Africa Chapter Report 2008

= Africa Chapter = You could say that the major event in the life of the nascent Africa Local Chapter was hosting FOSS4G 2008. Although it’s not a formal local chapter (yet) the criteria for reaching that status are closer to being met. Around 250 new local ‘converts’ attended FOSS4G 2008 and while a BoF called at the conference to initiate formal local chapter proceedings was poorly attended we have enough on the OSGeo Africa list and enough local interest to forge ahead with the process. GISSA (the Geoinformation Society of South Africa, who co-hosted FOSS4G 2008)) has agreed to ‘host’ the OSGeo Local Chapter under its umbrella, so we already have the required infrastructure. We’ll continue calling ourselves the Africa chapter as the list has members from all over the continent, until splinter chapters start forming to cover sub-regions. We held a very successful first training event: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/AfricaEvents29November2008 and more are planned around the country. We also plan to organise an OSGeo presence at Africa GIS 2009 (www.africagis2009.org).