A common thread linking youth initiatives is technology – it’s the platform fostering entrepreneurs’ relentless drive to innovate and build new businesses. Delalorm Sesi Semabia, a blogger and designer in Ghana (see http://afrilingual.wordpress.com/ and http://inghana.wordpress.com), reports on “Barcamps” that are providing a platform for youth to connect and driving a plethora of unique, innovative ideas to create jobs and opportunity. Follow Delalorm on Twitter: @Delalorm. Barcamp on Facebook for photos of the recent event: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.312257178795970.73254.138612209493802&type=3

A Barcamp is an ideas-sharing, brainstorming and networking event. The Projects Chair, Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco on Twitter), encapsulated the significance: “Barcamps want to create networks where it is no more who you know or who knows you, but rather who knows you for what you know.”

Since the first event was organised in 2008, there have been 10 Barcamps to date, taking the team of hardworking enablers to Cape Coast, Takoradi, Kumasi, Ho, Tamale and Accra. In all these regional capitals, they have engaged bloggers, technology enthusiasts, fashion moguls, authors, motivational speakers, bankers, artists, craftsmen, students, media people, teachers and a diverse array of young people who want to see and be a part of the positive transformation silently happening in Ghana’s entrepreneurial world.

Barcamp Ghana was held in December at the Kofi Annan ICT Centre under the theme “Establishing Partnerships to Transform Dreams into Action-Based Projects: Lessons from Mentors.” It brought together award-winners in the creative, financial, media and other industries to share ideas with young aspirants. Conspicuously following the tradition of earlier Barcamps, politicians were left out.

Innovatively, this Barcamp enabled a speed-mentoring session where campers had brief one-on-one sessions with mentors such as Bernard Avle (Programs Manager at Citi FM), Albert Ocran (motivational speaker and publisher), Lionel Dosoo (former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana), Leila Djansi (award-winning producer and director of movies like ‘I Sing of a Well’ and ‘Ties that Bind’), Kofi Akpabli (twice CNN African Journalist of the year for Arts and Culture), Nana Awere Damoah (engineer and author), Sefakor Gbewonyo (Director of the international brand, Sepha Clothing), among others. The aim was to transfer know-how to starters in the fields where these people have established themselves.

At every Barcamp, there are break-out sessions where participants suggest discussion topics which are aggregated into similar themes for deliberation. It is at these sessions that ideas are thrown up, dissected in the revolving mill of scrutiny and thrown back at discussants. When breakouts are usually over, there will be more than just a few people who have learned a new way of doing one thing, a better way of doing another, or received the inspiration to start something unique.

At Barcamp Ghana, some of the sessions included "How to raise capital for your start-up," "The Creative Industry," and, "Using technology to map Ghana’s 2012 election."

Increasingly, campers have seen themselves as providers of the alternatives to what that the political, economic and social systems have already established. If the education system will not teach them how to raise capital, they will learn it from others; if industry will not absorb trained graduates, they will start innovations that industry will find necessary to adopt for their own growth; if no one will invite them to it, they will set up their own monitoring systems for the coming elections.

The randomness of Barcamp conversations is much like that of the internet. And it is not strange that these young men and women understand the roles they have given themselves to play. Characteristically, over 70% of participants come armed with technological devices of all forms, ready to tweet the conversations they engage in.

If anyone wants to see the reality behind the statistics that Africa’s mobile penetration is rapidly increasing even beyond that of the more developed world, Barcamp is a good showcase. Laptops and smart phones gleam under the lights while endless cables litter the floors from one power source in one corner to the next. The tweets are necessary because whenever there is a Barcamp event, the interest is not limited only to those sitting in the camp halls, but there is a broader engagement with all the other cities where the camps have been, with people who could not make it for this one. The Barcamp website has a dedicated page where it streams all the tweets form the events, marked by dedicated hash tags.

When the day drew to a close and Donald Diaba, Media and Speakers Coordinator as well as the founder of iROKKO concepts, rose to say the closing prayer, it was in the spirit of the unhooked nature of the day that he said his prayer in pidgin English. To summarise, “We are Barcampers, we are change makers and we are different! Get used to it.”

Photos courtesy of Barcamp Ghana.

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