 Hi, thank you very much for attending my session. I'm Abu Bakr Sittigango and I'm excited to be sharing this knowledge with you. I was supposed to deliver this talk physically, but immigration has happened, visas. So I couldn't make it to Dublin, but I'm sure we are going to have fun in this session together. Now, I hope you enjoyed Dublin and look forward to connecting with you all next time wherever it might be happening. Now, first let me introduce myself. My name is Abu Bakr Sittigango. I'm a developer evangelism program manager at GitLab and also a Google Developer Expert and CNTF Ambassador. I moved recently to the Hague Netherlands, but I've lived most of my life in on Africa and I also currently lead efforts around mentoring more Africans in the communities community and also organize for the communities community is Africa. Now, in this talk, we'll be talking more about how you can improve the impact of your diversity initiatives in Africa. There are lots of organizations that are trying to create initiatives and create programs that are targeted towards Africans, but sometimes they don't tend to get it right or they miss the mark in achieving success in those programs. So I'll be showing you insights on how you can get more results from your diversity initiatives on the continent and drive impact. Now, I've given a version of this talk previously at the CubeCon EU in 2021. So, but this version is a more detailed one which is a year later. A year is a long time for several things to happen and I'll be adding more information here. If you want to watch the previous version, you can scan this QR code. It's on YouTube. If you search CubeCon Abu Bakar, yeah, unique name. You'll be able to see some of my talks at CubeCon and you definitely see this one, but you can scan this QR code to get the video link to this. But let's get started. Now, first, let's do some geography. It's quite important because most people get, it's wrong when it comes to African geography. Most times people just assume, our Africa is a place where the way we Africans get asked about where we are from. Oh, you're from Africa. You're from all specific comments. It usually makes us feel like we would think Africa is just one place or it's just a country. We've seen several videos where people refer to Africa as a country or a single entity instead of more than 50 countries with different languages and very, very huge landmass and more than a billion people. Yeah, still not quite as a lot of the Asian population but at least more than a billion. Now, Africa has different regions. First, which is at the top of the continent, which is North Africa, mainly countries like Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, ETC. Most times in most organizations, most use cases, they are usually grouped together with the Middle East. That's Middle East. Most times you see men are Middle East and North Africa or in situations where someone is trying to cover the whole of Europe and Africa, you see EMEA, Europe, Middle East and Africa. But most times, North Africa is usually grouped with the Middle East. Then we have this part of Africa that is below the Sahara, which is Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, according to the United Nations, most of the countries in SSE, that's Sub-Saharan Africa, are below the Sahara desert. Sahara desert, some of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa still have some parts of the Sahara desert but countries towards from there down up to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, part of Sub-Saharan Africa, we have West Africa, which is where I'm from, Nigeria to specific in West Africa, more than 400 people and several languages. I personally speak English, Hausa, Yoruba, a bit of Arabic and the French I learned in school. Now, then we have Central Africa. Central Africa is composed of more than 120 million people, several languages. We would like, I think, most popular in Central Africa or South Sudan, we have Central Africa Republic also and Congo, the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, but there are other countries, Central Africa Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola and Chad. Now, then we have East Africa. Most of the countries are quite popular. We have Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and a couple of others. Now, they have several languages. I think there's quite a bit of Arabic, the Indian languages spoken there also. Now, then we have Southern Africa, which includes South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and so on and so forth. Most of the languages spoken there are Zulu, Swahili, Hausa and so on. Now, it is worth noting that most of the places where you hear European languages, like English, like Portuguese, like French, like Arabic and so on, they are usually as official languages. Most of the countries, if not all the countries, have their own languages or sometimes several languages that are spoken locally. I can say that there are a lot of Africans that speak English or speak a foreign language have at least another language, sometimes two or three that they speak. Now, let's go to the main core of this talk, which is improving diversity initiatives in Africa. Yeah, there are lots of ways that initiatives can be brought into Africa, especially within the technology space. There are lots of advancement that has happened in the US, in the EU, in Asia and there are lots of advancement also in Africa, but it still needs improvement and we need partners in the community, in the technology space to bring these innovations and help us move towards more advancement and more empowerment on the continent. But where do you start? The first thing is to define the goal. Why exactly are you driving this initiative? Unfortunately, a lot of initiatives are just to get the numbers, just the KPI, somewhere that someone needs to tick off. And you see situations whereby events are organized, programs are organized without concrete plans. Mainly, there's a publicity stunt to show to the world, oh, we run a program in Africa or we have some initiatives that we are doing with Africans. Oh, we are helping the poor Africans and so on without having concrete goal that benefits both parties, both the beneficiaries and the organizers. So you need to clearly define your goal. What exactly are you looking for? Are you just looking for numbers? You get numbers. There are several companies who have initiated programs just for the numbers. At the end of the day, you don't see the impacts, you don't see the value they deliver on ground. Even if someone in the future wants to like, oh, this company came and did this initiative, let's see what has been the result, what has been the goal all this while, it's nonexistent because in the first place, they were just for the numbers, they were just for the glam, not really to make any serious impact. Now, so you need to clearly define what is your goal exactly? Why are you doing it? And what benefits do you want to get at the end of the day? And what benefits do you want the beneficiaries to also get at the end of the day? So once this is clearly defined, you can then move forward to how your initiative can happen. Now, another thing to take note while designing an initiative is despite the fact that you come into Africa is trying to be diverse, Africa itself is very diverse, very, very diverse. We have black Africans, we have Arabians. Yeah, not really black Africans, but not all of Africa is black. We have white Arabians, we have whites in South Africa, so we have white and some other part of the country. Then aside that the major diversity that is there is the language. There are hundreds of languages. I think in Nigeria alone, I think in the official documentuality we have more than 200 languages. That's a lot, a lot. So aside from local languages, when you want to bring your initiatives, you want to bring your program, how do you design your content? How do you present your content? Do you just target English? Yeah, you can't necessarily go down to local languages, but if let's say you are targeting Sub-Saharan Africa, are you just using English? Are you just creating content English? Are you just sending officials that only speak English? How about the French-speaking community, especially in West Africa? There's a lot of French-speaking community. Now, in Cameroon, we have the French-speaking part, we have the English-speaking part. If your program is mainly in English, if your content is mainly in English, half of the, the remaining half of the country are probably missed. Or some countries in Africa is in Portuguese. If your content in Portuguese, if you're not targeting Portuguese, a bunch of them will be left out. Another thing is regional diversity. A lot of times you will see organizations bringing events, bringing programs, termed African. At the end of the day, it's just happening in a city in Nigeria, Lagos, just in Lagos. And it will be counted, that was Africa, we went, we organized that event, we were able to reach social number of people in Africa. You are basically reaching Lagosians or Nigerians that are based in Lagos, because most times it is easy for Nigerians to go. Now, some of that countries, especially in South Africa, you see where an event is organized just in Cape Town or just in Johannesburg. South Africa is way down. I think from Nigeria to South Africa by air is more than six hours. So you hardly get Nigerians there. So it is important for you to be able to understand, okay, who do I want to target? What are the structures I want to put in place? And how do I want to design this content to make sure that I capture as many Africans as possible, as many people on the content as possible? If it's East Africa, most countries in East Africa speak similar languages. So if you are targeting content towards them, you can localize it a bit or engage partners so to make sure that you will cover that. In West Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, speak English. Other countries speak Portuguese. Some other countries speak French. How do you want to, I think Côte d'Ivoire speak French? So how do you want to tailor your content on the West African continent? How do you want to push your contents there? Do you think your content will be digestible as many people as possible? So understanding the diversity of Africa itself, it's extremely important. And cultural differences, extremely important. You need to work with local partners to know, okay, is this obtainable here? What is obtainable in Nigeria? Is it necessarily obtainable in Africa? You don't just send in Nigerians as in Africa. After all, it's all Africa. It might work, it might not work. So it's important to understand the diversity of Africa itself. Now, visas, this is very, I'm very passionate about visa because I personally have been denied visas by a lot of countries, US, EU, Germany, Greece and so on and so forth. Even Ireland didn't give me visa to come to Dublin to present this paper to you. So Africans, yeah, visa rejection and visa issues, immigration issues are global, but Africans are rejected in huge percentages. So anytime you are organizing programs or organizing events and you need people to travel, even within Africa, bear in mind that visas might be an issue. So when you are designing your programs, do people need visas? Did you station or program participation in a location that will have less visa issues for participants if people have to congregate to a country? Now, if you are expecting people to come to the EU, are you giving them ample time to be able to apply and get accepted and be able to attend? Though after the pandemic and the travel crisis, visas has been a mess all over the group. I've been trying to get an appointment this for the US visa at the point I was shopping for embosses to get an appointment. When I got in Amsterdam, it's scheduled for October, 2023. So basically all my plans to visit the US from now until then is basically canceled. Now, even as an African, when you move to the EU, there are still certain countries that you would need to get visa for. I'm in Netherlands. I need to get a visa to go to Ireland. I need to get a visa to get to go to the UK. And yeah, other EU countries, you might not because of, yeah, we didn't share again, but still you've not necessarily escaped the need for visa. And it might be, yeah, it's issue of reciprocity between countries. But when you are designing your programs and show that, oh, most community programs create and have anywhere you can, oh, request for a visa later. Yeah, but aside that if your initiatives are targeted mainly towards Africans, it is better to be able to find a way to avoid the need for visa completion maybe by organizing a hybrid or a more hybrid event or organizing its locations where travel will be easier. Or basically just maybe organizing more like regional events like viewing parties that will be happening at the same time and they are all connected to the central place. It entirely depends, but make sure you know that getting visa is expensive. Getting visa takes time. At least when you want to apply for a visa, you should apply like three months in advance most visa applications. And with the current crisis, it's even much more longer. Now, the next thing is travel. Obviously, they go hand in hand. Travel is very expensive within the African continent itself, not to even talk of outside. If you look at the images on the screen, it shows comparison between pre-COVID and post during COVID connectivity of the continent. Before COVID, you will see that most African traffic are going out, especially to Europe. Within, you see a hole within the map showing that connectivity within the country is still difficult and it's pretty expensive. There is a shortage of airlines that do points to points. Sometimes you have to travel transit through another country to get to another country within Africa. Sometimes there are some destinations that are basically difficult for you to be able to travel. Except probably you take an airline, you go to Europe and you come back, especially for countries around that maybe you want to move from West Africa to a country in North Africa. You might not get an airline that will take you there actually. Though Ethiopia Airlines covers most of Africa, Egypt Air covers most of Africa, but sometimes you might get some tight corners that might not be covered, except if you take airlines like Turkish because they cover most countries. You take Turkish to Istanbul, you've basically left Africa and you come back, which is really crazy. I've observed at the point that it is cheaper for me to fly from Amsterdam to Abuja or Lagos back to Amsterdam than to fly Abuja, Amsterdam, Abuja. All the maths and the calculation of the airlines can be very confusing. But when you are organizing your initiatives or program, bear in mind that Africans can not just travel within the continent just like that. It's expensive, it's difficult, visa issues are there. There's no, a lot of countries, of the countries don't have visa trees. So when you're designing your program, be well aware of the complexity of traveling within the continent itself. Now, the, oh, my clicker is not functioning. Now, after we talked about the complexity of traveling, the next thing is to see what other options do you have. It is extremely important to prioritize remote or hybrid events over physical. Hybrid has even won a lot of hearts. If you notice most events like the KubeCons, the open source summit and so on, there has been more participations because there's not a hybrid component. There's not a remote component. Maybe we can view some of these talks online. Yeah, we all love to be able to participate. Some of these countries are very expensive for a lot of Africans to be able to attend because to attend a conference, you need to pay for the conference. You need to pay thousands of dollars for flights. You need to pay thousands. It depends on visas. You need to do a lot of hectic planning and preparations to travel. But with hybrid, people can be in their homes, attend conferences. Someone from a village somewhere in Nigeria or Kenya can be able to contribute, can be able to attend, can be able to learn. So for your initiative, it is extremely important to prioritize hybrid because it saves you costs, it saves your participants costs, it saves your resource persons costs and it also saves the stress because when it gets to a point to like, okay, is it actually worth it to participate in this program? What's the value at the end of the day if one has to go through all the stress to participate in your initiative? Now, and the next thing I want to focus on is what the talent pipeline of this initiative you're trying to create, of this empowerment that you're trying to introduce. A lot of companies just come. Oh, we are introducing this new crazy technology, Kubernetes to the community. We want more contributors to the Kubernetes project, but have you invested in people learning? There's still a nascent community of more Africans learning new technologies. Seeing technology as a way to get out of poverty or to be able to create a life for themselves. And a lot of them are identifying new technologies, new ways to contribute. So what pipeline are you creating? For them to learn, for them to be able to get necessary skills to learn. Then for them to become contributors, let's say in the case of the Kubernetes project, after they become contributors, what pipeline is there for the next one that are coming? I think the CNCF has been, for example, the CNCF has created a mentorship platform that allows more people to be mentored, more people to participate and so on. Now, if you are introducing a technology to Africans or you want more Africans to use or contribute to the other countries, it's very important to work on how you intend to onboard people on and how you intend to keep them. The kind of pipeline you create to make sure that are, there are more people coming in and you are able to sustain them with more knowledge. This brings me to the next thing, which is mentorship tied to pipeline. Now, once people are onboarded, oh, they are not familiar with this technology, they are talking about it and so on. Can they access people that are already seasoned in that particular technology? Can they access your experts within the technology? Can they, if they have issues or have clarification, do they have to wander online to get the help they need? Are you able to create sessions where you can mentor new people to come on, onboard your technology? Mentoring is extremely important when it comes to running initiative because sometimes you get individuals who are volunteering their time but don't have the necessary background knowledge. A lot of people will say, oh, I'm learning Kubernetes, I want to get into the Kubernetes community. They've never used the Linux operating system before. They've never used Kubernetes itself. Even if they will not be writing code and they will be contributing documentation, do they have the required knowledge to be able to contribute? Let's say Kubernetes. So creating a system whereby that mentorship can help them level up fast to be able to now contribute to your project or be able to participate in any initiative that you are running. So mentoring is extremely important. Now, the next thing is thought leadership. You need people that have been pipelined, that have been mentored to now become thought leaders in your community. How, what plan have you created? What resources have you created that they can reuse to now mentor more people to come in, to maintain the pipeline? So it's no longer your developers or your engineers that are now mentoring them. They, you are creating more mentors. Who might then be domiciled on the continent? You don't necessarily, you don't need to do a lot more work on the continent because you've trained and you've mentored people that are now on the continent and can now mentor others and can create, maintain the pipeline for you to get all the experts and the awareness or achieve your goal for your initiative. So as part of your initiative, create a plan for creating thought leaders. Who will be able to advocate for your initiatives? Who will be able to sell your initiative and push it forward so that they will not be the familiar face that can be able to recruit more or gather more resource persons for you or gather more eyeballs on your initiatives or the content that you are trying to push. Thought leadership is extremely important. A lot of companies miss this. They simply go for already established thought leaders or spokesperson online that look or African or African and just keep using them and maintaining them but not growing more thought leaders. Now, then a last and most critical part is partnerships. A lot of companies just feel like, oh, we can just come in. Hey, we've been using a model. It works. Let's just work in and create programs and start throwing things or throwing money or throwing the popularity of your, the content of your initiative to the community, the local community. It is extremely important to identify partners. There are lots of community partners now within African continent and some of them are domiciled in specific countries. Do your research, reach out to some of the thought leaders that you know online and get suggestions on which program. What exactly is my goal? Is there a partner on ground that matches my goal? Once you identify that partner, you vet the partner, you ask around, you see some of their success record. There are lots of organizations that will claim to have some success stories but you can definitely see that they are either phony or they just want to make money off your organization. So you bring your research extensively to identify, okay, which partner can I work with? Is my program targeted as females? Oh, let me look for she called Africa. They are a mentorship program that is targeted mainly at females. Now, I'm largely into open source contribution. Now to get a mentor, some open source contributors, open source community Africa, Oscar is there. We have, are you trying to target students? Google has this developer student club where a lot of students in campus is they already have that network. So you can collaborate with the Google developer relations team that have that network, the Sub-Saharan team that has the network on the continent in different parts of the continent. So depending on the program we are trying to create, partner with local, they will be able to tell you, oh, these are the things that will work. These are the things that will not work. These are the right people to work with. These are the challenges that you might face. These are, the fact that something works in the US or works in the EU or works in certain places doesn't mean it to work. And the fact that it works in Nigeria doesn't mean it to work in South Africa. Doesn't mean it to work in Ghana. Doesn't mean it to work in Kenya. So partnership is extremely important. And ensuring that everything I have said here ties to one thing. First, to do your research. Partner, the next is to partner. The next is to create a detailed plan and structure of how your initiative will happen, bearing into consideration the cultural differences, the diversity of people, the diversity of languages and so on. And one thing, one last thing I want to mention is a lot of programs fail because a lot of companies come with a severe mentality. Oh, if I just take money or just go do things, it, things should happen. Or probably thinking because a particular country is known for corruption, you can just get your way around it. No, getting the right partner will help you identify how you should work and how you should manage things. And those partners can even help you to kick run or do the operations on ground. So be mindful of how you present your initiatives because the moment it sounds like some savior mentality, it is already some form of failure that's going to happen ahead. That's the end of my presentation and I'm happy to answer more questions after this. If you also want to engage me or you have more questions to ask, you can follow me on Twitter or check my website for more information at abuangu.me. Thank you very much for joining me and hope you enjoy the rest of the summit.