MY BACKGROUND

My name is Tibusiso Msibi and I am an 18 year old Swazi girl. I live in Manzini with my mother, two sisters and my baby brother. I finished my matric last year at Mananga College and would like to study social media in the near future.

MY INTEREST IN TECHNOLOGY

I grew up dreaming of being a chartered accountant and working for Donald Trump one day. But when I was in ninth grade, I joined the magazine club and that is when i had my turning point. Joining the magazine club meant spending more time in the computer lab doing layouts, typing, learning the different formats, and posting pictures. We had to use the Internet for research and that really facinated me. In tenth grade, I chose to study information technology and from that day onwards, my interest in technology grew.

WHAT I LEARNED AT BARCAMP SWAZILAND

I was really looking forward to the barcamp. What got my attention was the fact that you had to SMS to register, which is something new. I learned that technology is a tool that is used to educate, entertain, warn, help, allow people to make friends, do business and have the world at your fingertips. It is used to express feelings, join and learn about different cultures and religions.

I knew about multimedia, but that day I learned about social media, Twitter and how to make my own blog, a skill that i never possessed before. I learned about YouthAssets.org, an organisation which helps people including us Swazis. I also learned about Real Image Internet, a company based here which wants to open a porthole where people can experience the Swazi rhythm.

WHO I MET

I met different people from all walks of life. Students, artists, CEO's, managers, teachers, tourist guides, technicians, NGO workers as well as a music producer. We all had one goal in mind: to share and learn more about technology and how to use technology to improve Swaziland. There are some people who did stand out -- a guy who wanted to learn how to draw people and form a club where people can showcase their artistic side using the Internet. Also a music producer who explained how is he is marketing Swazi music using technology and learning about different types of music to improve our own.

MY VIEW ON TECHNOLOGY IN SWAZILAND

Although we are viewed as the country with the highest HIV/AIDS death rate, we are developing where technology is concerned. 90% of Swazis are exposed to the cellphone. Cellphones here are like laptops to us. You can receive your mail and search the web using the cellphone. We have one university here, and it does have computer science and talks of introducing new courses. Organisations have been formed to donate computers to schools and teach people how to use them. The government has seen the importance of technology, hence there is a new minister of ICT. Facebook is the biggest social network in Swaziland, and there is annual Facebook party hosted every year. Slowly technology is developing in Swaziland.