A while ago I joined a Tanzanian mailing list called eThinkTank Tanzania, which sports 1200 subscribers. It’s my source of cool East African IT news. I’ll try to republish good stuff here, and in my Delicious bookmarks feed. Some stories need some background, so I’ll try to frame them here, on the blog.

Recently, at Hacknight, Sebastian Büttrich held a talk about Tanzania and its possibility of getting Internet access everywhere. Lots of work is being done, and things happen – like the undersea cables – but Open Source hackers are needed. “Billing software, not very sexy to Open Source hackers, is needed.” Perhaps it is possible to create it, but will we be able to make it fun? Under which circumstances is it fun to build billing systems?

Full disclosure: as a kid of 11-13 years old, I lived in Tanzania, at a Swedish boarding school for children of missionaries. My parents ran a printing press for Pingstmissionens U-landshjälp, in the northern town of Arusha. Yes, that’s something like “Swedish Pentecostal Church Mission to Developing Countries… Aid” – er, my lingo-engine’s rusty in this summer heat.

Update: Via bjathr, I found DIY Mesh Guide from the Wireless Africa wiki.