Google sponsors 2 students from Africa

We might be approaching Winter in most parts of Africa, but nevertheless, Google has organised a Summer of Code program, where they sponsor students to work on open source projects. Each student receives a stipend of 4500 USD in total.

Recently, Google accepted 900 from 6,200 students applications who applied for this year's Google Summer of Code program. I got confirmation from a representative from Google's Open Source Team that of the 900 successful students, 2 are from Africa: one from South Africa, another from Nigeria.

Tectonic has already written about Charl van Niekerk, the successful student from South Africa and I have since started following his Twitterings. He a must be enjoying some tech celebrity status already.

But we are yet hear from Nigeria at least as far as the web is concerned. If there's a post already announcing that s/he has been accepted somewhere on the web (apart from the participant list) then I probably need a Winter of Googling 2007. There's a one page list over at http://www.third-bit.com/soc2007.html, for your information.

But what do you think about this number of accepted students from Africa? Is it representative of the number of capable Computer Science or Engineering students in Africa? I believe there are a lot more potential Dare Obasanjos out there who deserve to get on this program but weren't aware of this opportunity. So how do we help them get on the program next year?

Congrats to the 2 successful students! I hope this number grows exponentially in the following years.