BarCamp Tamale 2012 Focuses on Development and Sustainable Change

My friends at BarCamp Tamale are putting together their second event. Feedback gathered from Twitter on the first one was very positive. On the whole, it appeared to be an educative event. For Ken, it was an eye-opener. I hope to join them this time. Watch out for the #bcTamale tag on Twitter!

Shot taken at first BarCamp Tamale. Source: http://kenkubuga.blogspot.com

BarCamp Tamale Press Release

Here comes the 15th Barcamp in Ghana and 2nd in Tamale! BarCamp Tamale 2012 is a free networking event bringing people together for a day of discussion, demonstrations and dialogue about Tamale, Northern Ghana and beyond. BarCamp Tamale 2012 follows last year's November 26 event at the Tamale Polytechnic in Tamale, Ghana. This year's edition will be held on July 14 with Tamale Polytechnic. The theme is “Accelerating Development: Key Stakeholders & Priorities for Sustainable Change”. It will build upon local knowledge, expertise and resources in a supportive community for entrepreneurs, change makers, innovators and other leaders in Tamale and the Northern Region.

It will be organized in conjunction with LEAD-Ghana and the Tamale Google Technology User Group (GTUG). This Barcamp will focus on creating more awareness about the uses of technology; build knowledge on how to foster innovation in and around Tamale; and increase visibility through tourism, (re)branding and online content creation. 

BarCamp Tamale 2012 will feature multiple sessions on Northern Ghana’s development agenda and the recently launched Savannah Accelerated Development Authority, businesses, social entrepreneurship, technology tools and products, as well as breakout sessions on topics relevant to the Northern region and beyond. Like all Barcamps, there will be user-generated sessions and discussions where attendees get to set the agenda and topics for the day. Local experts will share knowledge on different technologies, and successful entrepreneurs and innovators will share their stories to serve as role models for participants. 

Register/RSVP today at the BarCamp Tamale eventbrite website. You can also register by sending "Barcamp Tamale, Your Name, Your Email Address" to 1945 on all mobile networks.  You may also contact the BarCamp Tamale team through this website for sponsorship opportunities. If you are interested in organizing a breakout session, let us know, especially if you have special needs. BarCamp Tamale 2012 is sponsored by the GhanaThink Foundation, Tamale Polytechnic, LEAD-Ghana, Nandimobile, Tamale-GTUG, Fienipa Group, Savana Signatures and Northern Ghana Innovators. Our media partners are Bishara Radio, SpyGhana and Radio Justice.

Towards Open Education in Ghana- What is Happening?

Last Friday, 8th June, I had the opportunity to participate in a forum on Open Education in Ghana. The forum was part of Innovation Week 2012 organised by the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE). The diverse audience included students, educators, software developers, entrepreneurs and people from government. Overall, the discussion was rich, informative and engaging making the event one of the best fora I've been in. Thumbs up to Dorothy Gordon and her team. 

A participant from Central African Republic sharing her joy at being at the forum

 The programme started with a discussion on open education, its relevance and the experiences of the audience. A graduate of SOS College shared how he used the Internet to study thermodynamics, a challenging topic, for his IB examination. An interesting debate on whether the rise of technology signaled the redundancy of the human element in education came up. The consensus reached was that "school was mainly for networking and socialization", and so the human element is still crucial. 

How are Ghanaians using open education resources?

The team from AITI-KACE then presented open courseware platforms such as Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware, BBC KS3 and Videolectures.net. These platforms serve educationsl content free of tight copyright restrictions. The issue of dearth of relevant local educational content was raised. Someone mentioned that Ashesi University have their course materials freely accessible by the public. I recall that Prof Dakubu and co were working on an online system called Kewl at University of Ghana around 2006/2007. I'm not up to date on the status of the project. Some strategies for building content, including training for both students and teachers were discussed. 

Next was a panel discussion on Open Education resources featuring officials of the Ghana Education Service, Ministry of Education and AITI. Also on the panel was Anis Haffar, a thought leader in the Ghanaian Educationi space. Some of the key discussion points were on the need for government to step up its interventions to integrate ICT into education and the need for a conscious national effort to create open courseware for the pre-tertiary levels. It was revealed that government will soon roll out e-SHS to minimize the effects of some of the problems facing our educational system: lack of easily accessible textbooks, low number of quality teachers and inadequate science equipment. It was interesting to learn that the educational authorities will be reviewing the policy that restrains students from using various digital devices in schools, so as to ensure that the full benefits of open eduction are realized. 

Speaking on the keynote "Education in the IT Age", Annis Haffar stressed on the merits of deploying ICT as part of an integrated strategy, rather than as a standalone tool. Hands-on activities, schemes of work and teaching methodologies, he said, were other tools that needed to be sharpened to improve the status quo. By showing images of schools that lacked teachers, electricity and books, he demonstrated that much was left to be done in terms of the basic ingredients needed to ensure quality education. Also, he was of the view that educational instruction must be tailored to affect both the affective and cognitive domains of students, stressing that one of the most important things teachers must do is to inspire their students to be able to learn by themselves rather than trying to teach them everything. 

Annis Haffar in action: teaching methodologies and planning must accompany technology to make any headway

Presentations of various innovations interspersed segments of the programme. Anita Hato, a fresh graduate of the University of Ghana, presented her undergraduate project, Kiddie World, an online system to help kindergarten children to build basic literacy and numeracy skills. Another presenter spoke about a software system he built that uses 2D barcodes to check the authenticity of drugs. 

The forum on open education was a refreshing change from all the talk shops we are greeted with every now and then. The practical demonstrations of what is being done and what could be done was inspiring and challenging. What are your views on integrating open education into Ghanaian education? What should be done to ensure that it is done right? If you're a teacher, school administrator or just someone interested in contributing change to education in Ghana, join the Ghana Educators Network now.

BloggingGhana Organises First Ghana BlogCamp

BloggingGhana, Ghana's biggest group of bloggers and social media enthusiasts presents a day of workshops and networking dubbed BlogCamp Ghana 2012. I will encourage everyone who can to attend this event as I can testify to how social media has changed my worldview and improved my life. BlogCamp 2012 indeed gives voice to the new generation!

Exchange of ideas during January 2012 meeting

BlogCamp seeks to educate and inform attendees on the benefits of social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and blogs. Further, BlogCamp 2012 will demonstrate how the youth can leverage the power of social media for positive social change, good governance, accountability, technology, business and education; this will ensure that there is more online content from Africa. BlogCamp 2012 will also be used to launch Ghana’s first Social Media Awards scheme, aimed at rewarding various activists and contributors to the growth of social media in Ghana. Visit the BlogCamp Agenda page for further details.

BlogCamp 2012 has been made possible through the efforts of the BloggingGhana Community and the kind support of our partners: Vodafone, Google, United States Embassy, Nandimobile, Web4Africa, Citi 97.3 Fm, Mawuli Sikanku Photography and REDD Kat Pictures.

Enter your details into the BlogCamp 2012 registration page to be part of this wonderful programme. For more information, visit the BlogCamp Ghana website or connect with BloggingGhana through Twitter, Facebook or Google +. We will be posting with the hash tags #BlogCamp12 and #BloggingGhana. Send your inquiries and we will get back to you immediately. Be part of BlogCamp 2012, Voice of a New Generation!

Ghanaian Developers Put Python and Other Technologies in Action

A cross-section of Ghana’s developer community gathered at BusyInternet, Accra, last Saturday, 14th April as part of Coders4Africa (C4A)’s monthly Coders in Action series. This month’s event was put together in collaboration with Python African Tour (PAT), and focus was naturally on using Python and allied technologies to build useful applications for Africa and beyond. It was a day of fun presentations, demos and networking that reiterated the tremendous progress that is being built in the Ghanaian tech community. Present on the day were established and emerging tech leaders such as Emmanuel Okyere (Hutspace), Adu Saarah-Mensah (PaasCo Africa) and Jojoo Imbeah (Suuch solutions). Selom Kossi Banybah, Ghana Technical Manager for C4A coordinated affairs for the day.

Pre-event interactions

The programme kicked off with introductory remarks by Kwame Andah (via Skype) of C4A and Gameli Adzaho of PAT. Kwame spoke about the essence of the C4A programme, their joy at collaborating with PAT and closed by giving hints on upcoming training opportunities. Gameli also gave an overview of Python African Tour, their activities so far, what the next plans of the tour in Ghana are (planned training events in Cape Coast and possibly another in Accra). All the attendees then took turns to introduce themselves and explain their connections to the Python language.

After the introductory remarks, the main presentations took off but not as planned as Anne Mukundi of PopKenya speaking from Nairobi, could not highlight on PHP Code Ignitor as she was impeded by intermittent breaks in the Internet connection. 

Francis Addai enjoying his presentation on Pyramid

Back home, PAT Kumasi co-organiser and mFriday Training Coordinator Francis Addai showed participants how to play with Pyramid, a Python Framework. Taking time to explain key advantages of Pyramid, chiefly its flexibility and versatility, Francis could not hide his love for the framework. He rounded up his talk by demoing how he is using Pyramid to build Geekry, a system that would allow developers to give and receive feedback, giving them the impetus to improve the quality of their work. 

After Francis’ great presentation, PAT Ghana trainer/organizer and CEO of Hutspace, Emmanuel Okyere, took the stage to showcase RapidSMS, another Python web application framework based on the Django. RapidSMS, he said, originally developed by UNICEF and it extends the capabilities of Django for SMS handling. Emmanuel went on to showcase sample apps developers can build with the tool, emphasizing that there are lots of opportunities they can exploit using RapidSMS. 

Emmanuel walking attendees through RapidSMS

Next, another PAT Ghana trainer, Kweku Danso of ilugi, stepped up to demo Showcase, a web application that, true to its name, showcases software built in Ghana on the web. He and his team mates, Jojoo Imbeah and Henry Addo, built Showcase using the Django Python framework. Kweku’s goal for Showcase is to be a one-stop shop for finding all the latest software developed in Ghana.

 Another brilliant young dynamic developer, Kwabena Antwi-Boasiako of Parallax Consult, then took over from Kweku to demo his innovation, Gspeaks, which aggregates the most interesting online stories Ghanaians care about. Gspeaks appears to be highly targeted version of Reddit aimed at the Ghanaian web user. Kwabena built his app with Ruby on Rails, an agile framework similar to the Python frameworks.

Finally, Ransford Okpoti rounded up events for the day through a short presentation on Google App Engine. He started by explaining the meaning of cloud computing concepts IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, pointing out the key offerings in each category. He then plunged into the Google App Engine, showing how developers can leverage on Google’s infrastructure to seamlessly deploy their apps on the Internet. He explained that using the cloud service was more advantageous to lean teams as they may not have the time or technical expertise to manage multiple servers on site.

Sarsah and Kweku discussing what next after the event

After Ransford was done, group pictures were taken and a brilliant day grudgingly came to an end as attendees stayed on a bit to network, give feedback, ask questions and discuss ideas. Truly, the Ghanaian tech scene is buzzing with useful activity as exhibited by another splendid day of learning and skills building facilitated by Python African Tour and Coders4Africa. It can only get better.

Group picture at the end of the programme

Biometric Voter Registration in Keta, Ghana: How I Registered

Ghana will be going to the polls this December to elect a new president and members of parliament. As part of preparations for the election the electoral commission (EC) is undertaking a fresh voter registration exercise using biometric technology. The adoption of a Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) system has become crucial in order to minimise electoral fraud, and to ensure that whoever emerges victor is the true choice of the people.

What is biometric registration and how will it be done? I believe the video below explains the process quite well:

I registered on Easter Sunday at the Abidjan station polling station at Tegbi near Keta. Contrary to reports of a tedious registration process, characterised by long queues, from some parts of Ghana, my experience was pretty smooth. In fact, one woman who was almost done with penning down her name was the only other registrant at the centre when I got there. It took no more than ten minutes to get my brand new voters ID card.

Going through the Biometric Voter Registration exercise at Tegbi-Keta in the Volta Region

 The staff of the EC were professional and friendly. They took the trouble to answer all my curious and probing questions. From them, I got to know that I was the thirty-second person to register on that day. They're not facing any major technical glitches. Hopefully, as the Easter festivities have ended, more people would go to register in order to participate in the national elections.

Which card is better? The old one or the new one? #iRegistered

 So, I have my voters ID card, and the power to elect our next leaders, in my hands now. There are many issues to weigh before casting that vote, before determining the direction that Ghana should go in the next four years. The conversations have began. Ghana Decides, a BloggingGhana Election project seeks to promote these important conversations on social media channels. Starting with the iRegistered campaign,  their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google + and Flickr pages reveal the amazing efforts being made to engage the youth ahead of this year's elections. Hopefully the often ignored voices of youth, women, physically-challenged and other socially-excluded groups will count during the elections through their efforts.  Refreshingly, the likes of Mashable, AJstream, GlobalVoices, Ghana News Agency and the government portal are following keenly what the youth of Ghana are trying to achieve using social media.

For now, I will keep a keen eye on events as they unfold and make my choices based on the real issues, the issues that I and others around me face. Just like every other Ghanaian would do. Go and register if you have not done so yet. Like the cliche goes, "your vote is your power!"