project mapping: It is still very difficult to know what FOSS projects are extant in Africa. A mapping of FOSS projects working in the African context would offer an invaluable inventory of who's doing what, and offer a range of stakeholders insight into where they might plug in and offer support, as well as avoid duplicating existing efforts.

• Events and workshops: While FOSS communities typically operate in virtual and distributed fashion, there is no doubt that in-person convenings are an invaluable source of knowledge gain and community strengthening. Ideas discussed include an annual FOSS fair, tied in with awards and a job fair in each country, to bring together developers and other FOSS advocates in a environment of capacity building and social networking.

Institutional support: FOSS projects are often challenged from the outset by a lack of institutional support. The lack of both financial and tactical resources hinders both success and growth. Ideas proposed to counter this dynamic include:

• Venture fund for FOSS in Africa: The establishment of a pool of venture funding for African FOSS projects would enable promising startups to seek seed capital. In addition, the process of seeking such funding would force those projects to analyze their business environment and sustainability much earlier in the development cycle than is normally done.

• Government strategy and policy: Any success at bringing governments into the fold as proponents could have far-reaching benefits for FOSS in Africa. But lobbying is challenging, and compelling cost/benefit analysis is hard to come by. In addition, influence peddling and corruption are ongoing concerns; proprietary vendors have resources and motivation to manipulate policy in their favor.

• Infrastructure: As countries and regional governments continue efforts to better connect their constituents, the increased connectivity will allow more of the ubiquitous collaboration that has characterized successful FOSS projects all over the globe. In addition, efforts to get PC's into more homes will increase the number of potential participants in the FOSS ecology.

Enhanced educational resources: Increased opportunities for both young learners and adults to encounter and understand FOSS tools and concepts are central to any growth plan. Two specific ideas were considered during the course of the Good to Great FOSS brainstorm:

• FOSS-based learning curricula: While there are already noteworthy examples of FOSS in African schools, the vast majority of curricula are still devoid of FOSS elements. Efforts to better integrate FOSS into elementary and high school learning programs would greatly increase the potential for FOSS to thrive in the African context.

• Technology centers with FOSS programming: Providing telecentres and other technology venues with FOSS tools and training materials could great learning gateways for adults to gain FOSS skills and knowledge.