The Encounter: Python’s adventures in Africa
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SoftwareIntelComputerGoodness of fitSelf-organizationSystems engineeringGroup actionSpeech synthesisFormal languageVirtualizationPressureComputer animationJSONXMLUML
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Wave packetSoftware developerGenderEvent horizonAreaInteractive televisionService (economics)Self-organization
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Core dumpNumberLevel (video gaming)SoftwarePower (physics)Software developerParameter (computer programming)GenderMeeting/Interview
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Information managementComputer wormWechselseitige InformationExecution unitLattice (order)Scaling (geometry)MathematicsEvent horizonRepresentation (politics)Computer iconLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Moving averageEvent horizonMultiplication signHypermediaComputer iconOrder (biology)Instance (computer science)MeasurementSinc functionUniform resource locatorLecture/ConferenceDiagram
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SineComputer wormMenu (computing)Traffic reportingCategory of beingSet (mathematics)Medical imagingEvent horizon
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Division (mathematics)Curve fittingEvent horizonForcing (mathematics)Computer scienceMereologySoftwareWeb 2.0Data conversionPlanningEmailDisk read-and-write headOpen sourceProjective planeCASE <Informatik>Java appletMassMoment (mathematics)Natural numberStudent's t-testSelf-organizationEndliche ModelltheorieCycle (graph theory)Observational studyUniverse (mathematics)Group actionSocial classMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signComputer programVideo gameEvent horizonReal numberStudent's t-test2 (number)
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Student's t-testResultantComputer iconSoftware developerUniverse (mathematics)Event horizonSoftware2 (number)
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Right angleEvent horizonMeeting/Interview
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MereologyWhiteboardHypermediaSingle-precision floating-point formatPlanningNormal (geometry)CodeSelf-organizationXMLUMLLecture/ConferenceJSON
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SoftwareLattice (order)Electronic mailing listMoment (mathematics)Self-organizationPoint (geometry)Speech synthesisLocal ringSoftware industryEvent horizonLecture/ConferenceXML
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Coma BerenicesSimultaneous localization and mappingVideo gameNumberMereologyEvent horizonRepresentation (politics)Computer configurationPrisoner's dilemmaPoint (geometry)ConsistencyBit
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MereologySet (mathematics)Letterpress printingTwitterExecution unitMeeting/Interview
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Displacement MappingNatural numberMusical ensembleComputer programMultiplication signSelf-organizationMereologyFrequencyMeeting/Interview
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PlastikkarteFrequencyNeuroinformatikAbstractionTouch typingOnline helpDistancePiKeyboard shortcutTouchscreenComputer programGastropod shellData managementComputer animationMeeting/Interview
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Goodness of fitContent (media)NeuroinformatikCovering spaceConfidence intervalMultiplication signArithmetic meanPerspective (visual)BitSocial classWordNatural numberProjective planeEuler anglesParticle systemSound effectSoftware developerUtility software
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AreaMenu (computing)Computer wormDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Content (media)Cellular automatonHypermediaMultiplication signMassLecture/Conference
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Different (Kate Ryan album)SoftwareFormal languageDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Bridging (networking)HypermediaUtility softwareOrder (biology)CASE <Informatik>Universe (mathematics)Open sourceSoftwareUsabilityAxiom of choiceMultiplication signWordModal logicMobile appInterior (topology)Game controllerProcess (computing)ForceContext awarenessVariety (linguistics)Stress (mechanics)Meeting/Interview
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Different (Kate Ryan album)SoftwareFreewareProcess (computing)Open sourceContext awarenessMoment (mathematics)Meeting/Interview
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Projective planeMultiplication signAnnihilator (ring theory)LaptopNeuroinformatikWordNoise (electronics)Modal logicDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Musical ensembleInformationEvent horizonPower (physics)Self-organizationElectric generatorInternetworkingSoftwareProduct (business)GenderLink (knot theory)File systemHypermediaData structureMereologyResonatorMeeting/Interview
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Musical ensembleBuildingGraphical user interfaceActive contour modelSoftwareRight angleState of matterXMLComputer animation
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SineFrequencyMereologyRight angleEvent horizonType theorySoftwareMathematicsWeb pageActive contour modelMultiplication signOpen sourceInheritance (object-oriented programming)Lecture/Conference
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Active contour modelSymbol tableMultiplication signPerspective (visual)Arithmetic meanMedical imagingPoint (geometry)Coma BerenicesLattice (order)Meeting/Interview
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Multiplication signEvent horizonDisk read-and-write headOffice suiteData conversionBuffer solutionConsistencyExpected valueEmailSeries (mathematics)Touch typingMoment (mathematics)Arithmetic meanMeeting/Interview
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State of matterExpert systemBranch (computer science)Materialization (paranormal)TheoryMetawissenExpected valuePanel painting
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Confidence intervalOnline helpLattice (order)AdditionSocial classAlgorithmMultiplication signRight angleOpen sourceSoftwareGame theoryFormal languageCartesian coordinate systemLogical constantGenderMereologyMusical ensembleAxiom of choiceInternet forumComputer programMedical imagingOnline helpDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Public domainVideo gameElectric generatorDesign by contract19 (number)
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Video gameCASE <Informatik>Multiplication signLocal ringMereologyEmailSound effectForm (programming)ExpressionForceProjective planeCausalityTelecommunicationOnline helpFrequencyInteractive televisionLecture/Conference
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Event horizonRoutingHypermediaMathematicsProcess (computing)Term (mathematics)Queue (abstract data type)Euler anglesDisk read-and-write headLetterpress printingMeasurementStandard deviationInformation securityContext awarenessOcean currentComputer iconMereologyLecture/Conference
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CodeThermal conductivitySimilarity (geometry)Latent heatFormal languageLecture/Conference
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Universe (mathematics)NumberHypermediaMultiplication signFormal languageStandard deviationMereologyLecture/Conference
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Multiplication signStudent's t-testDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Universe (mathematics)Event horizonComa BerenicesSound effectLecture/Conference
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Video gameMereologyNeuroinformatikComputer programFactory (trading post)Multiplication signLocal ringCellular automatonReal numberLecture/Conference
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Multiplication signLaptopInformationComputer iconSpacetimeLecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:04
Good morning everyone and thanks for being here and before we even start we have some thank yous to say and to you of course for being here, to the organisers for inviting us to speak and to all the volunteers who have helped put on this wonderful week of
00:24
Python and friendship that is a EuroPython. Humanly honoured to be here in front of you it means a great deal to us and just being here is going to be an important contribution to movement Python in Africa that
00:40
we're both deeply involved in and we feel quite responsible here speaking for a lot of people. No pressure. So thank you again, we'll introduce ourselves. So hi everyone my name is Aisha Belo, I work as a virtual systems engineer in the global virtual engineering practice for Cisco systems.
01:02
Among other things I helped do support for Jungle Girls, I started the Jungle Girls movement in Nigeria and I've helped mentor and coach at other events. I also help organise PyLadies in Nigeria and this picture actually is one that I've grown to love because it was in 2015 and my first EuroPython conference and my first ever
01:26
interaction with the Python community and even Python as a tool. So yes, do you think I look any different now than I was ten, two years ago? You look just fine.
01:41
I'm Daniela Placida, I work for BDO, a Swiss Django company that provides hosting and development services for Python and Django developers. I'm a great lover of Django and Python in its community and its conferences. I'm a core member of the Django development team.
02:04
Yesterday there was some remarks about people's level of Python power from Tracy Osborne and I'd just like to point out that this is what I look like on television by the way. I don't know if you can see but it says that I am in fact Python software.
02:24
So let's not have any arguments about that. Now what Aisha and I have been talking about a lot and what we're interested in is what Python is for each other and what emerges from the encounter between them.
02:43
And as always in an encounter, the most important kind of encounter is an encounter between people and here it's the encounter between people that Python in Africa represents. And encounters really matter because they are what change people when they happen.
03:02
And in our Python world we can trace these encounters through the events that we stage. So we're going to start with our PyCons, our national scale international events where you get to meet new people. So we've got Python South Africa which is well established. South Africa is quite different from most other African countries.
03:25
And then after PyCon South Africa since 2015 we've had PyCons in Namibia and then since 2016 in Zimbabwe and then coming later this year the first PyCon Nigeria.
03:41
And people are just like ideas. You have to spend time with them, you have to hang around with them and try and work with them in order to understand them. And that's why events where people meet are so valuable. And another way you can measure activity is at Jungle Girls events which is like
04:01
as you can see we've had 62 workshops since Jungle Girls ever happened. The first one was in Uganda in 2015. And since then we've had 62 workshops and the highest of them being in Nigeria which is 31 workshops. And I think what is more important for us to notice is that Jungle Girls events
04:22
are happening in places that don't even have an established Python community in Africa, in places in Africa. And for example in Africa the World Bank had a report they published sometime in 2008 where it says 70% of SMEs are owned by women in Africa.
04:42
So 70% of entrepreneurship in Africa are owned by 70% of women. Now if you translate that to what that could mean for programming it goes a long way to show the possibilities that Jungle Girls or even events like PyLadies can have an impact not just Africa as a whole but African women.
05:04
Well how did we get here? By the way Aisha is very modest. I don't know if you saw that fully 50% of those Jungle Girls events have taken place in Nigeria. And the reason is right here. So she's too modest to say that. So how did it get started?
05:21
The PyCon South Africa which was already established but since then. In 2014 I was working at Cardiff University School of Medicine where I was the web team. And I have the notion of somehow helping to start a new PyCon somewhere in Africa
05:42
because there have been these PyCons in South Africa since 2012 but nowhere else. And I was trying to find an African Python community large enough to host a PyCon. And I went to see one of my colleagues who'd done a lot of work in Africa for some advice. And this was Professor Judith Hall
06:00
the head of the Anesthetics Department and she just looks like an ordinary professor but in fact she's actually a force of nature isn't she? So she did have some advice. But much more interestingly it turned out that she was starting a major long-term engagement project called the Phoenix Project between Cardiff University and the University of Namibia.
06:26
There's Namibia in case you don't know where it is. It's a large place. It's larger than the land mass of Germany and Italy put together but there are only two million people just over two million people living there. So the professor had many questions for me
06:40
like what is Python? What is open source software? What's a PyCon? Why? And we had some lengthy conversations but to cut a long story short the idea of a Namibian Python software conference was adopted as an official part of the Phoenix Project.
07:00
And suddenly it wasn't just a notion anymore. We now had significant backing from two institutions. We had financial and logistical support. We had a lot of expertise. We had a venue and we even had a guaranteed audience. And then we had dates and we had sponsors to whom we are eternally grateful.
07:21
And we had speakers and people who were committing themselves to travel from different continents to Namibia in February 2015. And this was to run a new PyCon in a place that I'd never been before with people I'd never met except via email and Skype. And for an audience whom we discovered
07:41
didn't even know Python yet because even the computer science students studied Java and C and other things and they simply didn't know Python at all. So my main thought was this had better work because in my darkest moments
08:01
at three o'clock in the morning I was convinced that the whole thing was a preposterous lunacy and that this couldn't possibly work. And I imagine people speaking about me in the future, you know, do you remember that idiot who tried to organize a PyCon in Namibia? Did you also wish that the plane crashed and there was a volcano and you didn't have to go anywhere?
08:22
I was praying for ash clouds or international bans on Python events and anything that would mean I didn't have to go ahead with what I'd said I would do. But despite all of this, we found ourselves on our way to Namibia and then walking into the venue for the first time
08:40
where we found all these people waiting for us with some excitement and then suddenly we were in the middle of a real live Python conference doing all the things you expect from a PyCon, doing all these things together, people meeting each other for the first time and discovering things for the first time and that Python was a great success.
09:04
But it wasn't actually that event that really mattered but what happened afterwards, because at that conference the Namibians formed their own Python society, Pynan, the Python Programming Society of Namibia, and they got to work straight away. So the undergraduate students
09:21
who'd been at the conference and had literally just learned Python, the next month they'd managed to organize themselves with local high schools and they were doing programming demonstrations and lessons for high school students. So there's Jessica, she's the chair of Pynan and this is from the second year of PyCon Namibia
09:43
and those are some of her high school students who came to the conference. So the Namibians took the idea and really ran with it. And earlier this year we had PyCon Namibia 2017,
10:00
the third edition of the conference and just two years after that first event PyCon is now taught at the university as a result of the PyCon. It's taught in high school thanks to Jessica. Namibian businesses and developers have discovered Python. They say, wow, there's a software conference coming to Namibia.
10:20
They don't get many of those. We better go and find out what that's about. So there's an active growing community that's already organizing a PyCon now, PyCon Namibia for next year. And one lesson from this is that you don't need a community to have a PyCon because you can create your community out of from the PyCon.
10:43
And another thing that the Namibian, the second Namibian conference last year did was to lead to a PyCon in Zimbabwe because to the people who came in 2016 were Anna Makarudze and Humphrey Boutteau. They traveled well over 30 hours
11:02
in a minibus, an absolutely horrendous journey. After hearing about those travels, I've never once dreamt of complaining about my own long-distance journeys. And later that year, they launched and held the first Zimbabwean PyCon. And if you think that organizing a PyCon is an achievement,
11:21
organizing one successfully in a country like Zimbabwe, which has many internal problems, is facing international sanctions, is really a triumph of perseverance and strength and ingenuity. And if they can do that, they can do anything. So their first conference was a success, and the next one is taking place next month.
11:43
And really importantly, it's sponsored by some companies that we already know and love. I mean, three of these sponsors are sponsors of this event. So I'm really grateful to these companies. I hope there's somebody from JetBrains or Nexmo here in the audience to see this,
12:02
because this really matters. And we're so grateful for your support. To see not just that the Python communities are growing and developing in Africa, but that the rest of the global community is stepping forward to be part of them is literally a dream coming true. Zimbabwe, unlike Namibia,
12:21
already had an established Python community. It's a much bigger country. Very briefly, there's Marlene Mangami. She's the first African board member of the Python Software Foundation. She's a woman. There's Ronald, and some of his fellow leaders of ZimboPy,
12:43
which is an organization dedicated to getting girls into coding. And finally, last year in Namibia, there was another important person who also went back home full of plans, and she went back home to Nigeria, and here she is to tell them about them. And that's the southern side of Africa.
13:02
Now let's go to the western part of Africa. To start with, we're going to be having our first ever conference, Python Nigeria, September 15 and 16, and just take this as a personal invitation to come over to Nigeria, or come over to your first African Python conference. And I want to take a moment
13:22
to appreciate the team I'm working with. They've been so dedicated, and I have more on the next slide. It's our first conference, so trust me, we need all the hands on deck. That's why we have so many organizers at this point. And thankfully, I would also like to say thank you to our sponsors so far that are sponsoring us, like the PSF, GitHub, and Endela,
13:41
which is a local software company in Nigeria. Now moving on to Python Nigeria. Python Nigeria organically grew from a Jungle Girls event. Now we have over 700 Slack members, because we have a Slack Python community.
14:02
And we have over 1,000 PyLadies subscribers. I have a good explanation for why that is. And we have, just in a second, and over 500 PyLadies enthusiasts. So one of the things that we have in Nigeria, in Lagos, is that knowledge is sought after.
14:23
People want to learn a lot. And the thing is, PyLadies is an opportunity, or is the only event that has consistent Python tutoring. And the thing is, not just girls actually come. Sometimes we even get more guys coming than girls to PyLadies event.
14:41
And at the point where we were like, you know what, guys, if you want to come, make sure you come with a girl. Or don't come at all. You can't come and represent us in our own event. No, it just doesn't work. So yeah, it was a bit of a struggle there. And just to talk about numbers, and how much of an impact this has been.
15:01
We've had over 919 girls attend Django Girls events in 28 cities with 31 workshops. And there's still more coming. And what's also important to note is that girls from Nigeria went on to Ghana and organized one workshop in Accra.
15:21
And that enabled the Ghanaian women go on and are currently, just from two months back, going on to organize their own workshops in places like Kumasi, Ho, Kofaridua, which is how the Python movement is spreading to other parts of West Africa,
15:41
especially where there is no Python community or no Python presence. Django Girls is sometimes not regarded very fairly. So some people think that Django Girls is all about cupcakes and heart-shaped balloons in a kind of girly party.
16:02
It means a lot to us. In our part of the world, it's not news that Nigeria, two years ago, had made world news where a set called Boko Haram kidnapped over 200 girls in the middle of the night from their dormitory. And I've held most of them for over two years now.
16:22
And there was this huge campaign. And we even had Michelle Obama say, bring back our girls, bring them now. We want them alive. What I wanted to mention here is how Django Girls have gone on to help these girls that are internally displaced from the north
16:40
and trying to absorb them into the community based in Lagos. And a team called Abokodas, they're very passionate about tech education in the north. And she's like, you know what, Aisha, we need one specifically for internally displaced girls. And this was quite different because even the organizer, Simi, she had to organize a workshop for the coaches
17:04
because they had to be that conversation with them to say, you know what, these girls are not like your regular, maybe girls that you already coach. These are very special. And there is a way you need to approach how you teach them or how they ask questions, how you should answer.
17:21
And sometimes we even had translators actually try to talk to them in how the language is read, what most of the language that they use for the most part. So Django Girls is literally going into places where other people wouldn't even have the first idea how to begin working there.
17:40
So I think that's really important to recognize the significance of this. And who's the people in this photo? So Hamdola is actually a treasurer from the Python Nigeria community. And the girl, she was one of the girls from Bono State
18:00
where Django Girls have been, no, actually where Boko Haram has been like a terror and a thorn in so many people's flesh. So moving on to how much more we've done the Python Nigeria community, we've actually partnered with also other organizations. And this time we went to Adjegula.
18:20
Adjegula is one of the major slums in Lagos. And we went to a public school and picked 60 girls over a period of 12 weeks. And we taught them how to code. Now this is quite unusual because many of these girls haven't ever had to see, they haven't seen the computer before.
18:40
They probably learn about it in class, but as an abstract concept or as something as a computer that you put in the shelf and is admired from a distance. And most people are scared to go touch it. And so with the help of Python Software Foundation, we're able to give these girls raspberry pies at the end of the program,
19:00
not just the pies, the screens, keyboard, mouse, because most of them are coming from poems that they probably could not afford computers. And what is important here I would like to note is that that in the picture is Tosin. And Tosin is teaching them was at the beginning where we had to actually teach them how to type. We had to teach them what the computer is before you even begin to say,
19:22
oh, let's go to the command line. We had to go from like the very basics and teach them this, which we had support also from a youth fellowship initiative and the founders of Technic. One of the girls called Jane had this to say. So the Smart Girls Project made cover page
19:41
of like a major newspaper in Nigeria. And she had this to say. She said, I hated computers because I kept failing the subject in school. I mean, who would blame her, right? I couldn't even put it on and off. I was scared each time I saw a computer, always thinking if I touched it, it will spoil, meaning if I touch it, it will just break, right?
20:00
So it felt like this abstract thing. Now all my fears are gone. I can now code. I'm also very bored now in the class when it comes to answering questions about computer. This actually is resounding because even giving the confidence in this girl, this little girl, and saying that they can do it,
20:21
and it's not so much of a big deal, has gone on to actually change a perspective from a concept that I'm very scared of to a concept that you know what, I think I want to keep learning and I want to be a developer. So yes, this is how it went.
20:41
So we've talked a little bit about what's been happening, and now we want to talk a little bit, have a bit of a discussion about some questions that will help clarify the implications of all this. And I think the most challenging two words up there
21:01
are in Africa. So we've talked about this quite a lot actually. What is one of the biggest problems about talking about Africa? Africa is not a big country. It's a huge continent, and it's not just huge.
21:21
We have very different... Go on and clap. It's made up of very different people and very different communities. And you'll find out that even in a country like Nigeria, we're in ourselves very different
21:42
and probably have more in common with an Italian than we would have with a Ghanaian or a Namibian. So we're very different. So there is no summing up Africa in one content. Africa is huge and it's different experiences for different cultures and for different places. So just to give you an idea,
22:00
it's something like one-fifth of the world's landmass. So you could cram most of the other continents on top of Africa, home to 1.2 billion people, some 50 plus countries, and depending on how you count them, between up to 3,000 different languages.
22:21
So this is vast ethnic and cultural diversity. So if you're an Italian and you're going to Belgium or somewhere saying, wow, it's so different here, you've seen nothing. And Africa is not just different. Africa is-
22:40
We're very different from Africa. Africa is different from Africa. The difference is great as much as between a Nigerian and a Namibian, as opposed to maybe a Nigerian and a British. It's actually very hard to travel within Africa. I'm a Nigerian and I need to get a visa to go to South Africa, to Kenya, to anywhere else,
23:02
which is a luxury that I see that the European Union have, because once you're from Europe, you can go and you have freedom of movement, but we don't have that. And actually, Python in Namibia, or Namibia was actually the first African country outside of Nigeria that had ever been. So we don't even know ourselves for the most part,
23:22
because the ease of movement is not as easy as it seems like, oh, it's just Africa. But no, we have to get a visa like everyone else that's coming from anywhere else. Sometimes it's even easier if you're from Europe to come to a country like South Africa than it is for a Nigerian to go to a country like South Africa.
23:41
Or Namibia, where most Europeans don't need visas, but Nigerians have to jump through hoops. Exactly. Here's a question that we've encountered and also spoken about. What does Africa really need? Does Africa need access to software and high technology
24:00
or does it need things like universal basic education, vaccinations, clean drinking water, and basic healthcare? In other words, aren't PyCons or are PyCons a kind of frivolous luxury in the African context? African is technology too. So we use technology,
24:22
and this is where I see a role in open source software, such like Python. We use it to solve our own problems. Now we have people developing apps that can help with waste management, that can help people assess better healthcare. Africa, it's not a luxury to have Python. It's a necessity that we need,
24:42
and that's our reality. We need technology too. We need software. We have businesses. We have telcos. And no, it's not a luxury. So Africa is going to need software. It's not an alternative reality where they don't use software. And since it's going to need software, it faces the same choice that everybody faces
25:01
between being a producer or a consumer of the things that you need. And the choices for African economies are pretty simple. Either it can buy the software it must have, or it can find a way to build it, maintain it, adapt it, and own it itself.
25:21
And if it can't do that, it will have to buy it. And that will mean valuable money leaving African economies. And this is where open source software comes in, because open source software, I mean, don't think that open source software is something magical, but it's an opportunity.
25:42
It represents a possibility to make that possible, to make it an economic viability. And picons, as we saw from the Namibian case, are really important as a way of helping open source software
26:02
get traction and users in Africa. There's another thing I want about technology. So if you think that technology is MacBooks and iPhones and wearable technology and things like that, then maybe Africa doesn't need those things.
26:22
But if you stop thinking of technology as stuff that you buy and instead think of it as skills, then the question looks different. And saying, does Africa need technology, becomes the question, does Africa need skills, does Africa need practical knowledge? And then it has a very different complexion,
26:42
and it's much harder to think that skills are a luxury. Yes, we like denying that Africa doesn't deserve to have knowledge. I don't know if you know these gentlemen. They invented my MacBook. There's Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
27:05
Now, paradoxically, and Aisha will tell you more about this in a moment, free things can be unaffordable because they're free. In the African context, the hobbyism that strongly characterizes the open-source software movement
27:21
really is a luxury, because we're used in the West to building projects, skills, contacts, even industries as hobbyists, as amateurs, spare-time enthusiasts. But all that is only possible when there already exists a well-established industry and networks,
27:40
when there's an established faith in the industry, when there's plenty of spare money and spare time and easy access to resources and information. So hobbyism is kind of parasitic on established business success. And you've got more to say about this subject.
28:01
I'm sorry, did you say hobbies? Yes. We don't have time for that. The thing is, we need to make sure that whatever we're doing can at least generate revenue, because money is not a dirty word if you don't have lots of it. If you're living in a place or in a country
28:21
where there's no 24-hour access to electricity, and you have to buy generator and buy fuel to run, and you have to ration, okay, how much charge do I have on my laptop versus when do I turn on the generator and get charged, and how much longer can I work with, and you have to deal with noise pollution, air pollution, noise, everything, we don't have time for hobbies.
28:41
We need to make sure that whatever we're doing is profitable, is productive, right? I think you should say, though, where we're talking about, that you can't rely on 24-hour electricity. Are you talking about the remote backwoods of... No, so this is Nigeria, which is a different reality for Namibia. And which cities?
29:01
Every city. In big cities. So even in big cities, you can't rely on... Yeah, so you can't rely on that. And we don't have time for that. So there is the aspect of, we need to make sure that whatever we're doing can generate money. So we need to make sure that we can afford the time.
29:23
Time is a luxury for most people because you have to make sure the power is banked. Some people don't even have computers at home, so they need to borrow. So there is like so much we're working against, or so much working against us, that even sometimes the basic necessities are like a luxury, where you don't even have internet for the most part.
29:42
So it's work. It's not fun. And that's why PyCon is for us a serious business. Yeah, so I don't know how many people here have also been community event organizers. Has anyone else organized a PyCon here,
30:01
or an event, or even a meetup or something? Yeah, I see a few hands. Well, you'll know that, you'll have faced all kinds of challenges and spanners in the work, and you don't have to go to Africa to find them. So this is from my DjangoCon Europe in 2015, when a boy band disrupted our conference
30:20
by suddenly selling every hotel bed in the city after our conference had already started selling tickets, or in the PyCon UK a couple of years ago. So anything can come up unexpectedly. But still, let's look at it this way.
30:41
Python in Europe is funny. There's Monty Python, and Python software is characterized by this lighthearted tone that Guido van Rossum very wisely established right at the beginning. And we enjoy it in all kinds of ways, so it's fun, you have funny snakes and so on. What do you have to say about funny snakes, Aisha?
31:03
Snakes in Africa is not funny. I'm really serious. Take for example, in Nigeria, for a period of six months, we were trying to register as a not-for-profit with the government,
31:23
and it took us a lot of going back and forth, and we had to change our names so many times, because the officials were like, Python, are you a cult? We don't approve such. And no, this is actually after giving them a five-page document explaining open source and what Python does
31:41
and how Python is a software. We eventually convinced them after six months of going back and forth and changing our names, and finally say, okay, Python, and they told us, they gave us a name, I said, why don't you say Python software community so that it's very explicit, and no one thinks that, you know, because for us, Python represents negative.
32:04
It's a threat. We see it as a threat. It's harmful. I mean, people die from that thing, you know? So it's not funny for us. Another example in Zimbabwe was when a girl, a parent actually pulled out a child from a Jungle Girls event,
32:20
because she saw me with my EuroPython shirt and a huge snake was in, and she's like, there's no way I'm going to let my daughter be a part of that. There is no way. It took Hannah actually having to go to the woman and explain to her what Python is as a software, but not Python as a snake, or as a demonic idea that many people are used to.
32:43
Same thing happened in a show in the western part of Nigeria where the girl, the company actually at the last minute pulled out from hosting the Jungle Girls event because they said, jungle? No way. That's like jungle unchanged.
33:01
If anyone had ever seen jungle unchanged. It's against our religious belief and we will not support that. And the day before the event, they had to run around looking for another venue and it just sometimes it's preposterous. It doesn't make any sense, but this is our reality. We just have to be careful with our snakes
33:20
because they might not be as attractive as they are to us as they are to other people. Do you think if Guido had an African friend he would still have called it Python? Yeah, that's a good point. So if Guido had been developing Python in the beginning with an African friend,
33:40
perhaps the name Python would have made them stop and think for a minute. So you can't have too many useful perspectives when you're creating something. But this isn't really about snakes. It's about meaning because in a global community like ours, symbols and images and names
34:01
are going to have unexpected meanings and we can't rely on a narrow cultural perspective to find things that will work well. Aisha, can you explain to our audience what African time is? I think this might be important for anybody who's planning to go to an African Python.
34:22
So I will cut the long story short. But advice to everyone here. If you're ever going to organize an event where you expect Africans to attend and the actual time is 7 p.m., in the invite you send out, tell them it's actually 4 p.m. Give them three hours buffer because if you see 7 p.m., no one is going to arrive at your event until 9
34:41
and you don't want that, right? Yeah, organizing the events in Namibia, Namibians are extremely relaxed. They're much too cool to hurry. So everything does happen, but it happens in Namibian time. Meanwhile, the European co-organizers are sitting at home going,
35:01
because nothing seems to be happening. But in fact, it all just happens at the last moment. The other important thing is that the personal touch, I think, is this is a consistent thing in Africa, isn't it? Yes. Did you experience this? Yes. Well, you can bombard people with email messages for months
35:21
and nothing will happen. And then you walk into their office and talk to them for 45 minutes and the first 30 minutes of the conversation will be about their children and in the final 15 minutes, absolutely everything will be organized in a way that you could never do in Europe. So there are different ways of doing things
35:41
and it's less stressful if you know that it's going to happen like that. Heads up, guys. Heads up. There's another thing. Expectations work in other ways, too. So there's a long history of African technological brilliance and mastery that when discovered by the West is not even recognized because of disbelief that it could have come from Africa.
36:02
So I don't know if you've heard of the Benin bronzes that came from, actually from Nigeria, not from Benin, from the ancient Benin kingdom. Oh, I come from that state. You come from Edo state, yeah. So the Benin bronzes were these thousands of works created in the 14th and 19th centuries.
36:21
They're not actually bronzes. Most of them are brass or other materials. Most of them are now in Western museums and collections because they were all looted by the British in 1897. But when they arrived in Europe, art experts were astounded and they couldn't believe that this stuff had been made by people so, quote,
36:41
primitive and savage, not just because of the art, but because of the understanding of metallurgy that went into producing things like this. So they kept coming up with different theories about how the Africans managed to make these things. They must have learned it from the Portuguese traders, for example. And they just couldn't believe
37:01
that this was African technology. So that's just one example. But I think there's a real danger that if some new technological advance comes out of Africa, it simply might not be recognized because it won't fit Western or European expectations.
37:22
But it's not just Europeans who might have to reassess their ideas of African technology, is it? No, we were Africans by African technology. So we sometimes have the mindset that which I would say resulted from back in the day,
37:40
maybe in colonialism, where we feel that things foreign or things abroad are better than what we do or what we build within Africa. So we've actually started a lot of movement around buy Nigeria to grow Nigeria, buy Nigeria to grow Nigeria, buy Namibia to grow Namibia, buy Africa to grow Africa. And this has also translated into technology,
38:03
where we're trying to encourage companies within Nigeria to buy our own locally made software as opposed to believing in the softwares that come from the foreign anywhere else, Asia, Europe, or even America.
38:21
And this is just an example of how Nigerias love Italian shoes, right? There's this class that goes with, oh, my shoes are Italian. You don't want to say I have a made in ABA shoes, right? Because ABA is a industrialized city in Nigeria. And so we have actually started this movement
38:40
of buy made in ABA because we're as good as much quality as you would get anywhere else in the world. We've been talking about Python in Africa, but what about Africans in Python? So if there's going to be a new generation
39:01
of African Python programmers or Python community members, what new ideas or applications or insights are we going to see coming out from them? What could we imagine? We just don't know, right? We don't know yet, but we better be prepared for it when it comes, right?
39:22
Because we already as a community understand the importance of diversity, diversity not just in gender, diversity in different domain knowledge. So now imagine bringing the community of African Pythonists as integrated with the rest of the world. Just imagine what that could mean,
39:40
but I have no idea. We don't know yet. But don't be like 19th century art critics and simply miss it when it's staring you in the face. So what's next for Python in Africa? Well, I honestly think Python is special
40:01
and there's a good reason why we about that first conference was a Python conference and not just an open source software conference. It was because of the community of friends, of companies that we knew we could rely on to make it happen. And we've seen how the community internationally has helped start not just a Python in Namibia
40:23
but also a Python community for Namibia. So Python is the way in. It's not actually about Python. You know, it's not for us to say what software Africans should be learning. Africa is going to need to make its own choices, but Python gives us a great way
40:42
into introducing these technologies and skills into Africa. Python, because of its community, because of the strength of the language itself, can lead the way. So the future looks pretty good, but the last part of our talk,
41:00
just a couple of minutes left, is we want to address you as our audience who've been so kind to listen to us now. And we want to frame a question in your mind. Does Python in Africa need your help or does it need your participation and engagement in Africa?
41:26
Africa does not need to be saved or taught, right? We can do a lot of these things ourselves, but we want to be a part of your community. We want to be a part of our community, not just about charity.
41:41
We want you to come. We want you to teach, maybe, and we also want you to learn from us because there's so much knowledge that you can gain just by talking to someone completely different with a completely different experience than you're already used to, or to people around you. So yes, we want your participation. We want you to join us.
42:01
We want to join us. Come to an African Python. It's really an invitation. There they are. You know where to come over the next 12 months. We want you to make new friends in Africa. And keep them. Because when you have an experience like that,
42:22
it's something that will stay with you for your entire life and will be something really meaningful. We don't want you to be a tourist. Be a Pythonista in Africa. If you come and have the experience of finding out from an African schoolboy what his plans are
42:41
for the future in computing for his country, that's an experience you'll never have as a tourist. So what we're offering you is a chance literally to change the world. And to take back in the future. Because the future's right here. There it is. And you'll be amazed what a difference you can make to it.
43:01
And there's the future. And there's the future. And you'll find that you too are transformed by the encounter. Thank you very much. Thank you, Asher.
43:25
Hello. Thank you very much for this very inspiring keynote. You're a Python organizer. I have an immediate question. How can we learn to figure out to set up a conference like this in five minutes?
43:44
Actually, you said everything can happen there on short mode. Like in the last five minutes. And I was just asking probably a rhetorical question. Can we do a workshop for this for you or Python? I mean, I can actually give... Sorry, I think my microphone is making a lot of noise.
44:02
We can give an example of that. In the second PyCon Namibia, we got... I'm not sure he's making that noise. In the second PyCon Namibia, we got a call early in the morning to say that the conference wasn't going to start that day because there were student protests at the university and the venue was shut down.
44:22
Now, fortunate we had a day in hand because we planned a social day at the end of the conference. So we went straight to a hotel and we said, we've got a problem. We've got 120 people coming for a Python conference. We need audio visual services in two different holes
44:41
and we need catering for 120 people and we need it tomorrow. And they said, yeah, we can do that. And if you tried that anywhere in Europe, I'd be saying, it's impossible. So things do happen and can happen in different ways.
45:04
We're happy to take some questions from the audience. Keep them as short as possible so as many people can have questions as possible. Hello, thanks for the amazing talk. It was super inspiring. During the last few days of the conference, I met people from all over the world.
45:21
What would be your advice for them if they want to start a local Python community in their own city or country? I think the best way is to probably reach out to, it's always easier when you have someone
45:41
in ground that can help out. So the best way would be to maybe reach out to a community like ours or any other community in Africa and be like, okay, we want to start another community and let this collaboration with you. As opposed to, sorry, without having anyone interact with you.
46:01
Help put you around because you still need, even with a community, you still need to be able to have that personal touch, that one-on-one contact with someone and honestly, emails are great, but there's nothing still based on personal communication and interaction, so yeah. Or you can just get lucky and find that your colleague is planning this multi-year project.
46:24
Things to happen just by chance. You have to talk to as many people as possible and you will eventually talk to the right person, I think. You'll turn off our headphones. Okay, we'll use this microphone instead, shall we? Yes.
46:40
Yes, okay, we'll do that. We're on the same frequency of just being advised. I'm very sorry for that. So questions, here's the next question and if you have any more questions, please come down here. If you sit there, please take this route and everybody from here just come down for questions because I was at the social event till three o'clock. Okay, so I actually met a person from South Africa
47:04
at last year's Europe Python and he invited me to PyCon Namibia but I kind of chickened out because Johannesburg isn't the safest place in the world to be exact but if I come to Python Namibia, for example,
47:22
can you tell me that it's going to be okay and I don't have to worry about anything, for example? Okay, so Africa is unknown to many people. Ivan, our friend from South Africa, yes, so he's coming to Nigeria, of course.
47:41
He's coming to Nigeria. Namibia is a democracy with a functioning free press, a robust free press, has elections and governments that get voted out by the people and people who lose their jobs in the correct way. It's a really, really safe place to be.
48:01
It's much safer than most of South Africa in terms of personal safety and even places that are less stable than Namibia, they're not wild places.
48:20
It's not like you'll be walking on the road and someone's just going to grab you for the most part and we're aware of this problem and most communities like for PyCon Nigeria will actually put in some extra security measures to make sure, I mean, it's in Lagos, we don't usually have as much occurrences like in the northern part where there's Boko Haram and there's terrorism.
48:41
So yeah, it's not always Kumbaya, but. Yeah, our friend Luke who's been to every PyCon Namibia came this year with his seven-year-old or his six-year-old son. So, you know, we should mention though that most African societies are quite socially conservative,
49:04
aren't they? So unfortunately, for gay or transgender people, Africa might not always be sadly the most welcoming place and it's not for Europeans to start lecturing Africans
49:21
on what standards they should have, but I hope that this encounter that we've been talking about might change some of those attitudes just because people are meeting each other and being friends. So I mean, there are things to be aware of.
49:40
In many places in Africa, homosexual activity is not legal. So one more question from the audience. I might want to skip one of my questions as well. So are PyCons in Africa, then do they have like a similar code of conduct as we do in Europe or is it maybe an issue to set something like this?
50:02
So yes, we do have a code of conduct and we have just like a European having like dedicated people specific for that, you know, don't do anything, just code of conduct because this is very important and very crucial because everyone needs to feel welcome. Yes, we do have in our conferences. And taken extremely seriously as well, yes.
50:24
And we're not shy of putting in the code of conduct that, for example, homophobic behaviour or language is not tolerated. So we can still share the values of our community where we go, we just have to do it in an appropriate way.
50:42
Hi, thank you, it's quite inspiring. You've shown that it's growing really fast. My question to you is what does it mean in numbers? When can we say that let's say one percent of new graduates know Python? I'm not sure I get it. When you say that one percent of new university graduates
51:05
had some experience with Python. Okay, so for example in Nigeria, Python is not being taught or as a standard in universities. What we have now, lecture as actually part of the Python Nigeria community,
51:20
single-handedly championing teaching Python in universities. So for example, people still learn Kobo, Perl, basic, Pascal. Yeah, those kind of languages that make you cringe. And some more modern universities do C, C++ and Java, but we're hoping that with communities like this we can make it a standard, because honestly Python is one of the very friendly,
51:42
beginner-friendly languages to learn. Yeah, people have said this multiple times. People have said that multiple times to us in Namibia, for example. Hi, thank you. Speaking with friends that works in cooperation
52:01
in the African countries, they told me that after they set up institutions for teaching medicine, engineering and so on, one of the problems they have is that they come from many European American countries to teach,
52:24
and when the students have learned, they just leave as possible their country. So in time where they go, after each two or three years, they meet always different people, because, well, that's it.
52:42
Yeah. I think one of the things that we've discovered, Aisha mentioned, she talked about the kind of seriousness in which this is all taken, like the Django Girls events in Nigeria, where they're tackling really serious things. And I showed you some of the pictures from the school children giving lightning talks in Namibia
53:02
towards the end, and every time one of these young people stands up in front of a microphone, they're talking about how can we, what they want to know is, well, how can we bring what we've just learned to other people maybe in rural areas of their country?
53:20
So they are thinking about their own country and about people in their society who actually don't have the same opportunities as them. And we've seen them, for example, the university students going into the schools straight away to share this stuff with the kids. So I think the actual Python community
53:43
keeps people together. If people have got skills, they'll find those skills are at work in their community, keeping people in the country, generating work in the country, and revenue and money and so on in the country. And that's the hope. Yeah, I mean, a personal example is
54:00
I learned about Python when I had the opportunity or the privilege to be here in 2015 at EuroPython. And then I went back home and organized just one event, and that had like a ripple effect, where now we have like 31. So it's like I've learned so much about the community, which is so amazing, so great. I want this back home, and I took it back home.
54:22
So I would say it differs for many people. People have what motivates them. Because when I was like, I need to go and show women in Nigeria that we're not all about fashion and catering, that we can code and we can be good and great engineers too. So it differs. Because people are literally,
54:47
there's nothing wrong with video games and the fun part of programming and computing that many people enjoy. But you'll see that when people get hold
55:01
of this technology in Africa, they want to turn it so like Ronald's, so that a Zimbabwean factory manufacturing soap can work more efficiently. So that market traders can find a better,
55:20
make sure that they sell all their food. They're concerned with real local problems. And that's what's on their minds. And so I think that is what keeps people there. Okay, we're already running way over time. So one last short question, short answer, but I guess you're around today all day,
55:41
and I think you're really happy to ask any questions which comes to our mind, I guess. Rwanda is ready for a PyCon. I don't know how to do that, but it really needs to be done. He said Rwanda is ready for PyCon,
56:01
and it has to be done, and he wants to be the champion of that. Oh, sorry. Rwanda. Oh, Rwanda. Yeah, there are Django companies in Kigali, for example. So thank you so much for listening to us.
56:21
It's meant an awful lot to us to be here. It's a huge honor and means a great deal to us. There's some information there that you should follow up, or you can follow up with Aisha and me. We'd love to talk to you. I have some PyCon. There may be stickers if your laptop has got a blank space on it.
56:42
Thank you, and we'll see you at a PyCon in Africa.
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