Africa Open Science and Hardware (Africa OSH) Summit is a grassroots effort to bring together researchers, technologists, hacker hobbyists, educators, government officials, and start-up innovators around the world.
Our goal is to create a conversation and set of actions on OSH, among African actors, and between them and the international community, in order to adopt OSH principles and practices appropriate to our context. This alternative path to education, research, scholarly communication and manufacturing is crucial given the barriers imposed by closed knowledge systems and the traditional Intellectual Property (IP) regime.
Ultimately OSH aims to achieve an ecosystem for innovation that is locally adapted, culturally relevant, technologically feasible, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable
The AfricaOSH plan to host about 100 participants from across Africa and the rest of the world for three days in Kumasi, Ghana.
Running from 13th - 15th April, 2018, Africa OSH Summit will include:
- Presentations and working group discussions on challenges, opportunities and recommendations to contextualize a Global Open Science and Hardware Roadmap for Africa by 2025; and to make African academic research more visible and accessible
- Workshops on making, hacking and DIYBio for a wide range of stakeholders to experience the process of design, co-creation, problem solving and to contribute ideas to OSH development
- Unconference sessions by networks, startups, and innovators from Africa and the Global South
By partaking in OSH Africa, you will be at the forefront of promoting sustainable change in Africa, by enabling Africans to solve our own problems. This has tremendous implications for the future outlook of the continent.