Event eyes ICT Innovation with Open Source & Mobile Content

By Brenda Zulu, IDG News Service, 10/22/08

The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT is using its third annual Innovation Week, taking place in Accra, to educate African entrepreneurs on FOSS (free and open-source software), said Dorothy Gordon, the center's director.

The theme of this year's conference is "ICT INNOVATION with Open Source & Mobile Content."

"We are bringing together aspiring entrepreneurs, or those who are still in the early stages of their business careers, and bringing them to link in with successful FOSS entrepreneurs so that they learn about the business models and what it takes to make success happen," Gordon said.

Many people are confused by the term "free," which refers to freedom of use, modification, redistribution and publication, as opposed to the idea that there is no payment required, Gordon explained. Many IT entrepreneurs imagine that they could never make money if they use FOSS, she added.

"We should focus on gaining market share using business models such as those adopted by Firefox and other well-known open-source businesses," she said.

The main aim of Innovation Week, Gordon said, is to give IT innovators a platform on which to exhibit their products and ideas.

"The important thing is to publicize successful innovation and support those with the brain power to create and innovate to take their product or process successfully to market," she said.

"The 'I-Week' also showcases global innovation as an inspiration, all with a view to moving Africa from being in a situation where we consume technologies designed to provide solutions for other people's problems to a situation where we actually create and produce technologies designed for our own contexts and in response to our own markets," Gordon added.

The main players in this year's Innovation Week are the Advanced Information Technology Institute, the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, and Rancard, a mobile platform company.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.