Gisele Dovi of LEAD Togo, a stellar member of Kabissa's Web projects steering committee, has brought to my attention that the French and Arabic versions of the Kabissa Time To Get Online wiki were still behind a password and not publicly visible. The French and Arabic versions were never quite completed and edited, and we have ceased working on improvements to the wiki in any language. However we are proud of the material and much of it is still very useful for capacity building. I know of no reason why not to make all three language versions available.

Please contact me with feedback, or if you are interested in using the materials and helping to bring it up to date.

An active week on Kabissa with 5 new members and a good selection of blog posts and resource listings. 

Kabissa staff are sorry to hear about the sudden death of Guido Sohne in Nairobi last week. Guido was a "free software hacker" and leading proponent of open source software in Africa. Guido was based in Accra, Ghana and was well known in the online media and blogosphere. The following obituaries were written by his sister on Facebook last week

Erik Hersman has an excellent and informative post on Mapping Activism based on a recent presentation he gave at the "Where 2.0" conference in the US.  You can read the whole post but below are some of the things  that got me excited! 

Below is an excerpt from an email I sent to the FOSSFA discussion list in January 2006, which I encountered today during a Google search for something else altogether. The message contains some insights that I think we should return to now that we have launched the Kabissa Online Community Website - key words being TRAINING, USABILITY and EMAIL.

Indigenous people are most affected by global climate change not only because they eke their living directly from nature but also due to the fact that climate change adaptation requires economic and technical ability. Technology transfer, Capacity building and monetary benefits promised by the current climate change regime continue to be a day dream.

Read more about this article by clicking this link.

Enjoy your day.

Elson Makaye
TAPHGO (website hosted on Kabissa, Kabissa profile page) Information officer.

“People who ignore their history are bound to repeat it” (Desmond Tutu)

If we really wish never again to see a repetition of the traumatic events that we experienced after the 2007 elections, we CANNOT AND WE MUST NOT bury the memory of what happened in the early months of 2008.

Tobias calls for African to take possession of African Wikipedia. This report asks whether it is possible for  Africans to take possession of mobile phone technology by recycling, rebuilding and reselling mobile phones.   The development of a "Dual Sim Card" is a great step for those who have to use multiple carriers due to connectivity issues.  

I received the following appeal to Kabissa members to take ownership of the "African Wikipedia" from Gerard Meijssen, via the AfrophoneWikis discussion list. In it, Gerard provides a useful background explanation of the Wikipedia project, the free and open source software it runs on and how it is (and could be) utilized in Africa. In particular, note there is a bounty available for localisation of the Wikimedia software platform into African languages. There are many opportunities for Africans to take ownership of Wikipedia by building up content in their own languages as well as knowledge from their local communities that they know best.

The 16th edition of the Lorenzo Natali Prize has been launched.  The Prize is a reward for journalists writing on human rights and democracy in the Global South.