 Hi, everyone. My name is Victory Brown and I'm a user experience designer and open source contributor. I'm also a member of the open source community, Africa. For today's session, I'll be talking about supporting free and open source software in Africa. It's really exciting to have you join me. Well, first, I want to clear the notion that there's always a notion that Africa is a country. Well, Africa is a continent. In fact, it is the second largest continent after Asia and also the second most populous country continent with over 54 countries. And I happen to be from one of those countries, Nigeria. Well, just for clarity, see what is free and open source software for free and open source software is software that allows users and programmers a day to modify or reuse a software source code kind of gives developers the opportunity to improve program functionality by modifying it. It is free in the sense that there's free liberty. It could be used and studied by everybody open source, because the source code is open to be modified and used. Well, straight on to about communities supporting free and open source software in Africa. Unfortunately, there are several communities that were supporting free and open source software in Africa, but have not been active for a while. But currently, there is one community that speaks and supports and also creates awareness on open source software here in Africa. And it is open source community Africa founded by Samson Gaudi and Ada Yom. Well, the open source community Africa is a community that creates awareness and supports Africa and help Africans contribute to open source projects. They also try to create an awareness of what open source software is. And they have two parts of this community, the community focus area where they do more advocacy on open source projects, raising awareness on open source communities, how to join and how to contribute as a newbie or as a first time at open source. And then they have the project area where they build stuff or they build open source software tools, open source products and programs. Now, the open source community Africa in relation or in partnership with Sheikot Africa, which is also another community here in Africa that promotes women who are interested in coding, came together during the open source festival in 2019 to create the women of open source community Africa. Now, this is a community of women in open source that are interested in for during their or pushing their open source career. Last during the 2020 break, they held a program in the month of July where they got ladies to contribute to open source communities and whoever made the highest pool request was awarded. And this kind of like brought a lot of women into open source. I came through that medium and it has been life changing for me, which is really exciting. And there are so many women who came into open source through that medium and are doing fantastically well in the open source community. Well, challenges facing free and open source communities here in Africa is access opportunities. Well, considering that open source is free in terms of voluntary and contributing, you know, be paid to do this kind of like a learning medium. But sometimes after learning, it's always so hard for Africans to get access to opportunities like mentorship or job or references to present somewhere to kind of like give them a head start on their career. Also, the issue of funding, funding is one general challenge that faces both communities, the women of open source community Africa and the actual open source community Africa. Another challenge is access to resources, resources on open source funding, open source liberty, open source software, learning and certification. Also, the lack of technical supports. Most of these communities are just newly founded and would need a lot of technical support in terms of teaching or mentorship on how to use most open source softwares. A sense of belonging, a sense of belonging. This is rare, but it's also another challenge that is first that we face here in Africa. Sometimes we're a part of communities and we don't feel like we belong there. And this is why open source community Africa was created to kind of like create a body of people who share the same ideology or the same need to contribute to something bigger or work on something bigger. Also, the time zone differences trying to contribute to most communities that are not on the West African time or some other time zone. But this can be fixed because most communities actually take note of this challenge and actually try to help by keeping video records, also sharing Google Docs link from the meetings, etherpad links, so you could follow up if you miss anything. But sometimes it doesn't really solve the problem because the feeling of working together and sharing ideas live, it kind of like takes out the fun that as a Nigerian, I want to talk about the impact of open source here in Nigeria, where open source has had such a great impact on so many persons. But for 2021, I want to talk about the open source stars of 2021, Ruth Ikega and Anita Iheheman. Ruth Ikega is one of the women or yeah, women who benefited from the women of open source community Africa challenge in the month of July, where there was a hackathon for who make the highest pool requests and she did it. She's a Python developer now turned writer. She started her contribution to layer five community chaos community where she contributed as a document and she took documentation for the community. She also acted as a spokesperson for new commerce school. She helped onboard a lot of new techies to the open source ecosystem, which is quite amazing and her growth has been so tremendous. She says open source gave me the confidence to do things I had never thought of doing. She speaks at conferences now and she has also been awarded a GitHub star award, which makes her the first female African to get this award. Also, Anita Iheheman started tech without the knowledge of how computer works and during the period of the women of open source community Africa, she found the layer five community which she has contributed to by contributing through front end and also helping to onboard new commerce. She has stayed in community for such a long time that she was made community manager. So these are actually very exciting growth here in Nigeria, especially from women here in Nigeria. So this shows that these communities are actually doing so much. There are actually so many persons who have benefited from these communities. I for want to have kind of like gotten satisfaction contributing to open source communities as a designer. At first it was challenging, but with the help of these communities, I found my place in communities talking, writing and designing for them. It's actually a very amazing experience. Anita says I was afraid of speaking in public and that all changed when I started contributing to open source projects. Now I advocate for this project. Anita currently works as a developer advocate for Nermata and her growth has also been very, very tremendous. Now how to support these free and open source communities in Africa? Well, you could make donations to the open source community Africa through the Open Collective. The Open Collective is an open source organization that deals with funding of new open source projects and open source communities to kind of help them to grow and get a stance. Hosting workshops and trainings, it is you could reach out to these communities, their leads or community managers and talk to them and tell them, okay, I want to host a workshop and training for members in the communities and it's really exciting. Authenticating these communities probably by giving them a badge to say, okay, you've done this so far. Promote these communities, try to create awareness that these kind of communities are here and they are working to create awareness in the open source space. Proper onboarding, yeah, this can be a challenge sometimes as new techies come into the open source space and are lost trying to find communities where they will feel welcomed in or also find projects to work on. So have a proper onboarding system, have a documentation that guides newcomers to contributing to open source mentorships. Mentorships are really important, be a mentor, get acquainted with the community, mentor people, technical writing, project management, design. There are so many people in tech that are in these communities and doing different, in different areas of tech. Also hosting university outreach is helping these communities to host university outreach here in Africa is also another way you could support free and open source software in Africa. Well, thank you for coming to this talk. I'll be here if there are any questions, I'm ready to answer them. I look forward to hear from you soon.