A few weeks ago, the GNOME Foundation has been contacted by the organizers of the Idlelo conference in order to get a GNOME presence during the event. Quoting the website of the event:

IDLELO is one event for FOSS practitioners, developers and advocates as well as governments to showcase results, share experiences and challenges, review progress on the continent in diverse domains and chart a way forward for an African future grounded in true ownership of technology. IDLELO is therefore a premier international forum for the presentation of research results in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Africa.

The event will occur in May, in Accra, Ghana.

There have been many discussions in the past about how to get more community involvement in Africa, and there's no magical solution. But a good first step is, for sure, to be present at events that are being organized on the african continent. We're already sending Luis de Bethencourt to FOSS Nigeria, and we want to be at Idlelo too.

If everything goes well, the amazing Fernando will go deliver training sessions before the conference itself; but we need one more person to man a booth during the conference. While this is not a hard requirement, we'd still like to have a GNOME Foundation member who feels empowered to talk in the name of the Foundation. If you're interested in representing GNOME at Idlelo, please get in touch with the board. I'm sure you'll enjoy it!