Before we start:Abidjan is the capital of Côte d'Ivoire, located on the west coast of the "United States of Africa". Babi is to Abidjan what Big Apple is to New York or Jozi to Johannesburg.
BarCamp Babi 2010 will be a three day event held on March 5th through the 7th of this year 2010. BarCamp Abidjan 2010, also known as Barcamp Babi, will be a FREE event for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, vision, rive and financial resources to improve the production, dissemination, and monetization of content from and about Africa's economic, financial, cultural and social life. The first Barcamp Abidjan in 2009 gave birth to a Côte d'Ivoire-based social entreprise, Akendewa which is producing this second BarCamp .
BarCamps all over the world have brought together individuals and organizations to share ideas, passion, drive, ambitions and, eventually, collaborate on various projects and businesses.
Expected panelists and speakers (yet to be confirmed) include Google, Paul Sika, Jean Patrick Ehouman, Ameyah Debrah, E-tranzact, VIPnet, Web4Africa, Gwen Marshall, Radio Jam, etc.
There will be sessions organized by various Google representatives, presentations by lead speakers as well as other breakout sessions on various topics and interests as put forth by the attendees.
Register/RSVP today at the BarCamp Babi website. Help spread the word about BarCamp Abidjan 2010 by grabbing badges, and show yoursupport by donating to help cover costs. You may also contact the BarCamp Abidjan team through its website for sponsorship opportunities.
If you are interested in organizing a breakout session, let us know, especially if you have special needs. BarCamp Babi 2010 is supported by Google Africa, Web4Africa, Chembe Ventures, Foundation, Ushahidi, Web4Africa, who all pledged their support . Our media partners are IvoireMuzik,Ivoire Blog,Avenue 225, Fratmat.info, Koaci.com, Bassam fm (some to be confirmed). Our technical partners include VIPnet and Assistweb.
See you there!
Interested in becoming a partner? Contact Frederic Tape at tapefr(at)gmail.com or Edith Brou at edithbrou(at)gmail.com
An Akendewa production.
On December 22, 2008, over a hundred young Ghanaians met in Accra for BarCamp Ghana '08 to exchange ideas on entrepreneurship, innovation and development for a rising Ghana. This summer, the conversations moved to Washington, DC on July 25, 2009 where BarCamp Diaspora '09 brought together the African Diaspora to exchange ideas on doing business in Africa.
This December 21st in Accra, the BarCamp Ghana team, made up of passionate young Ghanaians, presents BarCamp Ghana '09, under the theme "Leadership for our times - cultivating change makers". The event will take place on December 21, 2009 from 8am - 6pm at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) campus at 20 Aluguntuguntu Street in East Legon, Accra.
A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering where attendees meet for discussions, demos and networking. Unlike a typical conference, at a BarCamp everyone is both a speaker and a participant. The content is provided by all attendees based on their interests, unified under the theme. This year, the focus is youth in leadership and how the youth can create and make change in various ways in various disciplines for the betterment of Ghana. The event would highlight different success stories involving change-making youth. Change makers and youth leaders are strongly encouraged to attend.
BarCamp Ghana ’09 is a FREE event for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. BarCamp Diaspora gave birth to a Ghana-focused healthcare NGO, REACH-Ghana, which will be presenting its story since its inception in July. BarCamps all over the world have brought together individuals and organizations to collaborate on various projects and businesses.
Panelists and speakers will include Patrick Awuah of Ashesi University, Estelle Sowah of Google Ghana, George Minta of Empretec, Hajo Birthelmer of Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), amongst others. There will be sessions organized by Google representatives and as well as other breakout sessions on various topics and interests as put forth by the attendees. If you are creating or making change in your own small way in your community, consider sending the team a note about your project or business to info at barcampghana dot org. Some of these stories will be mentioned at the BarCamp and all the information will be on the BarCamp Ghana website.
Register/RSVP today at the BarCamp Ghana website. Help spread the word about BarCamp Ghana '09 by grabbing badges and support by donating to help cover costs. You may also contact the BarCamp Ghana team through its website for sponsorship opportunities. If you are interested in organizing a breakout session, let us know, especially if you have special needs.
BarCamp Ghana 2009 is sponsored by the GhanaThink Foundation, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), Ushahidi, Web4Africa, etc. Our media partner is CITI 97.3 FM.
See you there!
Goes live at 9 am Tommorrow Saturday 7th of November Stay tuned
Press Release 28/10/2009
Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, CEO of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation and Ghana's former Minister of Communications to present at BarCampAfrica UK 2009
We are excited to announce the first of its kind, BarCampAfrica UK on the 7th November, which will see Dr EkwowSpio-Garbrah along with speakers from Vodafone Cactel Communications and a host of other companies present, debate and discuss technology in the context of African Development and how effective innovation can bring about development in its truest form.
BarCamp Africa, was first conceived by Ellen Petry Leanse and Kaushal Jhalla, two Bay Area residents with deep roots in Africa, BarCamp Africa provided the unique opportunity to bring together Africa-focused professionals from Silicon Valley with people from, and doing important work in, Africa
The London event is expected to attract a large number of technologically inspired Africans from diverse fields who have a common passion to bring about further development in Africa. Participants will include talented entrepreneurs, technologist, charities, engineers, designers, bloggers, students and artists.
The event aims to identify specific actionable challenges that are central to the growth and development of Africa, from a UK /Europe perspective, and to identify critical areas of development that the BarCamp community can support, promote and actively play a significant role.
This launch event will esentially shift the conversation to positive development on Africa and seeks to leverage our influence as mobile technologist, bloggers, techies and social media gurus to help bring a fair balance to the conversation.
For interviews, commentary and general enquiries, please contact Tony Burkson on 07545054135 orTony.Burkson@vbtpartners.com
Notes to Editors
BarCamp Africa UK aims to:
*Create a central node for ongoing conversations and connections between the UK and Europe Tech Community and the extended African community to share and build on resources leading up to the event and thereafter.
* Showcase success stories by individuals and organizations in the UK and allowing them to share and further their visions for working in Africa.
* BarCamp Africa UK encourages discussion and debate from creatives; technologists; designers; writers; bloggers; developer; geeks; entrepreneurs; academic researchers; journalists or investors with a passion for African Development.
In addition to our un-conference theme BarCampAfrica UK will have 2 Keynote speakers
We are happy to confirm our first a keynote speaker Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah,
Chief Executive Officer, of Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation(CTO)
The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) is an international development partnership between Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth governments, business and civil society organisations. It provides the international community with effective means to help bridge the digital divide and achieve social and economic development, by delivering to developing countries unique knowledge-sharing programmes in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the specific areas of Telecommunications, IT, Broadcasting and the Internet.
Pamela McLean(UK Africa Connections) has kindly agreed to run Teachers Talking/Dadamac Day as a Fringe Event of BarCamp Africa UK
Teachers Talking/Dadamac Day is a yearly an online Celeberation which Discusses the Training and resoucing of ICT teachers to make a better impact on thier students.
It is a low bandwidth online party to suit the needs of people logging in from Africa - so expect lots of typing - and no fancy sound and pics for most of the time.You are welcome to simply drop in, or bring your laptop, log in, and really join in the party.
Story of Teachers Talking
Teachers Talking (TT) started in 2004 when John Dada needed someone to run an introductory course on ICT for local teachers in Nigeria - so he asked Pamela McLean (who often did brief informal introductions to computers when She was on "working holidays" in Nigeria.)
She willingly agreed to run John's course, She then realised how out of practice she was - and in need of updating. She hurriedly sent out a cry for help and set up a yahoo group for rescuers.
In less than a fortnight with more than a dozen people in the support group from four continents, She left for Nigeria, in November 2004, with an online "information cupboard" of useful resources (in the form of a wiki), and a group of online well-wishers who were interested to connect up with the TT course participants. The interest of these well-wishers influenced subsequent developments in TT and Dadamac. They enabled the friendly online exchanges that were the highlight of TT's daily practical sessions.
This years Celeberation Schedule
There are three parts to a TT course:
* The No-Computer Computer Course (NC3): providing relevant ICT related activities to do back in school
* TT-online: which includes the experience of being part of a supportive trans-national online community
* Hands-on computers: which gives enough practical experience to build teaching confidence
MANENO 
Maneno is a fast, low bandwidth, multilingual blogging and communication platform for citizen journalism in Sub-Saharan Africa
AITEC AFRICA 
Aitec Africa focuses on ICT publishing, event management, professional development and training in Africa utilising computing and telecommunications.
VBT PARTNERS
Consultancy that advises firms on Marketing, Sales and Branding.
VIRTUALLY LINKED LONDON
A company based in the UK providing services and solutions to companies and individuals in Virtual Worlds
GhanaConscious is the online community (web portal) of the GhanaThink Foundation.
GHANA IT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
Ghana IT Professional Network is the home of IT professionals from Ghana both at home and in the diaspora .
After the success of BarCamp Ghana '08, I dreamt of a similar event in the US. It took a while to bring the planning and organization together and last weekend, the dream came true in the form of BarCamp Diaspora '09. The event, themed 'Investing our talent where it counts', took place at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins' University in Washington, DC on July 25. BarCamp Diaspora was a free event that brought together people interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. The event went on smoothly and judging from the feedback of the attendees, I can call it a success as well.
BarCamp Diaspora was a free event which had about 100 registered attendees and about 70 people showed up to the event. It was 'tweeted' through Twitter, you can search #bcdiaspora for related tweets. The event was also streamed live online through ustream which had viewers in Ghana, Burkina Faso, the UK and the US, amongst others. These were put in place to allow people outside the venue to participate in the event which worked. Questions and comments were submitted through these media which were communicated to the BarCampers present. One attendee volunteered to record video for the whole event and many attendees took digital photos. Since, we couldn't get the funds to support a longer event, BarCamp Diaspora took place between 12 and 6pm (as advertised) with a short snack break (plantain chips, donuts - bofrot, atsomo, water and soft drinks).
The keynote speaker for the BarCamp was Ashifi Gogo, CEO of Sproxil.com and co-founder of MPedigree.org and a 2009 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. He spoke about various ventures he had been a part of (including Odadee.org) and his present project which is fighting counterfeit drugs. Ashifi is a PhD Innovation Fellow at Dartmouth College and the service is taking off in Nigeria and Ghana. He also talked about the challenges and intricacies involved with doing business in Africa and mentioned mobile communication, microfinance and big agriculture as what's hot in Africa at the moment. Ashifi mentioned that there were many opportunities back home and advised those who wanted to return to Africa to pursue enterprises or businesses ('do something') to have 5 year work plans and save before returning. He also talked about having friends there and keeping in touch in classmates. He stated how his colleague from his alma mater Presec had now become the deputy minister of information. I loved Ashifi's presentation, it was educational, funny, and told his story really well.
In order to foster the BarCamp spirit, we had zero panels; only breakout sessions. A lot of sessions were suggested and we ended up with 9 sessions over 3 time-slots, hence 3 ongoing sessions at each time. They were Microfinance & Mobile technology (Derek Koranteng & Benjamin Lyon), Healthcare in Ghana (Maame Sampah), Innovative technologies for rural communities & Mobile apps (Molly Mattessich & Jackie Adhiambo), Creativity & the Arts (Seyram Avle), NGO's (Aida Manu), Gender, education and technology (Henry Barnor), Scientific research in Africa (Akua Akyaa Nkrumah), Using technology to connect communities (Raquel Wilson), & Blogging & Social media (Jemila Abdulai). Most of the sessions were round-table style and ensured participation from as many as attendees as possible. These sessions were tweeted as well and notes were taken, which will be provided for the public soon. The brainstorming and discussions in these sessions were great and gave birth to many ideas and promoted projects/businesses that were working on those ideas. Attendees learnt about blogging, and many organizations and projects which are fostering African development.
The organizing team took care of the opening and closing remarks, as well as the agenda building session which helped decide the breakout sessions. The opening session talked about the idea behind BarCamp Diaspora - bringing together intellectual and enterprising minds to dialogue and discuss African development in whatever sector or discipline they were interested in. The agenda building session allowed attendees to share what issues were most important to them and which discussions would dominate the business of the day. The closing remarks summed up the day's agenda, the ideas generated and the need to consolidate the thoughts, ideas and solutions for future use. The plan is to draft some policy papers around some of the discussions to be presented to various organizations who can push for their implementation. One attendee, Kofi Ntim, had a lot of helpful information about receiving funding for start-ups and enterprises and he gave a short presentation at the end of the BarCamp.
Most of the attendees were Ghanaians, especially those who lived in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. This was a result of the network that the organizing team had available. Unlike BarCamp Ghana, the ratio of women to men was much better and ladies represented in full force. There was a good mix of students (both in undergrad and grad programs) and professionals. It obviously showcased a youth movement, since more than 75% of the attendees were under 30. Barack Obama called on young Africans to take charge and some of them were at BarCamp Diaspora. I don't remember anyone mentioning Barack Obama at the event even though we were right in his backyard (DC) and he had just been to Ghana. Like one attendee said, the attendees were busy talking about what they could do for Ghana/Africa and not thinking of what Obama or the West needed to do.
Many thanks to the organizing team for the putting this together. The GhanaThink Foundation was the main sponsor and provided funds for event material and food and drinks. This allowed us to make the event free. JHU-SAIS' African Studies program sponsored by enabling us to use the Kenney Auditorium, four classrooms and other spaces for free. Judging by the amounts we were quoted while looking for a venue at the start of planning the BarCamp, JHU-SAIS did us a huge favour. In the future, we'll like to enlist more forward-thinking organizations like GhanaThink as organizers & sponsors so as to keep the BarCamp event free, increase the network from which the attendees come and provide more for the attendees. There is still a lot of room for improvement, with note-taking, better live-streaming, documenting and promoting ideas, etc.
When you are having trouble getting people into different sessions to stay with the schedule, it may not a bad thing. It may be because attendees are busy networking and discussing future plans, which takes a little longer than short breaks. We hope to see many ventures and initiatives started out of this event. One lady who needed help with a business plan sat Kofi Ntim down to get as much information as she could, that makes for fulfilling and valuable time spent. If your attendees are fulfilled, then your work is fulfilling. Thanks to all our organizers, sponsors, our volunteers, our attendees and our broadcasters. Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend. It's time to move. Less talk, more action. Let's begin to invest our talents where they count.
Culled from MIghTy African's blog
BarCamp is coming to Cameroon!
Event planning is still in it's early stages but we have setup the following ways to find out more and follow us.
Official Event Page: http://barcamp.org/BarCampCameroon
Blog: http://barcampafrica.com/cameroon
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BarCampCameroon
Please do follow us, advertise us and most of all if you are in Cameroon or would like to get involved join our Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/barcampcameroon.
We have quite a few things to do in order to get this event off the ground so please do get in touch and take an active role, the event is meant for all of us
