In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would ever get to sit down with Jon ¨maddog¨ Hall over breakfast and discuss open source. This happened during the just concluded Idelo4 conference in Accra, Ghana. I was totally blown away by his humility, taking into consideration that he is one of the foremost open source evangelists in the world. I got to discuss many issues with him and his presentations at the conference were extremely inspiring. In terms of the Idlelo being a time and place for the open source community to refresh and refuel, this one was way up there.

This years Idlelo conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons is taking place from  May 17th – May 21st, 2010 in  Accra, Ghana. The IDLELO Conference, themed „Development with Ownership“, is a premier international forum on Free and Open Source Software in Africa and is therefore an especially important event for any ICT programme. It presents the opportunity to discuss new issues, tackle complex problems and find advanced enabling solutions able to shape new trends in FOSS and related technologies on the African continent.

I have been involved in FOSS advocacy in Kenya for the last 7 years. My love affair with FOSS started when I was looking for a content management system (CMS) for a sports portal I was proposing to develop back in 2003. I looked around and what I saw was not impressive. The figures that were being quoted for applications like octigon were basically far out of reach for me as i was just starting out in my consulting business (BTW, just google that name and see what happened to them).

Idlelo 4 Conference 2010 - Accra, Ghana

>Call for Papers and Presentations: deadline 28 February 2010

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) is hosting its fourth biennial conference Idlelo 4, 17 – 21 May, in Accra, Ghana. The purpose of Idlelo 4 is to discuss new issues, problems and innovative solutions which are shaping FOSS and related technologies on the African continent.

This year, to celebrate SFD, InWEnt hosted a virtual event to connect its programme partners in Asia and Africa working to promote FOSS.

A full programme awaited the FOSSFA-delegates upon their arrival in Berlin - a week of meetings, conferences, trade fairs and receptions all around the topic of Free and Open Source.

In ten days five FOSSFA-members will embark on a study tour to Berlin Germany where a week full of appointments, events and receptions all on the topic Open Source awaits them.

During the week of the 22^nd of June - 26th of June Berlin will become the Open Source Hub of Europe: The annual business oriented Linux Day, the academic Berlin Open congress, and LPI's 10th anniversary are only some of the Open Source events taking place in Berlins capital.

This years e-Learning Africa took place in Dakar, Senegal from the 27^th - 29^th of May. Athough this report is both belated and short it is worth mentioning the outstanding contributions FOSSFA-representatives made during this conference – the largest on ICT and Education in Africa.

FOSSFA and OSIWA's FOSS for West Africa (FOSSWAY) project is set to invest in FOSS research in West Africa.  In the recently published Call for Tender both organisations are awarding a research contract up to the tune of 65 000 US dollars for a Study to be carried out in five West African Countries.