Africa

Anyone in Senegal interested in a User Group meeting?

jpoesen — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:31:59 +0000

Anyone in Senegal (preferably Dakar) interested in getting together and discussing Drupal over some food and cold drinks, sometime the next couple of weeks?

Let me know!
Joeri

Africa

www.itbusinessafrica.com and www.rateoga.com

websesame — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:36:13 +0000

These are two new African projects that I am about to sign off . The first is self-descriptive and it is the online edition of a magazine named IT Business in Africa which is meant to be a meeting hub for CEOs, CIOs and all ICT professionals in Africa . The second is a public appraisal website for Nigerian leaders.

Nigeria

Showcase African Sites (GHOP 2007-2008)

yoniwiz@drupal.org — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:46:49 +0000

Hello,

I am a GHOP participant who completed Drupal Issue 75

I have selected two of the top sites and posted them on http://groups.drupal.org/node/6878 and posted the small thumbnails here, as per the GHOP issue.

Other sites I discovered and posted include: Liberdadi, Birdman, Suuch Solutions, Butronix, and FHSST. For links to these sites please see the showcase sites page at http://groups.drupal.org/node/6878.

Below is my report (For your convenience it's also attatched in the following formats: .doc, .odt, and .pdf)

Introduction:

While conducting my research for this project, I discovered numerous Drupal sites based in Africa. I decided to write on a diverse sampling that would be of most interest while still demonstrating a good use of features. The site first excels in use of Drupal’s technical abilities. The second demonstrates a great and unique African use of Drupal, and in doing so, demonstrates a good harnessing of Drupal for community-focused causes.

First Site:

First, http://www.afgri.co.za/ is a South African company that offers a wide array of services including financial services, producer services, and raw products. The first thing that is apparent and the factor that makes it uniquely African is the splash page offers the site in two languages: English or Afrikaans. When the user enters the site the next impression is of a clean, well-organized, well-developed site. The pages are clean, visually pleasing, and do not look “canned” or pre-made but instead very professional. There is a simple navigation bar under the main banner on all pages as well as a great menubar on the left allowing easy site navigation. On the main page, there is a pie chart style design with different colored sections linking to different areas of the site. The URLs throughout the site are concise, clean, and logical. The site is also internalized to make it mesh well with the local language. Another key element of the site is the ability to log in (user authentication). This is crucial since the company is also a financial institution and the log in is through a third party, not Drupal. Logging in gives users access to dynamic content specific to their business with the company. This is done accomplished by integrating roles into the site. This demonstrates that Drupal is extensible and has been used to allow this business to integrate its own systems with the Drupal structure. Other examples of integration of outside applications with Drupal-made content are present throughout the site. They include a fast and somewhat interactive local weather application (http://www.afgri.co.za/english/explore/weather) as well a promotion section with external video seamlessly weaved in with the page –http://www.afgri.co.za/english/explore/promotions/corporate-video. A final example of extensions off Drupal is the Dividends page, which shows changes in share prices updated hourly – http://www.afgri.co.za/english/investor-relations/dividends. In conclusion, the site is very professional and the wide array of features makes it both uniquely African and the perfect example of the potential for Drupal sites.

Second Site:

Second, http://abahlali.org/ is the ideal example of how Drupal can be manipulated to draw attention to a specific cause. “Abahlali baseMjondolos,” meaning “people who live in shacks,” is an organization that fights for the rights of landless people who are forced to live in informal settlements throughout South Africa. They have used Drupal to create a site on a minimal budget and effectively bring international awareness to the injustices they are combating. As Mark Theunissen, the Drupal user who led me to this site, pointed out in his post, “Drupal has been a very important tool for the dissemination of information, without it they wouldn't be able to have such a powerful online presence." This statement captures the essence of why this site is a showcase worthy Drupal site. Drupal as well as all free and open source software in general is important to world communities because it allows them to project their message to a larger audience throughout the world. This site also integrates technology well; it has integrated FeedBurner to create a "Recently at Abahlai..." section. Blocks have been utilized to for layout of sections and custom display of media content. Furthermore, this site uses terms as "tags" to classify post contents. Finally, users also have the option to post their own comments on stories.

Additional Sources:

In the process of completing this task, I consulted a variety of resources. I used two Africa focused groups and posted a request for input in both. See my posts in each group; the South Africa Group request and the Africa group request. I found many Drupal users from African through those groups and by searching for people who provide Drupal services then sorting for ones in Africa. There were three main companies I found that provide Drupal services in Africa. Two of the firms were relatively small: Suuch Solutions, a firm in Ghana that provides Drupal services and Burtonix, a self-trained South African startup site that provides Drupal services (after Winter break their site will be fully refinished and improved). In addition to these two firms, I also came across eConsultant, a firm in South Africa that provides Drupal web development and hosting. eConsultant has done over 300 Drupal sites from “large corporates to UN sponsored nonprofits” to small local business. I also consulted Drupal users via IRC. Overall, people were very open to the project and willing to help.

Note/Discolsure: The site afgri.co.za was developed by a consultant featured in the conculsion of my report, eConsultant.

Research and report assembled, written, and submitted by Yoni Blumberg. December 12 - 16, 2007

Marketing of Drupal

REQUESTING INPUT DRUPAL IN AFRICA

yoniwiz@drupal.org — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:46:55 +0000

Hello All,

PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE OR TWO TO READ THIS

I am a high school student in American participating in the Google Highly Open Participation Contest 2007 (http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/2007-8/) and am working on a task for Drupal. The task is to research how Drupal is used in Africa to demonstrate that Drupal is used worldwide.

I am posting this to you either because you are an Africa group, have an African Drupal site, or have been using Drupal for a while and are knowledgeable (or all of the above).

I figured you would be a great resource to tap into since you live in Africa and would know most about this. If anyone here has sites I would love to see them (also I presume since you are in the Drupal community and live in Africa you might know of other African Drupal sites and if you do please please please post them or email me!) I have already discovered a few on my own and in addition to any others that you have I would really appreciate if you could take just a moment and browse the following Drupal websites based in Africa. If you see anything that you particualrly like please post back or email me with your favorite and what you liked about it. If possible please include what the site does that makes good use of Drupal features.

An example of this would be Liberdadi because it uses Drupal, connects to the community in a creative way that helps the community keep in touch and up to date and is well organized. (information on uses of Drupal features would be great too but I am not familiar enough with the features of drupal to identify them myself)

It would be a HUGE help if you could take a few moments to do this and it would help publicize your sites and get them more publicity/hits too!!!

The sites that I already have are:
+ Liberdadi - The Voice of Cabo Verde's People
+ Filmmaker
+ Suuch Solutions
+ Burtronix - Drupal Programming and Web Development (South Africa)
+ Free High School Science Texts (South Africa)

Summary: Please visit these sites and write me a review of which you like and why. Also it would be amazing if you could say what Drupal features they use well and what makes them uniquely African (if anything). Finally, if you know of other African Drupal sites please link me to them and include the same information as you would if you were doing one of the above sites.

also there is a deadline on this so the sooner you can get back to me the better!!

Many thanks in advance and the more people who do this the better!!!!!!

Africa

Cape Verdean Site built with Drupal

Funana — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:00:40 +0000

Liberdadi.com is an internet project based on the Cape Verdean Island Santiago which is built with Drupal.
We successfully upgraded to Drupal 5.1 yesterday.

Liberdadi.com is multilingual and will be the first cape verdean website with creole interface and content.
We would like to translate everything into portuguese creole and then contribute the .po files to enable other cape verdean projects to set up a site in creole (which is in fact the national language).

Next steps are:
- Translation to creole (ongoing)
- Enhance the site with social network features
- Build a creole wiki

Liberdadi.com is a project of Delta Cultura Cabo Verde and we encourage our computer- and internet students to use Liberdadi.com to publish their stories and blogs. As soon as we generate enough content we will publish a wall newspaper in creole to contribute informations to the people which dont have internet access.

Any feedback and participation is welcome!

Africa

Looking for Ghana-based PHP devs

suuch@drupal.org — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 11:39:16 +0000

We (Suuch Solutions) are always looking for Drupal talent in the Accra area. If you've got some PHP skills and are willing to learn, feel free to drop me an email.

Africa

South African project using Drupal

marknewlyn@drupal.org — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:06:37 +0000

Just a quick note to say that the Free High School Science Texts (http://www.fhsst.org) project is using Drupal - based in South Africa and writing free textbooks. We wrote our own module which I would like to neaten up and give back but time is the issue right now.

Mark

Africa