Hello everyone,

My name is Olawale Fabiyi, born in Nigeria, Studied& Worked in Malaysia & SIngapore for over 8years and i am currently back in Africa, i currently reside in Gambia where i head the Computer Science & Technology Department at the American International University, West Africa, The Gambia. As an Educator, Technopreneur & Strategist with a career of over a decade, my interests lie in TechEd,Entrepreneurship&Startups in Africa and beyond.

I founded Open-Source Academy which is focused on institutes of higher learning with the sole aim of pushing open source implementation and bridging the gap between academia and the technology workforce. I also run an a socialimpact initiative with focus on openness and opensource technologies as a tool to solve issues affecting our society called HackWeakEnd   .

The main aim of running for the board of OSI is to be able to push Open Source implementation and use in Academia as we all know there is low adoption in academia. Alongside in Africa too, though alot use open source software but they do not know the tenets of open source and open sourcing and contributing to projects. There are already programmes running under Open-Source Academy and  HackWeakEnd with a Hackathon that uses open source technologies for implementation and impact is already being felt.

If I am elected as an affiliate board member, my agenda and purpose will be centred around Pushing more adoption of open source both in Academia and in Africa as a whole. The reason for this is not far-fetched. Just as we were once youngsters and now filled up the space of those that came before us, the youngsters coming up will also do the same at some point in time and should not be neglected, they are the leaders of tomorrow. Institutes of higher learning are cradle in which the future of the bedrock of our nations and communities (students) are built. Students need to be exposed to what is required in the workplace after graduation and the way to g,  based on both empirical research and also the Tech ecosystem is exposing them to Open Source technologies.

If we decide to neglect them, they will suffer, institutions will suffer, and our communities will in turn suffer. I have seen that advocacy for Open Source in academia in Africa is little to nothing and with me coming on board I will be able to push this as I being a modern academician and also a techie and hoping TechEd in Africa will grow with adoption of open source technologies and Africa as a whole.

Thank you for your kind consideration and i look forward to serving for the collective good of all.

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