Schoolnet Africa Supports FOSSFA's Capacity Building Initiatives

At the recently concluded First African Conference on the Digital Commons - Idlelo 2004 in Cape Town, South Africa idlelo.uwc.ac.za/ ; it was emphasized that the greatest challenge to the effective use of open source software in Africa was the lack of capacity and the need to build support structures all over the continent.

 

The Free and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) of which SchoolNet Africa (SNA) is a partner has initiated a number of training projects to improve upon the current low level of support for open source software users in Africa.

Support for FOSSFA’s initiatives stem from SNA's open standards policy of developing vendor-neutral ICT generic, transferable skills applicable to all platforms as stated in its technology choice policy: (http://www.schoolnetafrica.net/1174.0.html). It is also a fact that a number of SNA partner countries are using open source software in their schools which requires support.

SNA believes that open source software could be an optional choice and must be supported in view of its vision of:

• providing for the African child the right to education, information and knowledge in a non-restrictive technology environment;
• providing affordable and sustainable ICT access for African schools using a variety of solutions and the
• creation of locally developed digitized educational content which is accessible in all platform environments.

Furthermore SchoolNet Africa notes the increasing maturity and acceptance in industry of open source software for both server and desktop applications and operating systems and guided by its indirect advantages for socio-economic development in Africa.

SchoolNet Africa will make available to FOSSFA’s training programmes teachers, learners, and ICT in education practitioners to be trained as resource personnel in its train the trainer and education support programmes.

Initiatives of such nature will be posted on SNA’s Knowledge Warehouse (http://www.schoolnetafrica.net ) in the future for all within its constituency to apply for consideration.