Seyi Kuforiji – Bridging the Gap: Encouraging African Talent to Open Source #FOSSBack

This talk explores the challenges and opportunities for African talent in open source contributions. The speaker, an experienced backend AI engineer, shares personal experiences navigating the complexities of contributing to major projects like Git and discusses the barriers faced by many in Africa. These challenges include limited access to resources, lack of mentorship, technical knowledge gaps, and structural frictions such as hardware constraints and poor internet connectivity. The speaker emphasizes the importance of building supportive communities and structured onboarding processes to encourage more African developers to engage with open source. Additionally, he highlights the demographic shift in Africa, stressing that as the continent's youth population grows, there is a pressing need to harness this emerging talent for the global tech community.

Morning everyone. My name is Shik for and I'll in this talk we'll be exploring how to bridge the gap and encourage more Africa talent into open source. I hope you enjoy the talk. Um so a little bit about me. Um I currently work as a back end AI engineer. Um but I got involved in open source a couple of years ago. Uh a little over let's say

two years and ever since then open source has been a big part of my life. Um I contributed to the gate project where I completely modernize moderniz unit test unit testing framework. Um yeah I revamped um G testing testing framework um using car. Uh I also contributed to a bioinformatics tool um that helps researchers um study the origination and evolution of proteins. um that's in ma and

I'm also a graphics enthusiast um I I I like exploring graphics on Linux and I also contributed to MA 3D which is um a core backbone of um graphics on on that's a little bit about me so what was my first connection with open source Where did I have problem? >> Um the major one was um navigating g huge code base the g code base if everyone

is familiar with it in this room then you know how huge it is and how difficult it is to understand the various parts that make up git. Um so aside this I also had a problem with understanding workflow right so aside from the fact that you write code in C you um test on the GitHub CI and then you push your changes it's quite different from the

normal process of you know software engineering uploading um making changes on GitHub and then push with git you have to sort of build your patches a mailing list which is which was quite new to me at the time because I had no idea about mailing patches to um an email. So this workflow was quite was quite new to me and it was something I had to get

by. I understand. >> Um, my first patch took nearly a week for me to set I spent so much of my time trying to understand people base and trying to get uh trying to get back. Uh, but I did realize that um I'm I knew how to write. I'd written programs in C, right? I I knew um software engineering fundamentals but the problem was I needed that

guidance and lucky for me I had guidance because I was mentored by Git acting engineering acting engineering manager at the time I think it's currently is the current engineering manager so I had that accent but a lot of Africans are not so lucky right they don't have the access they don't have someone to point them to the right place right resources and what they need to learn

or what they need to focus on. I had that which is fortunate to me. Um so why do African contributors really really face the snack? Where do they get problems uh when they are trying to contribute to huge um open source projects? So the first one I would like to explore is the um technical picture. uh many times uh aside from the fact that you know how

to write code right it takes a lot to contribute to open source project particularly large right so there are major there are many moving part complex contribution workflow that you need to look at resources that you need to explore so many of these things that you need to um take a look at so um second point will be implicit knowledge are not always documented So um the

a particular workflow in Git was when you make a change right you patch it up you send it right you get reviews on the mail list and then you have to send a new version of the patch I didn't on this when I when I made my initial patches I sent those patches it I without showing the difference between the first version of the patch and the

new and second version of the patch just to show the two difference that was that was made on the update. I had to I sent it like a new patch overriding the first patch and then just showing it with the update. Right? So this this this particular knowledge wasn't wasn't really mentioned until I reached out to my mentor and he told me that his his basic workflow

was to tag the previous version and then use a range if between the previous version and the current version just the difference. So but this particular um workflow it's not mentioned anywhere project right you have to sort of uh figure it out right so this is one of the problems and also um many open source projects they have um problems with their onboarding like there's a structured

the structural um difference with on boarding right so there's really easy that plan to take a contributor from the initial stage to a constant contributor Right. Also, there's the psychological friction, right? Um, you know, when you contribute to a large open source project, you're out there, right? Your work is out there, your code is out there, everything you do is out there. And you need to find

a way to sort of, you know, balance that imposter syndrome to think, you know, maybe I'm not good enough. I had I had the thoughts initially contributed to Git because it was so large and I I couldn't navigate so I thought maybe this wasn't for me. Uh so yeah this is something that a lot of African space and this is um another one would be the tone.

Um so for example um there are certain ways communicate uh in Africa there are certain words that we use and sometimes this can might not translate very well to a foreign um you know person right so for example um one um when we when we take medications for example in Africa we usually term it as drugs I'm about to take my drugs. But to a foreigner that

might seem a bit weird like with drugs with set of medications. So these are some of some um tones representation that happens when we're communicating from the community and also um ash feedback right this happens a lot particularly when you are to a very large uh like Linux or the G project. uh when you get reviews on the mail list it can come off as hostile or

you know a bit and then you might feel like oh yeah this is trouble and you know just get discouraged. So this is also another problem point. Um then finally I think um we have the structural um friction. Uh so structural friction come in forms of um hardware constraints. um many African contributors don't have access to high-end equipment um laptops and these sort of things and so

this makes um contribution a bit hard. I remember when I was first contributing, I had a a PC, a core i3 PC, an Intel core i3 PC and my mentor asked me to build a gate project and it was so slow. He got so tired of it and I was wondering if only met my previous PC because I was extremely slow probably tears out watching me watching

me build Git locally. So this is something African political space. Um also again we have very limited oss communities in Africa right um open source is popular but there isn't that much local communities where you can reach out to people who are in the field communicate get mentorship and um you know make it easy for you to contribute and also uh the final one would be connectivity

and stability right so many times African countries is problems with power, problems with internet, some things that you know had hinders them from regularly. Okay. So that then begs the question, why does this matter to abusers? Why does it matter to people sitting in this room? Um so there's a major demographic shift that is happening currently, right? Um and this is documented everywhere. um the Berlin Institute

mentioned that um 60% of Africa's population is under 25. Okay. And by 2024, one in every four will be an African. So that's we have over five continents over six continents and then one in every Africa. One in every four would be an African. So that tells you that there's a major shift happening in in Africa. And also according to United Nations by 2030 42% of the

world's youth will be will be African right so 42% of the of the entire world's youth will be African right so that this tells that there is um a decline sort of a decline a youthful decline in um youthful in population in western countries Asia and the like and what what does this mean right so for example if my mentor in a few years, 20, 30 years

decides to retire, who's going to take over, right? Where there's a major gap, right? And also according to the World Economic Forum, 25% of the global working age by 2050 will be Africa. Africa had approximately 25 working age. So this is this is a major shift and this something that community needs to we need to come together and see how we can tap into this human capital.

So Africa is um is really doing well in terms of um digital adoption right um digital tools um we have the the continent is trying it could do better but yeah uh 700 we have Africa currently has over 700,000 developers across Africa across Nigeria South Africa Kenya Morocco and this region And we have enthused people who want to get into open source. So how do we reduce

the friction? How do we do um first we need to reduce to try and use the steps it takes to get open source right the the basic flow right we need to have a clear map for contributors particularly from Africa okay you come in first issues that you should explore and these are some of the other issues that you should explore you get more experience and you

can go on from there to become a constant contributor and a great maintainer right also you need to beginner issues like we need to create more beginner issues because I see this a lot when you go to when I try to contribute to new resource project there hardly any beginner issues or the very little beginner issues a lot of people are a lot are competing for that

beginner issues and this is something the open committees to um work on to try get more contribution market. Also, we need to have a structured on boarding documentation. You need to have a document that explicitly detailed details how you contribute, right? So those implicit knowledge alo need to be put down. So contributors can they aware and um it makes it easier for them. Also we also need

to create psychological safety for contributors. Right? Right. We need to make we need to ease in uh how we react to um first mistake um problems from with codes. Uh there are sometimes you cook with a code and it looks so basic and you know whoever is reviewing might feel like you could do better but yeah the way we communicate should should improve. Also we need to

encourage beginner questions. Um yeah I mean the hostess committee does very well in this regard particularly if they dedicate a mentor to help so but we need to also be more available and make it easier also we need to create a a mentorship lad which a contributor can come in contribute and grow with that community right um become a maintainer at some Also, we could also try

to lessen structural barriers, right? Um we can explore ways to um provide grants um mentorship, scholarships, sitements to academic contributors to ease in that um hardware sort of difference. Uh we need to find a way to to um to make this happen. Also um we should host conference in Africa. Africa is such a beautiful continent. Uh it has very nice places. Uh there are so many places

we can explore. North Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria. If you go to South Africa, you got South Africa itself, you got Zimbabwe, go to East and West, there's so many nice places to to host. uh and I also feel to allow foreigners or you know the larger community to understand African better because they see the way they um they interact in their community locally. So we would really

you all to have your conferences in Africa. Um I think um is quite important because we see this shift I was that I spoke about in the demographic section. We have very we have a very youthful um population. We have a lot of them interested in in tech interested in open source and we have this university students who just need that guidance. I need someone to I

need a community to help me coach them and build their skill. So this is something we should look at. Um finally inclusion is not charity right because there's going on and if you don't pay attention to it will suffer in the future. So we need to create that sustainability ensure that we have more people we have enough supply of talent into the community for when um the

opportunities of the world catch up in terms of population Africa can take this um this man this in the meantime um my talk is quite quite short I didn't envision it last but yeah um thank you so much Yes. Uh, thank you so much. My name is Sh. Yeah. And want to reach out to me by email or shake on my website. Um, yeah. Thank you so

much. Any questions? >> Thank you. >> Do we have questions from the room? Um I noticed that on the sides of the challenges um one of the challenges was um involved related to connection right what type of issues are related to connection is like less mile connection of the the actual user or like the the contributor or is something more infrastructure to to that to this problem.

Um yes thank you very much for that question. It's basically infrastructural problem in terms of local connectivity to internet. Um well this this problem is localized to you know certain regions than Africa. Uh but um yeah there are ways we could help because many of these in order to get a much higher end connectivity these contributors need to have more um access to a better um Wi-Fi

better internet so sort of like stinking and the like right so they have better internet it is quite expensive for African contributor. So this is uh one of the problems that they face. >> Thank you. Do we have more? Yes, we have more questions. >> So thank you for this nice talk um and the honest words. Um what I mean basically I appreciate your comments about entry

level problems. I mean they are not specifically uh for present for Africans. So that applies to everyone. So it's good to to observe certain rules here of course. Um what I would like to know is um how can we get in touch with Africa? You mentioned uh open source conferences. Are there any already? Are there universities one could contact? Uh are there promoters of or let's say

incubators for open source something like that? >> Um that's very good. Thank you very much. I think the when I got into open source I got into a mentorship program out and I think they're doing a lot to encourage um people from under represented communities to get into open source. So I think this is something local community can encourage right to sponsor programs like RPA that help

bring in more contributors from from Africa and other underrepresented region and also um there isn't really an incubator say right but yeah I do believe we can reach outreach can be made to university students I know they are interested um contributors in in in this university community and campuses that they could be reached out to um sort of build like a community that helps them try source

okay so I just have one question so I'm also like a product of open source um actually uh but I I was just wondering because in my experience for example it's not so easy that people are aware for example of what are the benefits that they could get from being involved in open source projects I guess at this point I'm returning the the the sort of the

problem over to the other side of the camp you know like how do you get the students or the people that could be involved in open source for example to want to be involved in open source you know it's like how do you galvanize them and then uh I mean on the other hand already you propose some solutions that the organization could offer but I in my

case for example I had like the benefit of having like a local person that was already involved in the open source community that could help me for example to make my first steps, right? So, this was very important for me, you know, because a lot of my classmates when I was university also couldn't like break into it because it was so much more challenging, you know, like

what you just presented some some time ago. >> Um, thank you very much. Um, so yeah, that still ties to the previous question having a little incubator sort of like that in Africa. Um I do know for a fact that there's many enthusiastic contributors to open source. I get a lot of messages on Twitter on you know messages on LinkedIn how do I get into open source

are you are you going to host a talk or are you going to have like a Twitter space to sort of tell us about getting into open source. So there there's that community there's that community of enthusiasts trying to get into open source. We just need to reach out to them right and build that incubator that they can access right and have you know access to some

of the brilliant most brilliant software engineers that are in open >> Thank you. Do we have more questions in the room? One more. >> Uh thank you. Maybe a followup to the last question. Uh one important thing is motivation for new contributors. Do you think the motivation for African contributors is different from people in other locations? Like is there something specific? Um well yes I do feel

like contributors I mean we have a lot of internal computers around the world but because of the problems that African computers face right the very little who get into open source would probably have gone um over various to achieve that feat right so it takes a lot of consistency or it takes a lot of effort to sort of break into open source as an African So yeah,

they they do have uh they do put a lot a lot more effort or they put just as much effort as Western counterparts.