Open Source Africa – project plan
“Open Source Africa” aims to set up a multinational online platform which will allow small IT companies in Europe to enter into a business relationship with small African IT companies. It is intended to be an „Open“ platform, in order to make “Source Africa” accessible for IT services and outsourcing of European industry. To develop knowledge and acceptance of open source software in Africa, the development and later operation will also use free and open source software (FOSS). The first (European) target group of people inviting project tenders should therefore also be IT companies which use Open Source. The target group of small IT companies is crucial to guarantee the project’s sustainability. The portal must be able to organise not only the awarding of complete projects, but also sub-projects “micro-projects”). That increases the acceptance of the European target group by building confidence.
Benefits
- For small IT companies in Europe, (573,000 IT and 130,000 media companies – Eurostat 2007) the portal offers the opportunity to buy in programming offshore at favourable rates for micro-projects (that is, clearly defined subprojects and components), thus ensuring a competitive advantage.
- For small IT companies in Africa, new market opportunities are opened up, they become independent of the projects awarded by their own governments, receive access to European project and IT know-how and can network across the continent and worldwide.
Since the development of sources of know-how and of money also opens up new business and start-up opportunities, this prevents the brain drain of highly qualified experts from Africa to Europe and the USA.
Why HighText Verlag?
HighText Verlag, founded in 1991 by Joachim Graf und Daniel Treplin has a in longtime experience in developing and operation business to business platforms: IBusiness.de is a trendscouting and knowledge portal for media convergence with 150.000 registered German speaking users. Press1.de offers a platform for distribution, consulting and production of press material including text, images and video per e-mail, RSS, satellite and fax; furthermore press1 provides online press compartments for tradefairs, events and congresses, congress IPTV and media surveillance
Tags: open source
