The first DjangoCon Africa, State University of Zanzibar (SUZA), Zanzibar • 6–11 November 2023. An orientation day, three days of talks and two days of workshops and sprints.
Keynote
Keynote Speaker • USA
Practices and patterns in problem-solving, and how they apply across the globe.
Speaker
Speaker • Italy
Drew parallels between music and software in one of the standout talks of the week.
Speaker
Speaker • Zimbabwe
Spoke on the place of minorities in tech communities.
Speaker
Speaker • South Africa
Reflected on Django’s impact on the communities that use it.
Hosted at the State University of Zanzibar, with an orientation day, three days of talks and two days of workshops and sprints.
Around 200 people from at least 22 countries came to Zanzibar for the first DjangoCon on the continent.
103 of the attendees were women, and 10 of the speakers were women.
130 students attended, 75 of them women, many supported with travel and hostel accommodation.
Air tickets for 27 African travellers, mainland travel for 36 people and hostel beds for 67.
Talks covered programming, society, careers, education, disability and agriculture: Django ORM lookups (Mariusz Felisiak), queryset optimisation (Atieno Ouma), Django caching (Mariam Muhammed), developer experience (Mark Smith), debugging practice (Vuyisile Ndlovu), disability inclusion in open source (Brayan Kai Mwanyumba), open source careers (Omotola Omotayo, Ruth Ikegah), geospatial visualisation (Samweli Twesa Mwakisambwe) and digital agriculture (Lidya Tilahun). About two-thirds of the audience stayed on for the workshops and sprints.
