Just for my interest, there has been one mentoring organisation on GSoC from Uganda for each of the last 3 years. Anyone know who this is?
Thanks Tim On 14 September 2010 14:45, Tim Schofield <[email protected]> wrote: > This is a really interesting and important discussion, which I am > enjoying reading. > > I don't think there is a single answer, but here are a few views of my own. > > I agree that GSoC is a not a perfect indicator of how good and how > interested students are in programming, but it is an interesting > indicator. USD 5000 pay for a few months of coding is a great > incentive, and a much bigger incentive in EA than for a student in > Silicon Valley, so why no one accepted? Either they are applying and > getting turned down (maybe the university should be offering to help > to them to apply. Maybe we could help them to apply??), maybe they > haven't heard about it (does it get publicised at the University? I > haven't seen it), or maybe they lack the confidence to apply. I don't > know. > > Governments do have a role to play here. Which is the country in EA to > have invested most in IT? Rwanda. Which is the only country in EA to > have had anybody accepted onto GSoC in both of the last 2 years? > Rwanda. Maybe a coincidence but...... > > I'm sorry to say that the standard of the education at Makarere also > has some blame here. I have seen first hand that they lack some basic > knowledge of real world programming. a simple thing such as proper > code indentation and formatting was lacking. > > Spending too much time on facebook, and a lack of a reading culture is > a problem wherever you go in the world, not just in Uganda. > > Is there something the LUG can do? I think there is a lot we can do to > highlight the benefits to the students of writing and using open > source code. I have come across the view many times that writing open > source is just for rich westerners. We need to show them how they can > leverage open source to work for them. The project I am mentoring on > at the moment has real world commercial value, and their incentive is > to get it working and I will start a company with them to market > services around this software. There are many such possibilities, > maybe others here can start their own similar initiatives. > > Thanks > Tim > > -- > WebERP Africa Ltd > +447710427049 > +256752963327 > +255784602561 > www.weberpafrica.com > -- WebERP Africa Ltd +447710427049 +256752963327 +255784602561 www.weberpafrica.com _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---------------------------------------
