Women to promote open source in Africa

November 2, 2005

My fellow friends,

My apologies for crossposting but this is a welcome development. I

posted this at an IT forum Digital Africa but wanted to share it with

all of you. Again I am very happy that technology in Kenya and

elsewhere in Africa is moving ahead.

Chifu

Moderator

Digital AFrica

Women to promote open source in Africa

The third Women's Electronic Network Training (WENT) Africa event will

take place in Uganda in December. The focus for the event is the

promotion of awareness and support for free and open source software

(FOSS) in women's organisations in Africa.

Hosted by APC-Africa-Women, WENT Africa's workshops are designed to

help African women's organisations utilise information and

communication technologies in social development and policy advocacy.

The Kampala, Uganda event, which runs from 5 to 10 December, follows a

FOSS for Women workshop in the SADC region, which was hosted by

Women'sNet in 2004.

WENT says that the reasons for its focus on open source technology

include its low-cost royalty- and license-free nature; the

accessibility of the source code which allows for modification for

particular contexts and languages; the freedom from dependency on

particular vendors; the collaborative nature of open source; and the

fact that it is recognised as being more secure and stable than

proprietary software.

The workshop's primary objectives are to stimulate awareness and

adoption of FOSS solutions among women's organisations in the region,

and to deepen the understanding and skills among women technicians in

providing technical support to women's organisations in the

assessment, adoption and use of FOSS applications within women's

organisations.

APC-Africa-Women has partnered with WOUGNET, Women'sNet, Linux Chix

Africa, Isis-WICCE and AITEC Uganda for the event.

The first WENT Africa workshop was held in 2003, and focussed on the

strategic use of ICT.

--- End forwarded message ---

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