advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Africa has just 4 527 Github coders. Is there an open-source issue?

Where are all the open source developers in Africa? According to Matt Berg and CodeAfrica, African developers only account for a small fraction of developers on open-source development hub, GitHub.

Mr. Berg created a map to depict African coders by country, using statistics available on GitHub. The results are shocking, showing that only 4 527 (or 0.12%) of GitHub’s more than 3.85-million users. The statistics show that of those 4 527, around 34% are based in South Africa, with Egypt coming in at second place, at 16%.  The rest of Africa accounts for the other 60%, with countries sharing between 9.75% and 0.02%.

Muggie van Staden of Obsidian, an open-source software developer, says “There are a lot more OSS devs so Github may not be the best measure as it is not clear what exactly it takes into account.”

His intimate knowledge of the industry is probably a better bet than statistics pulled from GitHub, which is only one of the internet’s open-source repositories. Sites like Google Code and SourceForge can also be used to host open-source software projects, but those haven’t been taken into account in Matt Berg’s map.

“Lots of people use other systems that they may prefer so it is safe to say there are people using other systems and not Github,” says Muggie.

Despite that, though, we know that historically much of the training for software developers in African countries is for proprietary languages and platforms: there’s still a perception that these are the skills that the market demands, and increasingly programs are being funded by the likes of Blackberry and Microsoft as part of their CSR/entrepreneurship programs.

Until we get statistics that show open-source contributions from more than just GitHub, however, it’s safe to say that there are probably more developers using open source in Africa than depicted here. But it’s still a scarily low stat all the same.

(Hat tip to ICT Works)

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement