Well Barcamp Africa has come and gone and a weekend of interesting conversation and meeting people from all over Africa has ended. It was a really great time and there were some truly interesting people with interesting projects and ideas.
Some of the most interesting talks that I went to touched on subjects like:
1) Where the “bleep” is PayPal and Google Checkout in Africa? This was led by one of South Africa’s rising entrepreneurial stars, Henk Klenhans, who founded Skyrove. The basic issue here is that you can only “send” money via PayPal in Africa, you can not “receive” money. This is a major problem for small businesses in Africa that are trying to access global markets via their websites. You can imagine that this requires all kinds of issues and prevents many sales from happening online. Why is this?
2) Mapping the cities of Africa; Open Street Maps and Google Map Maker Both of these are “open source” approaches to mapping Africa. I feel like this is an incredibly useful tool and will benefit people greatly. It will help to reduce the “dark continent” aspect and people may start to see that Africa has cities with roads and buildings. My one concern, which I raised in the talk but didn’t really get a satisfactory answer, is how can a local African with a simple Nokia phone benefit from these maps? What would happened if you could add locations, and request geo-specific locations directly via SMS - assuming that people don’t have access to 3G networks. I think if mapping systems are able to be tapped in this way that they could truly be useful tools.
3) Why Africa? This was a discussion centered around why people are so interested in Africa. A very non-technical discussion that focused more on what peoples experiences with Africa are, and how Africans are experiencing Africa and what that means to those of us that live in the West. 2009 has been declared the Year of Reconciliation by the UN and coincides with the 15 year anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide and the first democratic elections in South Africa. It was powerful sharing my experience of growing up in South Africa during Apartheid and this led to me being invited to the upcoming Gathering of Forgiveness, A Step to Reconciliation in Rwanda.
Of course there were was much more that happened during the course of the day - some of which you can find on the blog BarcampAfrica. The blog will have more to come and we are in the process of putting together another space that will be called Re-aspora (a play of the Diaspora term). I hope that this conference will lead to a plethora of Barcamps that focus on the positive stories of Africa - the incredible ingenuity, the creativity, the technical proficiency and the entrepreneurial spirit. I believe that Africa has entered into a new phase and the “emergent economies of Africa will help tell the true story of what this wonderful continent has to offer the world. Much will come from Africa and many will yet be suprised by its splendors.
Once again I have to thank Abraham & Harrison for their generous sponsorship of the event. They, along with a great group of sponsors, made this day happen and I am truly thankful for their generosity. Thanks guys!!
No Comments » Posted on October 15th, 2008 by Saul Wainwright
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