WentAfrica2005 on Blogger.com is an electronic record of the Women’s Electronic Networking Training, which began in early December at Kampala, Uganda.
WENT Africa training workshops aim to build the capacities of women and their organisations in Africa to utilise new Information and Communication Technologies in social development work and policy advocacy. This year, the focus of WENT Africa 2005 is Free and Open Source Software Solutions (FOSS) in women’s organisations in Africa.
APC-Africa-Women held the first WENT Africa workshop in 2003 with a focus on the strategic use of ICTs.
Women from Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Cameroon, Zambia, Sudan, Cameroon, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Senegal are participating in the second WENT Africa workshop being hosted by href=“http://www.apcafricawomen.org/”>APC-Africa-Women.
APC-Africa-Women is convenor. WOUGNET, Women’sNet, Isis-WICCE, href=“http://www.africalinuxchix.org”>LinuxChix Africa and Bellanet-Africa are partners in the event. HIVOS is the donor and partner who made the workshop possible.
“Many participants who work in rural-based organisations expressed concerns around the lack of access to facilities that enable safe and reliable electronic communication,” says a comment on the blog. [Blogs, which grew out of the collaborative nature of functioning of the Free Software world, allow for the easy creation of content on the Internet. The templates take care of adding the article to the home page, creating the new full article page (Permalink), and adding the article to the appropriate date or category-based archive. Most blog platforms allow the administrator to invite and add other authors, whose permissions and access are easily managed.] Early in the camp, participants split into tracks with the first focussing on techie skills and track 2 on technology planning. “Before leaving for our welcoming dinner, the tracks reconvened and started work on their joint projects — the ‘techies’ acting as consultants to the technology planners. We will upload more information on the technology projects being discussed,” reported camp participants. ‘Techies’ installed Ubuntu and the ‘tech planners’ deepening their technology plans. (Ubuntu is a simple-to-install, user-friendly GNU/Linux desktop distribution. It is sponsored by Canonical Ltd owned by Mark Shuttleworth, and the name of the distribution comes from the South African concept of Ubuntu — roughly, “humanity towards others”.) Says the event’s blog: “Brenda observed that Track 1 had flexible trainers who were prepared to go to places they had not been before. This caused chaos in certain spaces and success in others. Melissa’s screen is still talking gobledeegook! Strange messages flicking across her screen but it was solved by the end of the day. Salma feels brain dead and can’t think of anything right now. Fatima (a trainer) is slumped down in a chair exhausted but she seems satisfied with the day.” Keep track with the event at http://wentafrica.blogspot.com/
