Dear friends in Uganda,
Our work with Leadership Beyond Boundaries http://www.leadbeyond.org began in 2005 in Jinja, Uganda. Over the last 10 years we have expanded to more than 20 other countries and engaged in the leadership journey of more than 250,000 individuals. Projects in Uganda have spanned public health, education, orphan-vulnerable-children, micro-finance in places like Karamoja, Kampala, Gulu, Jinja, and the coast of Lake Victoria with partners including Makerere University, Mulago Hospital, Samaritan’s Purse, Global Outreach International, ChildFund, the Hive, CRS, World Vision, YWAM, Good Shepherd’s Fold, and Ugandan Government.
Today we hosted Alberto and Nadia from edgeryders at our office in Addis and I was quick to join the community to learn more and share more. Please do let us know what you are doing in Uganda and if you see ways we can contribute from CCL http://www.ccl.org
Best to you,
Steadman
Leapfrogging: can Africa become a global technology provider?
Hello again @Steadman, glad to see you have found your way here. In the end, as I told you in Addis, we could not help our Ugandan friends very much (except maybe individually); but at least we did identify and discuss a promising partnership. The idea was to take some project somewhere, like this family transition center, and make it double up as a “Lo-hi technology center”. African ingenuity is a powerful force, and the international cooperation context provides a safe space for deployment of open source technology, far from IPR lobbies (yes, that can be a problem). Worst case scenario, you get a slightly more hi-tech family transition center; best case scenario, you have started the open source revolution. Mind you, I am talking about open hardware here, and with mostly a focus on agriculture: tractors, vehicles, bioreactors, or even our very own solar tracker. There are plenty of projects, mostly led by small groups of dedicated hackers.
If you read the thread, it will be very clear that the Life in Africa group encountered some unexpected problems and had to regroup behind “just making it happen”, and take the project at a slower pace. Eventually, their second crowdfunding campaign was successful, but we have not heard about a phase 2.
Hopefully the project is thriving in Uganda, and the offer we made then to @gracia and @Ndelo_Peter and the others still stands (Gracia, Peter, if you are reading us come say hello to Steadman here!). But if that does not work for them, we would be in principle up for exploring the “Hi-lo tech” idea elsewhere in Africa. Does any of this make sense, Steadman?