Also affiliated with the World Language Documentation Centre, the Kamusi Project needs help from technical individuals. They are in need of programmers to help them update the legacy code used in their website framework into something that allows them to grow. If you know Drupal, Perl, PHP, & MySQL, this is the project for you to volunteer time towards.

As described on their Call for Volunteer Coders:

We need your help to hack kamusiproject.org!

The Kamusi Project, the web’s leading Swahili language resource, needs coding help in a hurry. We have a lot of old code that works pretty well for what we’ve been doing (running a collaborative online Swahili dictionary), but we need to modify and modernize our back end in order to get where we’re going: a free and open source interlinked dictionary and learning center for dozens of African languages.

Our code has been patched together over the years, adding bits and pieces to meet specific needs of the moment. Now we have a tangle of Perl and PHP overlaying a MySQL database, shoehorned into a Drupal platform and installed hastily on a new server. Can you help us get our current functionality working smoothly as a coherent PHP/ Drupal/ MySQL system, so we can then be in a position to expand our model to multiple languages of Africa?

If you can volunteer, please contact CodeAfrica {at} kamusiproject {dot} org

Specifically, our task list includes:

• Converting all our Perl code into PHP. The Perl code is old school, poorly commented, and doesn’t play well with Drupal. This includes four major features: (1) the Edit Engine, through which participants contribute to the dictionary and submissions get processed for the MySQL database; (2) the Grouping Tool, through which users can sort dictionary entries; (3) the Photo Uploader, through which users submit images to illustrate dictionary entries, and (4) the Bantu languages Verb Parser, which makes it possible to look up ridiculously complicated conjugated verbs such as “nitakapomsomesha”.
• Perfecting and enhancing our new Drupalized search engine. We’ve already designed a new PHP dictionary search engine to replace the fossilized Perl system you can see in action now, but we have some distance before the new version is ready to go live. The main challenges are: (1) reflecting live database updates from the Edit Engine; (2) presenting results to match the current format; and (3) building in some kick-ass advanced search features. We expect to go from 1 million searches per month today to tens of millions when we go multilingual, so we need a really robust search engine.
• Making Google behave. The search engines were eating us alive on our old server, crawling nonstop with repeated wildcard searches and any term any user with Google Toolbar had ever typed into our search box. We want the search engines to index the site, but we need to figure out how to prevent them from taking over.
• Organizing our log files. We want to sort our search logs so that we can rank our most popular searches in descending order, with the goal being a tool that can feed the 10,000 most searched for terms (from 45,000,000 searches) to the editors for the languages we’ll be adding. The challenge here is to deal efficiently with the sheer bulk of the dataset.
• Improving the Learning Center code. We have a nice skeleton for a multimedia Swahili learning center, but our funding situation never allowed us to finish developing the online exercises and lesson templates, completing features for interaction between students and instructors, and integrating the exercises with the dictionary and media uploader. Now we have been asked by a university in South Africa if they can use our learning tools for some of the 11 official languages of that country, and we would like to say yes. These tools are already within PHP/ Drupal.
• Widgets. We would like to display a variety of information as a toggled sidebar widget, similar to the “Most Recent Searches” infobox now installed (which needs to be made scrollable, since it changes too quickly). Widgets will include recently updated entries, recent photo submissions, most popular searches of the day, etc. We would particularly like a widget that displays results from a log file query for the most popular searches that are not actually in the database, then lets a user “check out” a missing entry in conjunction with an Edit Entry submission. We would also like a slide show for the homepage that displays images from the Photo Uploader in the context of the associated dictionary entry. The widgets are low urgency, but an easy and fun way to help out.

Once we accomplish these Code Africa tasks, we will be in a position to put the project on steroids, going from two languages to two dozen in a couple of years. Future work will involve re-engineering the database to accommodate multiple languages spoken by over half a billion people, modifying the Edit Engine for each new language, and building a linking tool to join the languages together. In order to accomplish these multilingual goals, though, we really need to get our current code in order.

If you can help, please contact CodeAfrica {at} kamusiproject {dot} org – we look forward to working with you!

“Availability of affordable bandwidth, growing synergies between IT industry and academia, government policy reforms and emerging opportunities in the IT sector have led to growth of incubation labs outside the orbit of the corporate giants in Africa.

Big companies like Nokia and Google have done extensive work with developers in the region but the growth of smaller labs financed by smaller companies and individuals in Cameroon, Senegal, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Uganda have underlined the opportunities presented by availability of bandwidth.”

More can be found at the original article. Hat-tip goes to Timbuktu Chronicles for the find.

Why the interest in such an idea? It’s completely applicable to many scenarios on the continent of Africa. While “going green” is a hot buzzword here in the States, it’s serious business in Africa. Energy conservation is not only a way to look cool and lend a hand to the environment, it’s often a necessity in Africa’s oftentimes unreliable infrastructure.

While I know that there are many individuals, nonprofits, and for-profits innovating on this level, and have been for many years, I would venture to say that this will become a trending topic over the coming years in Africa and around the world to a point where its progress is obvious everywhere we look.

Good stuff indeed.

For more info on ecological innovation, be sure to check out the Open Source Ecology blog.

“This looks like a great project. There is a container at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London waiting to be filled with academic books for Juba University. Get down there if you have any and you are based in London; the deadline is the end of March.”

There you have it. If you live in London, please head on down there and donate a few books. It’s going towards a great cause and there is not a single reason why we can not meet that need.

“…giving ICT special attention would play an important part in the development agenda of the union.”

–Bingu wa Mutharika, the African Union (AU) chairperson at a recent AU summit themed “Information and Communication Technologies in Africa: Challenges and Prospects for Development”. [Source: ITNewsAfrica.com]

I recommend by starting with Secretary Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom before moving on to reading Zuckerman’s blog post. Regardless of your political persuasion, this speech is a powerful one that touches on an issue of increasingly profound importance to human rights advocates: the exercise of political rights (and others) through the Internet. This is something we can all get behind, and should. (The speech gave me goosebumps.)

However, Zuckerman takes it one step further and offers a more comprehensive look into censorship and how we can better approach this topic. He offers some keen insight into the pitfalls of censorship circumvention and asks some potent questions we need to ponder before jumping to conclusions.

Excellent post Zuckerman. This will be a scene we need to watch.

“I think we better abolish the visa regime and I am going to inform my government so that anybody with a South Sudanese or Ugandan travel document can walk into each other’s country and trade freely.”

….that comes from Otafire, Ugandan Minister of Commerce. [Source: Roving Bandit]

In this week’s Kiva Pledge Update I am supporting Tettey, who deals in mobile phones and accessories in Kade, Ghana.

According to his Kiva business page:

Tettey is forty-three. He is married and has four children, all in school. He lives with his wife and children in a rented apartment in a town called Kade in the Eastern Region of Ghana. He works hard to be able to provide for the family. Tettey is a trader. He deals in mobile phones and accessories. He sells in a shop by the roadside in his community. He tells us that he buys the phones from the big cities at affordable prices. Tettey has been in business for three years and wants a loan to procure all kinds of phones in larger quantities in order to expand his business.

Stay tuned for the next Kiva Pledge Update on December 6th.

In this week’s Kiva Pledge Update I am supporting John Lubowa, who currently rides a boda-boda in Lugazi, Uganda.

According to his Kiva business page:

Lubowa John is the leader of his lending group in Lugazi. He is 36 years old, married, and has five children aged 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. They are all in primary school. John also takes care of seven dependants, including orphans.

John is a hardworking man and has been a boda-boda rider for Lugazi Town Council for the past five years. He shows good customer care towards his clients. His business is seasonal, which affects his cash flow. He is able to make 20,000 UGX a week profit. He has a dream of buying his own bike so that he could earn a larger income and continue to educate his children to the last level. John is requesting a loan to purchase a cow (with a top-up from his savings) so that he could sell milk to diversify his family income.

Stay tuned for the next Kiva Pledge Update on November 22nd.

Indego Africa is an organization that is truly making a difference in the lives of Rwandan women by helping them to sell their local crafts. Why go to this event? Here’s three great reasons to spend part of your Friday night at the fundraiser:

• Rwandan dancing. If you’ve never seen a great intore show, you don’t know what you’re missing. Come see Amariza N’Amasonga, the best Rwandan dance group in the area!
• Good people, good food and good drinks. Indego Africa events attract interesting people from all age groups, united by the common bond of an interest in the world outside our borders. The $45 ticket price will include traditional Rwandan food and an open bar.
• Raffle Drawing. We’ll be drawing for our raffle grand prize: a trip to Rwanda (or $3000). Already have a raffle ticket? Come see if you’re the lucky winner. If not, you can get one at reduced price when you buy your ticket.

Tickets and more info are can be found at http://www.indegoafrica.org/fundraisers

Come join me in supporting Indego Africa this Friday night at the Josephine Butler Parks Center in Washington, DC.