I wrote a blog post a while back about location based profiling on the web. Many websites do it, particularly television and movie sites and financially sensitive websites. The reasoning I can often gather from looking at the terms of service and other language is that these sites are simply trying to ‘protect’ their users who happen to usually be primarily North American or European. They can’t rely on foreign authorities to police the hackers, phishers, and scammers coming from those countries, and since it’s not cost effective to do anything else, they blindly classify anyone who happens to born in the wrong place as not being able to use the their services AT ALL.

But today, I think I died a little inside. As a champion of open source as a way for people to stop depending on aid, and to improve their own education and resources to empower themselves as digital citizens, I was more than surprised to read that SourceForge (one of the leading hubs of open source activity) has begun denying access to ANY IP addresses identified as originating from the countries of Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. If you don’t immediately get the ramifications of this just type the query “open source” into Google and what’s the first site that comes up? SourceForge.

SourceForge is quick to explain they do not support this decision but they were essentially forced to as a company based out of the United States:

Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited certain persons from receiving services pursuant to U.S. laws, including, without limitations, the Denied Persons List and the Entity List, and other lists issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. The specific list of sanctions that affect our users concern the transfer and export of certain technology to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list. This means users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, may not post content to, or access content available through, SourceForge.net. Last week, SourceForge.net began automatic blocking of certain IP addresses to enforce those conditions of use.

Still, this is a truly disheartening blow to the open source community as a whole. It attempts to say that we are not truly ‘one’ software community, and that we as human beings are nothing more than the sum of the parts of the people who claim to represent us. Furthermore, this action seems to imply that any software hosted on U.S. soil is therefore on U.S ‘property’ and thus subject to U.S. jurisdiction. That stands against the very idea of the internet and the world wide web. Hell, it’s hypocritical of everything the current U.S. administration has said about internet freedom and digital rights and about providing access to information to all. Furthermore, how will this affect all the social and aid organizations attempting to combat illiteracy, poor education, and the ideals of terrorism from the ground in these countries? How can we ever expect change by limiting people’s options instead of expanding them?

I realize that there are national security measures that must be taken against the people in certain countries who wish to do other countries harm. But is the neighbor of a terrorist simply guilty by association? I truly hope that’s not the global digital future we’re headed for.

More on this…

• http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of-site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=5698
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/26/sourceforge_ip_address_filtering/
• http://www.techeye.net/software/1683

This is article is syndicated from Appfrica.org. Appfrica.org facilitates, mentors and incubates entrepreneurs in software in East Africa and Uganda. Their goal is to offer a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that will allow students and recent graduates a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals outside of school. For more great articles from Appfrica please visit Appfrica.net.

Close your eyes and imagine a city built for technology. It is a city that will help spur economic development for an entire region, and serves as a exemplar for tourism, manufacturing, IT, and financial service companies. There’s ample mass transit, fiber optic speeds for data, partnerships with academic institutions and real estate developers, and is located near other large cities and airports. Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, doesn’t it? Well by 2030, this will be a reality in Africa.

This is Malili.

Malili is a proposed 5,000 acre “technopolis” located 60km near Nairobi, Kenya. The city will create a regional brand for telecommunications, as well as grow the country’s IT contribution to their GDP. Malili will include a convention center, hotels, shopping facilities, academic institutions, health facilities, and more, according to Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary in The Ministry for Information and Communications. Since his appointment, Ndemo has been concerned with the spirit of entrepreneurship in the region. Malili will follow similar “smart villages” created in Malaysia (Putrajaya) and China (Shenzhen). Smart Village Cairo, another comparison model, has 120 companies and 20,000 local and expatriate technology professionals in their city, and expects to expand more by 2011.

According to WhiteAfrican.com, Malili is a large government project that also has private sector participation – a combination which has not had the best track record for completed projects. This is an extremely ambitions move on the Kenyan government’s part. Time will tell whether or not this will fully come to fruition, but this is a great project for the country and the continent.

Long limited to English and Japanese, Twitter is crowd-sourcing translations for its interface. Starting with German, French, Spanish, and Italian, Twitter is going multi-lingual. The Twitter blog says:

Twitter is currently available only in English and Japanese. With some help, we will soon be rolling out support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish. These languages are commonly referred to using the acronym FIGS and are often the starting point for services like Twitter when its time for more language support. Later, we hope to offer Twitter in several other languages. No matter how sophisticated technology gets, we’re reminded daily that it’s about people and that’s something we’ve taken to heart regarding translating Twitter.

This is a huge deal for non-native English speakers. One of the hurdles to introducing Twitter in non-anglophone Africa is that, while there are busily tweeting francophones, the interface is in English. As Miquel has noted, even adding French will open up the service to a huge number of users in sub-Saharan Africa. While testing the service last week, he also noted that options to translate Swahili and Afrikaans are also available, which means that Twitter is already thinking globally.

As Twitter’s valuation continues to climb into the stratosphere, Twitter has to start thinking of ways to expand its audience in order to compete with sites like hi5 and Facebook, who have both made significant inroads into the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This should increase Twitter’s appeal. Allowing users to interact with the site in their own language opens the service up to a lot of content makers, and encourages the creation of local content.

A new Gartner study says that one household in five will have broadband access by the end of 2009.

A total of 422 million households will have a fixed broadband connection in the home in 2009, up from 382 million households in 2008, and the market will steadily grow with nearly 580 million households having a fixed broadband connection by 2013.

Despite the recession, broadband subscriptions are growing throughout the world. Gartner cites several reasons, including lower connectivity and hardware costs, and country-specific stimulus packages.

South Korea has the highest broadband penetration, at 86% of households, followed by the Netherlands, Denmark, Hong Kong, and Canada. Mature markets can expect slower growth in the future, while emerging economies, will account for the vast majority of new connections.

Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will account for 92 million (68 percent) of the increased 135 million household broadband connections in the emerging markets, meaning that BRIC accounts for almost half (47 percent) of the total global increase in connections. China takes first place in contributing the greatest number (62 million, or 46 percent) of the 135 million new broadband connections in emerging markets.

Gartner expects the digital divide to continue at least through the next decade. Households in emerging economies far outnumber those in mature economies, which means that even with explosive growth, the developing world won’t catch up.

About the Appfrica.net author: Theresa Carpenter Sondjo is an entrepreneur and web developer. She lives in Cotonou, where she and her partner run People Online. Their mission is simple: la mise en ligne du Bénin. Follow her on Twitter at @theresac.

One of our readers, Joy Elliott, kindly passed on a link to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences’ NextEinstein initiative. Here is a brief overview of NextEinstein:

NextEinstein is a program that provides the opportunity for Africans to develop as independent, creative problem solvers and teachers. Grants and scholarships allow students throughout Africa to attend the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and be part of building a better continent.

Please watch AIMS students discuss their passion and appreciation for mathematical sciences. (More videos can be found here on YouTube.com)

(Thank you, Joy!)

TMS (Teddy) Ruge who was introduced to BlackWeb20.com by Jon Gosier tweeted out the link to the following information:

Zebrajobs.com and the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) are launching the first Africa-wide Virtual Job Fair on September 30th 2009, which will run for three consecutive months (Oct 1- Dec 31, 2009) on-demand. The Africa Virtual Job Fair (AVJF) is a dynamic opportunity for employers in the public and private sectors, organizations, and other hiring entities as well as job seekers ranging in experience from seasoned professionals to graduating students to use Internet-based recruitment and career advisory services for their employment needs. Attendees enjoy browsing employment opportunities, submitting resumes, event networking and even conducting an interview – all at no cost and in the comfort of their own home or office.

The Virtual Job Fair will offer many of the same benefits to employers and job-seekers as a physical job fair. Navigating around the virtual event is simple. Employers and job-seekers can access all areas of the Virtual Job Fair from any computer screen. The Virtual Job Fair will have multiple floors hosting a variety of employment opportunities and organizations. This state-of-the-art web-based tool makes it easy for job seekers and employers to connect virtually from all over the world.

Tom Rielly, partnership director of TED (Technology, Education, Design) Conferences introduced BlackWeb20.com to this amazing young man, William Kamkwamba. William is barely 20 years old, a former school dropout from a small village in Malawi, Africa, and proof positive that technology knows few boundaries. Watch this video about William and note that his next endeavor has a little, ahem, something to do with Internet access.

Popular American Gospel artist Kirk Franklin tweeted as he was caught up in riots in Kampala, Uganda yesterday afternoon.

The penman of the songs “Stomp” and “Do You Want a Revolution” was returning from a visit with Uganda’s Vice President.

KIRK FRANKLIN, an American gospel singer and author, was yesterday caught up in the Kampala city riot on his way from the Vice-President, Gilbert Bukenya’s home in Kakiri, Wakiso district.

The riot, which started at around mid-day with civilians battling security operatives, arose from rumours that Buganda Kingdom premier Eng. John Baptist Walusimbi had been arrested on his way to Kayunga.

Franklin had just paid Bukenya a courtesy call, ahead of his show at Nakivubo Stadium today. His team from the US has about 100 people.

Witnesses said by the time Franklin got to Nansana, a city suburb, the road to Kampala had been cut off with logs and the rioters were pelting motorists with stones.

With him were an American pastor, John Petton, and several other Ugandan pastors.

The fleet was forced to seek refuge at Nansana Police Station. By press time, the group was still at the station under tight security.

Franklin was able to put up a video blog via YouTube last night some time after the Riot where he outlined the events leading up to the riot as well as his thoughts:

You can view Appfrica’s Coverage of the Riot straight from Uganda here.

Source

PBS Frontlines World: Stories from a Small Planet featured this story on the digital dumping grounds of Accra, Ghana a couple of months ago.

The New Times Blog Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything (African Entrepreneurs) featured a story written by Dwyer Gunn about Appfrica Labs founder, Jon Gosier. Jon is a venture capitalist who runs the technology incubator in Kampala, Uganda.

According to the article, Jon took a non-traditional route to both technology and Uganda. He was working for media mogul Tyler Perry when he decided to explore technology’s impact on the music industry (think early Napster), while at the same time his girlfriend was offered a job in Uganda. He followed her and the rest is history.

This has been a stellar year for Jon, who is a contributor to and partner with BlackWeb20.com. This past summer he had the opportunity to participate as a fellow and speaker at the prestigious TEDGlobal2009 (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in Oxford, England.