After a very busy week at the Strathmore University in Nairobi, a small group of 7 African Linux experts made probable History by producing the first LPIC training manual done in Africa, by Africans. In the group was a veteran Linux and Unix Engineer and writer from the UK, Dr Chris Brown.

More and more success stories of people making a business with FOSS in Africa are emerging. We have put together a little video of the FOSS stories captured by ict@innovation at this years Fourth African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons, Idelo 4.

Location

The first LPIC-1 exam will be conducted on the 13th of December 2010 in Nairobi. This exam will be hosted by the Strathmore University but it will be a public exam. Anyone who is interested to sit for the same is welcome to do so even though they may not be participating in our trainings. This will be a proctored and paper-based exam and will be on a special discounted rate of $ 95 per exam. There are two exams in LPIC-1, Exam 101 and Exam 102.

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.

The first day of sessions at this years Idlelo has evoked some interesting discussions. Different country perspectives are being shared from all over the African continent and even from Brazil. The day began with a welcoming of the IT Minister and the organisers. ict@innovation is represented by a booth and a number of sessions.

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.

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

Kampala, Uganda will be hosting a special event on September 19th at the Software Incubator Makarere University for Software Freedom Day 2009. Their aim is to host the biggest international celebration and outreach event for Software Freedom globally with hundreds of teams from all around the world participating! The event will include competitions and demonstrations of Free and Open Source Software and everyone is invited to come and find out about the benefits of Free and Open Source Software.

The trainings for African FOSS Business Models, a major part of the ict@innovation programme, are currently being conducted in southern and eastern Africa – this summer first trainings took place in South Africa and Uganda. One of the participants of the Uganda training, Isaac Kigen, described the training as an important opportunity: "The training comes at a time when the world is embracing free and open source software and Africa should not be left behind. I think the objectives of the training are being more than met.