“Linux4afrika has the objective of bridging the digital divide between the developed countries and the disadvantaged countries, especially in Africa, by supporting people getting access to information technology.”

Time is running out to register for Idlelo 3, the third African Conference on Free and Open Source Software and the Digital Commons. The conference will be held in Dakar, Senegal between 16 and 20 March.

If there is any word other than Microsoft which can get an argument going among open source advocates, it is DRM. (The t-shirt is available here.)DRM, Digital Rights Management, is generally found in the form of an encryption wrapper giving control of the content to a rights holder.

German Development Organization InWEnt is partnering with FOSSFA (The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa" ) on a new training and networking programme called "ict@innovation". Both partners signed an according Letter of Intent at the third African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons – Idlelo 3.

HP and MIT have formed an independent organization to support the work of digital archivists who use the DSpace open source archiving software.

55,000 Sugar/GNU/Linux XO machines are being shipped every month to kids all over the world. This is a generation getting ready to break the bonds of digital dependencies and building a commons for themselves on free and open source software and open content and standards. In the meantime, Microsoft announced a pilot study to run Windows XP on these very machines.

"Jabi Lake Secondary School, on the outskirts of Abuja in Nigeria, is the poster child for a project set up by chip-maker Intel aimed at bridging the digital divide."
Comment:

Untangle is scheduled to host an Ubuntu Linux Installfest from Aug. 4 to 7 at LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco. This latest Installfest, coupled with recent moves by Canonical and Intel made The VAR Guy wonder: Can Ubuntu Linux close the digital divide?

Nigerian schoolchildren no doubt appreciate the innovative little machines that are trickling into Africa via Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program. But IBM thinks the developing world needs a little more processing power to cross the digital divide--about 14,000 times more, by the company's estimation.