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.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
African Countries slipping down in Tech Rankings
The World Economic Forum recently published the Network Readiness Index which ranks the impact of ICT on the competitiveness of various countries world wide.
Relatively, African countries are not doing well. Only Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia have moved up by 7, 2,1 and 1 steps respectively. Madagascar maintains its position 102 and the rest (except the new entrants) have slipped from the previous ranking.
Uganda has slipped 21 steps to position 100, while Egypt, Cameroon and Mozambique have gone down 14 steps each.
My country, Malawi, is a new entrant in this year's ranking at position 111 out of 122 countries ranked, beating neighbouring Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe among others.
In Africa, we are at position 17 out the 26 African countries ranked with Tunisia, South Africa and Botswana taking the first 3 positions respectively (1,2,3) in Africa and globally 35, 47, 67 respectively.
It's unfortunate that Rwanda was not included on the list. Rwanda has been getting a lot praise in Africa for investing a lot in ICT. It is aiming to be the technology hub in Africa and is one of the first countries to sign deals with leading Internet companies while other African countries are still looking up to tech companies that no longer matter.
You can get the 2006-2007 Network Readiness Index at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gitr/rankings2007.pdf
Below is a filtered list that shows only countries in Africa:
Relatively, African countries are not doing well. Only Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia have moved up by 7, 2,1 and 1 steps respectively. Madagascar maintains its position 102 and the rest (except the new entrants) have slipped from the previous ranking.
Uganda has slipped 21 steps to position 100, while Egypt, Cameroon and Mozambique have gone down 14 steps each.
My country, Malawi, is a new entrant in this year's ranking at position 111 out of 122 countries ranked, beating neighbouring Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe among others.
In Africa, we are at position 17 out the 26 African countries ranked with Tunisia, South Africa and Botswana taking the first 3 positions respectively (1,2,3) in Africa and globally 35, 47, 67 respectively.
It's unfortunate that Rwanda was not included on the list. Rwanda has been getting a lot praise in Africa for investing a lot in ICT. It is aiming to be the technology hub in Africa and is one of the first countries to sign deals with leading Internet companies while other African countries are still looking up to tech companies that no longer matter.
You can get the 2006-2007 Network Readiness Index at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gitr/rankings2007.pdf
Below is a filtered list that shows only countries in Africa:
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Update on the Rails and Ruby Presentation
Although the Ruby and Ruby on Rails Presentation was scheduled on Sunday April 1st, it was no Fools' Day joke. Mike gave the talk using the screencasts from Ruby on Rails website: Creating a weblog in 15 minutes (by the creator of Ruby on Rails himself) and Putting Flickr on Rails.
He also gave away electronic books, videos and links to online resources and IRC channels, and few days later gave a summary of the event to ICT Association of Malawi's mailing list.
It was great to have 8 guys from Lilongwe show up on a Sunday afternoon and discuss programming languages and trends. A lot of thanks Margaret Ngwira of Kamuzu College of Nursing for allowing us to use (or is it under-utilise) the Library computer room. There was an LCD projector and lots of space and computers ready to be used. We want to have such talks once a month so expect another one in May.
Like I said, the second screencast was Putting Flickr on Rails, so I've Put the photos of the Rails event on Flickr.
He also gave away electronic books, videos and links to online resources and IRC channels, and few days later gave a summary of the event to ICT Association of Malawi's mailing list.
It was great to have 8 guys from Lilongwe show up on a Sunday afternoon and discuss programming languages and trends. A lot of thanks Margaret Ngwira of Kamuzu College of Nursing for allowing us to use (or is it under-utilise) the Library computer room. There was an LCD projector and lots of space and computers ready to be used. We want to have such talks once a month so expect another one in May.
Like I said, the second screencast was Putting Flickr on Rails, so I've Put the photos of the Rails event on Flickr.
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