BarCamp Ghana 09 Recap

Patrick Awuah is the Founder and President of Ashesi University. We at BarCamp are excited to have him as the keynote speaker for the second BarCamp Ghana event on December 21, 2009 at the
Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST).

One of the most popular breakout sessions at BarCamp Diaspora was the healthcare session. Participants at the July 25th event in DC discussed the problems facing Ghana's healthcare delivery and systems, how they differed from what they had seen in the US and how Ghana's could be improved. A lot of the attendees were medical school students or professionals in the health-care industry.

BarCamp Diaspora '09 (Investing our talent where it counts) took place on July 25 at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. The event was a success and drew about 80 participants and had many more following proceedings through Twitter, Ustream and Facebook.

BarCamp Diaspora '09 (Investing our talent where it counts) took place on July 25 at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. The event was a success and drew about 80 participants and had many more following proceedings through Twitter, Ustream and Facebook.

Shara Karasic, who was one of the attendees, interviewed Ashifi Gogo (the keynote speaker), Henry Barnor (one of the organizers) Melanie Dickson, and Freda Obeng-Ampofo (two of the attendees).

Interview with Melanie Dickson, attendee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtVloWzVhRQ

On December 22, 2008, over a hundred young Ghanaians met in Accra for BarCamp Ghana '08 to exchange ideas on entrepreneurship, innovation and development for a rising Ghana. This summer, the conversations move to Washington, DC to bring together the African Diaspora to exchange ideas on doing business in Africa.

Join us at BarCamp Diaspora '09, under the theme "Investing our talent where it counts".

When: July 25, 2009 from 12pm - 6pm
Where: Kenney Auditorium, School of Advanced International Studies - Johns Hopkins
University
1740 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

BarCamp Ghana 08 - Fueling Ghana's Business and Tech Renaissance - came off on December 22nd, 2008 and it was a success. Below are a few links to blog entries from attendees about impressions, thoughts, comments and suggestions about this BarCamp and future ones. We also kept non-attendees informed about proceedings through twitter and we uploaded a lot of pictures on flickr. We are preparing notes, video and presentations from the BarCamp which will be available later. You can also join the mailing list at barcamp-ghana-08@googlegroups.com for more updates.

Twitter - http://twitter.com/barcampghana

BarCamp Ghana photos - http://flickr.com/people/barcampghana/

George Ayittey is a prominent Ghanaian economist, author and president of the Free Africa Foundation in Washington DC. He was one of the speakers at BarCamp Ghana 08 held on December 22nd. The organizers were excited to have him come talk about the 'cheetah generation' amongst other things.

He is a professor at American University and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He has championed the argument that "Africa is poor because she is not free", that the primary cause of African poverty is less a result of the oppression and mismanagement by colonial powers, but rather a result of modern oppressive native autocrats. He also goes beyond criticism to advocate for specific ways to address the abuses of the past and present; specifically he calls for democratic government, debt reexamination, modernized infrastructure, free market economics, and free trade to promote development.

Estelle Akofio-Sowah is presently the CEO of Busy Internet in Ghana and we at BarCamp are excited to have her as a keynote speaker for the first BarCamp Ghana event in December, 2008.

Estelle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to a Ghanaian father and Scottish mother and was six months old when she was brought to Ghana. Her parents met in Edinburgh, where her dad was studying. She attended the Ghana International School. She proceeded to University in Brighton, Sussex University, where she pursued a Bachelors Degree in Economics and Development in the United Kingdom. After graduation, she returned to Ghana and landed a job with ProNet, a community based service delivery civil society organisation. She later worked with La Palm Royal Beach Hotel before settling down with SIMNET, a South African ICT company working in Partnership with the Department of National Lotteries.

Herman Chinery-Hesse will be a keynote speaker at BarCamp Ghana 08. As one of the most prominent leaders of the technology sector in Ghana and Africa as a whole, and a TED Global Fellow, we are pleased to have him.

Herman Chinery-Hesse is the CEO of Soft Tribe Ghana Limited and the BBC has described Herman as Africa's "Bill Gates". He was born in Dublin, and went to college in the United States.

Herman is a manufacturing engineer by education but a software engineer by profession having graduated in industrial technology from Texas University, San Marcos. He holds a number of directorships and is an Assessor of the Commercial Court, Ghana. He has also won a number of personal awards including being the only African recipient of the "Distinguished Alumnus Award" from the Texas State Alumni Association and Texas State University-San Marcos, USA.