The problem of "missing" developers in Africa cannot be solved with another database (there's already DevelopersInAfrica [1], and I think there could be more). What I have identified as the problem since I started running DevCongress [1] with a couple of friends and the general community of programmers in Ghana is, ironically, community and activity.
You see, Ghanaians generally a quiet people, and it pierces all our circles. It's hard to shake that dumb silence off, it's hard. Just look at participation in our Google group [3] and how it's dominated by just me. That's not what we wanted, obviously. So we set out solve the problem of programmers restricting themselves to absolute silence. That familiarity among ourselves would lessen the barrier to participation was our riskiest assumption. So we started yet another project, namely, #eXchange (you can see episodes here [4]). So far we are engaging really well via the videos, and more importantly we're exposing the humans (and their humanness) behind the big names in the programmer community in Ghana. It's been successful so far.
Last but not least of our attempts is FORGE [5]. Oh I so love FORGE! We have plans to launch before the end of June but funds (we foot all the bills ourselves) are holding us back a little. We are preparing to approach GitHub Community [6] to ask for help. Since you're in Ghana we should link up to discover even more ways that we can pull ourselves up to an appreciable, non-mediocre level.
To all non-African programmers, please consider actively mentoring us even though we can't afford to pay you. Also think about offering us internship and job opportunities without paying significant attention to our CVs because tbh, they're mostly crap.
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The problem of "missing" developers in Africa cannot be solved with another database (there's already DevelopersInAfrica [1], and I think there could be more). What I have identified as the problem since I started running DevCongress [1] with a couple of friends and the general community of programmers in Ghana is, ironically, community and activity.
You see, Ghanaians generally a quiet people, and it pierces all our circles. It's hard to shake that dumb silence off, it's hard. Just look at participation in our Google group [3] and how it's dominated by just me. That's not what we wanted, obviously. So we set out solve the problem of programmers restricting themselves to absolute silence. That familiarity among ourselves would lessen the barrier to participation was our riskiest assumption. So we started yet another project, namely, #eXchange (you can see episodes here [4]). So far we are engaging really well via the videos, and more importantly we're exposing the humans (and their humanness) behind the big names in the programmer community in Ghana. It's been successful so far.
Last but not least of our attempts is FORGE [5]. Oh I so love FORGE! We have plans to launch before the end of June but funds (we foot all the bills ourselves) are holding us back a little. We are preparing to approach GitHub Community [6] to ask for help. Since you're in Ghana we should link up to discover even more ways that we can pull ourselves up to an appreciable, non-mediocre level.
To all non-African programmers, please consider actively mentoring us even though we can't afford to pay you. Also think about offering us internship and job opportunities without paying significant attention to our CVs because tbh, they're mostly crap.
[1] http://www.developersinafrica.com [2] http://devcongress.com [3] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/devcongress [4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJdep9xo0Y8UTvKehbhey2g [5] http://forge.devcongress.com/faq [6] https://community.github.com/