For your information, am sure, most of us, would be interested. 


Take note of the Closing date.


Kind Regards,


IDLELO 5, the fifth biennial meeting of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) will be held on March 19-23, 2012, in Abuja, Nigeria. The 2012 Idlelo Program Committee thus invites proposals for papers and presentation of on the use of Free and open Source Software (FOSS), and Information and Communication Technologies(ICT) in general, to help attain the MDGs. Members of FOSSFA may submit more than one paper or presentation proposal.

Sessions usually consist of three thirty-minute presentations, and proposals should be geared to that length. A different format for some sessions may be chosen by the Programmme Committee after the proposals have been reviewed. Session organizers may wish to propose different formats for their sessions, subject to Programmme Committee approval.

Themes:  The theme of Idlelo 5 is: “Open Source Solutions for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.” Under this rubric, IDLELO 5 will bring IT and FOSS experts from all over the African continent and the world to discuss the use of FOSS and ICTs to help the attainment of the MDGs in the following areas.
 
  1. Governance (e-government, advocacy, etc)
  2. Poverty Alleviation (business, innovation, job creation, mobile technology)
  3. Education (open educational resources, open learning, virtual learning, online universities)
  4. Health
 
The Programme Committee seeks innovative proposals and sessions and hope to see cross-disciplinary participation wherever possible. For both the commissioned and the open sessions, we are looking for the broadest possible range of proposals of topics within and across all the disciplines.
 
Selection procedure: Papers and Presentations will be evaluated for promise of quality and significance of topic. Session organizers make an initial selection of papers and submit a plan to the Programme Committee, which makes final decisions by 24th February 2012. Notification of acceptance or rejection will take place shortly thereafter.
 
The proposal must have two parts: (1) a cover sheet containing the proposer’s name, professional status, postal address, home and office telephone numbers, fax number (if available), e-mail address, and paper title; (2) a second sheet containing the proposer’s name, session for which the paper should be considered, paper title, 250-word abstract, and audio-visual equipment requirements. If the proposer will be at a different address when decisions are announced in March, that address should be included.
 

Submissions: Proposals should be submitted to the Programme Committee  idlelo5@fossfa.net

TOPICS

The Programme Committee solicits papers for the sessions listed below. For information about a specific session, contact the session organizer.

  1. Government Roundtable

  2. Poverty Alleviation

  3. Education

  4. Health

Other topics: The Programme Committee welcomes submissions on other topics and will organize additional sessions to accommodate the best submissions.

Session proposals: The Programme Committee will consider proposals for entire sessions if their subject matter does not conflict with that of other sessions. Please consult with the Programme Committee chair before preparing a proposal. Session proposals require the same information as individual paper proposals; abstracts for the papers in the proposed session will be evaluated by the Program Committee.

Audio-visual equipment: Requests for audio-visual equipment must be made with the proposal.

Student Prizes: Special awards will be given to some students for papers judged meritorious by the program committee. To be eligible for an award students must, of course, be members of the FOSSFA and, once their proposed papers have been accepted for inclusion in the program, must submit complete papers to the Programme Committee by 24th February, 2012.

The deadline for submission of proposals is 20th February, 2012. Please do not send proposals to session organizers