Building a Django Community in Africa
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Dogbe, Abigail Mesrenyame
Alorwu, Noah
The fast spread of Django in Africa through some initiatives such as Django Girls and Python Conferences has gained popularity especially in the West of Africa. Pushing the agenda of creating an active community will go a long way to promote the use of Django and strengthen the relationship between Django developers in Africa.
 I want to specially thank the Django Denmark team for making this trip possible for me. Actually, I'm supposed to present this particular talk together with a colleague, Abigail Miserinami. But unfortunately, she couldn't make it here due to visa issues. Abigail is one of the, is the lead for Pilates in Ghana and she's doing an amazing job by encouraging more ladies in Ghana to learn the land fighting and hosting Django Girls Workshop across the country. And since Abigail is not here, she has a message for us and let's watch this. Yeah. Yeah. ok, you have to play the sliding we can switch machine to work I apologize for not making it hello everybody, my name is Apigel Visya Nyamidobé and I'm a proud member of the Python Software Community in Ghana I apologize for not making it to Copenhagen and I'm excited to be doing this video as well I want to use this opportunity to say a big thank you to the organizers, they've been so supportive Elvis, Benjamin, Sarah, I love you so much, I appreciate all their love and I also hope you enjoy your stock, greetings from all of us here in Ghana, bye thank you, Apigel, I hope I will make you proud who are my Noa Alawu and developer and an individual member of the Django Software Foundation on Twitter, Plasmadre and GitHub, Noa Alawu and you can always shoot an email to noaawuajima.com alright, so let's get started, building a Django community in Africa the beauty of community is that it connects people, you and I are gathered here because of the love we have for Django and Django, a community, brought us all together the heart of every community is its members, without its members there is no community building together makes us stronger I would like to share a quick story about how it all started and where we are now there is this particular initiative called Django Girls and I hope all of you know about Django Girls I mean if you don't know about Django Girls Django Girls were a shop that allows people to learn how to program and still for ladies to learn how to code so I happened to attend my very first Django Girls in Ghana, that is early 2017 in April and I was so excited about the ladies interested in learning how to code so in the course of the training I realized that there are different categories of people and some are following and they are able to build their blog and some are like, this is not our team and some are also looking for A on the keyboard, they are actually struggling and I was like, how can I help solve the ones that are not having access to this part or are not following the whole workshop so I decided to create a tutorial for them so that at their own pace they will be able to build their blog whenever they have time and then another workshop, there is another call for coaches to mentor at another Django Girls event and this particular workshop is same in Ghana, that is actually the second workshop in Ghana and this workshop is hosted by Nigerians, not Ghanians and I was like, why would someone travel from Nigeria just to host Django Girls event all this has been done because of the love of the community and we were like, okay, what can we do again, there is another issue because all these workshops are being held in the cities but not in the rural areas so I and a friend or colleague called Manny decided to host our very first Django Girls workshop and that was held in Ho in the Vota Region of Ghana during that particular workshop we decided to we were discussing about how we can have a community that can see to all these things so that particular Django Girls workshop leads to the formation of the pithons of the community in Ghana and last year we hosted our very first PyCon and this year we will be hosting PyCon Africa, I will talk about that later so looking at this particular map of Africa, this represents the coverage of a workshop being hosted in Africa, Django Girls workshop what you are saying is in the years to come, focusing this one year we should see that all these workshops will replicate or will fill the whole Africa and what this map is also telling us is that we have developers in Africa that are making use of the Django framework and pithons and the reason why they are attending this workshop is to connect with other developers, learn, share, network and collaborate aside teaching their ladies do we have a community that brings all these developers together? No this is a picture of I and Respawn Cancer, also a developer, a Django developer we went on a round trip with a motorcycle to attend one of the Django Girls workshop in the northern part of Ghana approximately 1.7 thousand kilometers when we went there we met a young lady, 11 years old, so it is very rare in Africa to see keys coding actually so we had this encounter with the lady, they are so excited anytime people see me they are like Django lady or Django man or whatever they are calling me so this shows the love we have for the community or we want to give back to our society my colleague Abigail and I conducted a survey recently and we asked if they would like to have a community in their cities and we received responses from Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the rest and 96% says they are interested in having a community in their city and then we have 4.0 which are in 50-50 if they would like to have or they are not interested and we had 0 for no so what does that mean? It means that having a community in Africa will provide an opportunity for developers to contribute to the Django framework we are not going to be just users of the framework but we will also be contributing to the framework I said that Django supports 10 languages for now and with the help of a community in Africa to aid in the indigenous contribute to their language, to contributing to the local or translating the documentation of Django to their local languages tutorials will also be written in their local languages whereby they can develop in that particular area some of the African countries can speak and the documentation does not have that particular language for them so they find it very difficult to make use of this amazing framework so this will provide a platform for them to make tutorials in these I said that having a community will be able to host workshops and trainings to learn more about Django framework new updates and everything contribute as well and this will also create awareness for us to create awareness with workshop etc a lot of people heard about DjangoCon in Europe, on Twitter etc having a workshop for instance will also aid in promoting the Django framework in Africa I said that it's going to also strengthen the relationship between Django developers to bring all developers in Africa to meet and then network so what's next? later this year we will be hosting our very first Django Summit or Congress and after the Congress in 2020 we are going to host the very first DjangoCon Africa and we can't wait to see you come and experience DjangoCon Africa for the first time and we have a team dedicated working tirelessly to actually make this happen in 2020 so when the time is due we will actually communicate it and I will also post on the Slack channel so let's do this for the love of the community I would like to especially thank all people who made this conference a reality, you are all super amazing thank you and if you have any questions you can ask me thank you I'm super excited to go to DjangoCon Africa next year so who else is? whoo! okay are there any questions? there is, there's a Russell I'm really excited to find out about DjangoCon Africa, I hope I managed to get there one day I would like to know your thoughts about what you have done, any advice you have about building a community in an area as large as Africa I'm guessing language issues in some cases, different cultures, different national boundaries you are dealing with Australia is big and we have difficulty pulling together a national Python community and a national Django community do you have any tips for how you have been able to pull it together even though you have the additional barriers of languages and cultures alright so if I get you right with regards to that, what we plan on doing is to have different metas at different countries and then later on we all come together and have a successful conference so glad to hear you talk, this was so great and meeting you in person so my question is very similar to Russell's with Python Africa coming up in August and things like that how, what resources are you utilizing mostly and how can we help and participate and when call for proposals come out where should we be listening? alright so we will be creating a channel and also be posting on the mailing list so we will actually broadcast all those information so with regards to the way that you can, are possible ways of helping us, we, if you mean Python Africa all of the above alright so for Python Africa we have actually opened a call for a proposal and you can find that on paper I can actually show that if you want can we get the slides up again please? alright so Python Africa will be on the 6th to 10th August in Akragana and what to expect workshop, talk, sprint and community our call for proposal is open to 1st June and you can submit your proposal to this particular link paper called.io slash Python Africa and we also, if you want to sponsor us, here is the link to see our sponsorship packages that we have and now if you want to connect with us, here are our handles on Twitter, Python Africa, Facebook, Python Africa and you can join our Slack channel to get to know people that are travelling to Ghana to experience their very first Python Africa so yeah hi thanks for the talk, very inspiring, I'd like to know more about those financial and structural needs like we, I think we probably face the same problems in Brazil as you face there we have like huge territory and we make a huge effort to bring not only gender diversity but also social diversity and the main problem we have normally is financing all those events because you have to bring tutors, you have all of structural things to come up with how do you have a special way of providing that or just like going to companies and asking for sponsors? alright so with regards to funding of our event, it's very difficult to be sincere, it's very difficult to get sponsorship from our local companies so we rely on international organisations, so mostly when you take a look at all the jungle girls for shops held in Ghana or other parts of Africa I realise that the majority goes to like the funding that we get from international organisations without that particular support, I don't think we'll be able to make or host those particular workshops so we rely on the international organisation, we hope the local companies will actually come on board to support us thanks hi thanks for the talk, I would like to ask what's the most difficult thing that you faced in building a community because coding is not something that everyone is passionate about, so how do you build that interest in people? alright so I forgot to share this, so when we hosted these particular jungle girls workshops we have midwives that got like when they first encountered this particular coding, they were like wow I think I can do this part time and then yeah they actually learn how to code now and they are also giving back to society we have nurses, chemists, engineers who don't have anything to do with computing yet they are able to experience this and also giving back to the society, so with people who don't have interest or people who don't have the necessary means of learning so we will have a meet up that we can enlighten people about coding, what they can do with it so I think that is how we will be able to draw them to this particular community thank you you're welcome thank you Noah I wonder if you could say something about for the potential travellers to a Picon Africa or other events in Africa because many of us travel very happily within Europe or between Europe and the US and we are in familiar territory speaking languages we know using currency we know in cities we are maybe familiar with already but for many people travelling to Accra for example it will be a brand new experience and I wondered firstly if you would have any advice for the potential traveller and secondly if you have any plans to help those travellers who are coming from very different places and cultures and countries when they arrive to orient them ok so Accra, Ghana is very peaceful and very friendly for we welcome everybody to Ghana with regards to, it's a very peaceful area that you don't have to worry about nobody will just attack you on the way or do anything to you the indigenous are very very friendly you can go to the market, charts and almost all of them will speak English to you and touring Ghana we have a lot of tourist sites that you can visit and trust me if you happen to make it to Accra, Ghana you will have an interesting wonderful time in Accra we have a particular day dedicated for touring Ghana that we will send you to experience the will of life in Ghana and also there will be festivals and some other programs that will be going on in Ghana that we plan to bring in our international travellers to come and experience so Accra is very welcoming, your safety is assured thank you
 I want to specially thank the Django Denmark team for making this trip possible for me.  Actually, I'm supposed to present this particular talk together with a colleague, Abigail Miserinami.  But unfortunately, she couldn't make it here due to visa issues.  Abigail is one of the, is the lead for Pilates in Ghana and she's doing an amazing job by  encouraging more ladies in Ghana to learn the land fighting and hosting Django Girls Workshop  across the country.  And since Abigail is not here, she has a message for us and let's watch this.  Yeah.  Yeah.  ok, you have to play the sliding  we can switch machine to work  I apologize for not making it  hello everybody, my name is Apigel Visya Nyamidobé and I'm a proud member of the Python Software Community in Ghana  I apologize for not making it to Copenhagen and I'm excited to be doing this video as well  I want to use this opportunity to say a big thank you to the organizers, they've been so supportive  Elvis, Benjamin, Sarah, I love you so much, I appreciate all their love  and I also hope you enjoy your stock, greetings from all of us here in Ghana, bye  thank you, Apigel, I hope I will make you proud  who are my Noa Alawu and developer and an individual member of the Django Software Foundation  on Twitter, Plasmadre and GitHub, Noa Alawu and you can always shoot an email to noaawuajima.com  alright, so let's get started, building a Django community in Africa  the beauty of community is that it connects people, you and I are gathered here because of the love we have for Django  and Django, a community, brought us all together  the heart of every community is its members, without its members there is no community  building together makes us stronger  I would like to share a quick story about how it all started and where we are now  there is this particular initiative called Django Girls and I hope all of you know about Django Girls  I mean if you don't know about Django Girls  Django Girls were a shop that allows people to learn how to program and still for ladies to learn how to code  so I happened to attend my very first Django Girls in Ghana, that is early 2017 in April  and I was so excited about the ladies interested in learning how to code  so in the course of the training I realized that there are different categories of people  and some are following and they are able to build their blog and some are like, this is not our team  and some are also looking for A on the keyboard, they are actually struggling  and I was like, how can I help solve the ones that are not having access to this part  or are not following the whole workshop  so I decided to create a tutorial for them so that at their own pace they will be able to build their blog whenever they have time  and then another workshop, there is another call for coaches to mentor at another Django Girls event  and this particular workshop is same in Ghana, that is actually the second workshop in Ghana  and this workshop is hosted by Nigerians, not Ghanians  and I was like, why would someone travel from Nigeria just to host Django Girls event  all this has been done because of the love of the community  and we were like, okay, what can we do again, there is another issue because all these workshops are being held in the cities  but not in the rural areas  so I and a friend or colleague called Manny decided to host our very first Django Girls workshop  and that was held in Ho in the Vota Region of Ghana  during that particular workshop we decided to  we were discussing about how we can have a community that can see to all these things  so that particular Django Girls workshop leads to the formation of the pithons of the community in Ghana  and last year we hosted our very first PyCon and this year we will be hosting PyCon Africa, I will talk about that later  so looking at this particular map of Africa, this represents the coverage of a workshop being hosted in Africa, Django Girls workshop  what you are saying is in the years to come, focusing this one year  we should see that all these workshops will replicate or will fill the whole Africa  and what this map is also telling us is that we have developers in Africa that are making use of the Django framework and pithons  and the reason why they are attending this workshop is to connect with other developers, learn, share, network and collaborate  aside teaching their ladies  do we have a community that brings all these developers together? No  this is a picture of I and Respawn Cancer, also a developer, a Django developer  we went on a round trip with a motorcycle to attend one of the Django Girls workshop  in the northern part of Ghana approximately 1.7 thousand kilometers  when we went there we met a young lady, 11 years old, so it is very rare in Africa to see keys coding actually  so we had this encounter with the lady, they are so excited  anytime people see me they are like Django lady or Django man or whatever they are calling me  so this shows the love we have for the community or we want to give back to our society  my colleague Abigail and I conducted a survey recently and we asked if they would like to have a community in their cities  and we received responses from Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the rest  and 96% says they are interested in having a community in their city  and then we have 4.0 which are in 50-50 if they would like to have or they are not interested  and we had 0 for no  so what does that mean? It means that having a community in Africa will provide an opportunity for developers to contribute to the Django framework  we are not going to be just users of the framework but we will also be contributing to the framework  I said that Django supports 10 languages for now and with the help of a community in Africa to aid in the indigenous  contribute to their language, to contributing to the local or translating the documentation of Django to their local languages  tutorials will also be written in their local languages whereby they can develop in that particular area  some of the African countries can speak and the documentation does not have that particular language for them  so they find it very difficult to make use of this amazing framework  so this will provide a platform for them to make tutorials in these  I said that having a community will be able to host workshops and trainings to learn more about Django framework  new updates and everything contribute as well  and this will also create awareness for us to create awareness with workshop etc  a lot of people heard about DjangoCon in Europe, on Twitter etc  having a workshop for instance will also aid in promoting the Django framework in Africa  I said that it's going to also strengthen the relationship between Django developers to bring all developers in Africa to meet and then network  so what's next?  later this year we will be hosting our very first Django Summit or Congress  and after the Congress in 2020 we are going to host the very first DjangoCon Africa  and we can't wait to see you come and experience DjangoCon Africa for the first time  and we have a team dedicated working tirelessly to actually make this happen in 2020  so when the time is due we will actually communicate it and I will also post on the Slack channel  so let's do this for the love of the community  I would like to especially thank all people who made this conference a reality, you are all super amazing  thank you and if you have any questions you can ask me  thank you  I'm super excited to go to DjangoCon Africa next year  so who else is?  whoo!  okay are there any questions?  there is, there's a Russell  I'm really excited to find out about DjangoCon Africa, I hope I managed to get there one day  I would like to know your thoughts about what you have done, any advice you have about building a community in an area as large as Africa  I'm guessing language issues in some cases, different cultures, different national boundaries you are dealing with  Australia is big and we have difficulty pulling together a national Python community and a national Django community  do you have any tips for how you have been able to pull it together even though you have the additional barriers of languages and cultures  alright so if I get you right  with regards to that, what we plan on doing is to have different metas at different countries  and then later on we all come together and have a successful conference  so glad to hear you talk, this was so great and meeting you in person  so my question is very similar to Russell's with Python Africa coming up in August and things like that  how, what resources are you utilizing mostly and how can we help and participate and when call for proposals come out  where should we be listening?  alright so we will be creating a channel and also be posting on the mailing list  so we will actually broadcast all those information  so with regards to the way that you can, are possible ways of helping us, we, if you mean Python Africa  all of the above  alright so for Python Africa we have actually opened a call for a proposal and you can find that on paper  I can actually show that if you want  can we get the slides up again please?  alright so Python Africa will be on the 6th to 10th August in Akragana  and what to expect workshop, talk, sprint and community  our call for proposal is open to 1st June  and you can submit your proposal to this particular link  paper called.io slash Python Africa  and we also, if you want to sponsor us, here is the link to see our sponsorship packages that we have  and now if you want to connect with us, here are our handles on Twitter, Python Africa, Facebook, Python Africa  and you can join our Slack channel to get to know people that are travelling to Ghana to experience their very first Python Africa  so yeah  hi thanks for the talk, very inspiring, I'd like to know more about those financial and structural needs  like we, I think we probably face the same problems in Brazil as you face there  we have like huge territory and we make a huge effort to bring not only gender diversity but also social diversity  and the main problem we have normally is financing all those events  because you have to bring tutors, you have all of structural things to come up with  how do you have a special way of providing that or just like going to companies and asking for sponsors?  alright so with regards to funding of our event, it's very difficult to be sincere, it's very difficult to get sponsorship from our local companies  so we rely on international organisations, so mostly when you take a look at all the jungle girls for shops held in Ghana or other parts of Africa  I realise that the majority goes to like the funding that we get from international organisations  without that particular support, I don't think we'll be able to make or host those particular workshops  so we rely on the international organisation, we hope the local companies will actually come on board to support us  thanks  hi thanks for the talk, I would like to ask what's the most difficult thing that you faced in building a community  because coding is not something that everyone is passionate about, so how do you build that interest in people?  alright so I forgot to share this, so when we hosted these particular jungle girls workshops  we have midwives that got like when they first encountered this particular coding, they were like wow  I think I can do this part time and then yeah they actually learn how to code now and they are also giving back to society  we have nurses, chemists, engineers who don't have anything to do with computing yet they are able to experience this  and also giving back to the society, so with people who don't have interest or people who don't have the necessary means of learning  so we will have a meet up that we can enlighten people about coding, what they can do with it  so I think that is how we will be able to draw them to this particular community  thank you  you're welcome  thank you Noah  I wonder if you could say something about for the potential travellers to a Picon Africa or other events in Africa  because many of us travel very happily within Europe or between Europe and the US  and we are in familiar territory speaking languages we know using currency we know in cities we are maybe familiar with already  but for many people travelling to Accra for example it will be a brand new experience  and I wondered firstly if you would have any advice for the potential traveller  and secondly if you have any plans to help those travellers who are coming from very different places and cultures and countries  when they arrive to orient them  ok so Accra, Ghana is very peaceful and very friendly  for we welcome everybody to Ghana  with regards to, it's a very peaceful area that you don't have to worry about  nobody will just attack you on the way or do anything to you  the indigenous are very very friendly you can go to the market, charts and almost all of them will speak English to you  and touring Ghana we have a lot of tourist sites that you can visit and trust me if you happen to make it to Accra, Ghana  you will have an interesting wonderful time in Accra  we have a particular day dedicated for touring Ghana that we will send you to experience the will of life in Ghana  and also there will be festivals and some other programs that will be going on in Ghana that we plan to bring in our international travellers to come and experience  so Accra is very welcoming, your safety is assured  thank you
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