August 13-15 | Accra Ghana: Maker Faire Africa
Emeka Okafor was the director for TED Global 2007 that took place in Arusha, Tanzania and is the TED Africa Director. He is known for his blog the Timbuktu Chronicles which seeks to highlight innovative approaches in Africa that include: “sustainable technologies in the developing world and paradigm breaking technologies in general”. His blog, “Timbuktu Chronicles seeks to spur dialogue in areas of entrepreneurship, technology and the scientific method as it impacts Africa.”
Most recently he has been spearheading an effort called Maker Faire Africa. The will take place at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana’s capital, Accra from Aug 13-15, 09.
What inspired him to create this conference was his realization at the NED Conference, that “the ICT space has developed a head of steam in some parts of Africa,” however a ‘Maker Philosophy’ has yet to occur. Maker Faire will address this by fostering an inventive and innovative spirit in Africa.
This is partially based on the fact that Africans both at the leadership and mainstream level have not completely challenged the basic tenets of neocolonialism with a practical practice of everyday personal and community empowerment. Thus there is little encouragement and inspiration to challenge the prevailing notion of what is good for Africa as put forward by Western Aid and Development Agencies.
The key for Okafor’s approach to succeed is by developing a way of fostering leadership in people who are of a similar mindset can be trained to promote a practical philosophy of self-reliance and empowerment for African rural as well as urban communities. What we see is the importance of a Unity Center model by which people become part of a unified movement to better themselves and in that process be a model for positive change in the world.
Okafor’s work is the promotion of more of a “Made In Africa” approach. The key is that if we make the investment in human capital in people who challenge prevailing notions of development, and do so in a more systematic way, we can begin to see support networks emerging for promoting more effective development in Africa.
Another blog we have been watching from Africa is the White African blog focuses on the role of technology in promoting sustainable development in Africa and how it is impacting Africans on an everyday level. The author Erik Hersman who grew up in Kenya and Sudan also contributes to AfriGadget where he talks about low-tech ingenuity and microentrepreneurs in Africa.
