Retrospect: Pycon Ghana 22 Experience, Ghana leading Africa in Tech

After two years apart, it was exciting to reconnect in person with fellow Pythonistas in PyconGhana 2022

First and foremost, a big shoutout to everyone and their families and friends as we all continue to navigate the challenges of COVID-19, as Ghana is one of the world's victors against the pandemic.

Happened at the Kofi Annan ICT Center, Ridge, Accra; Pythonistas and non-techies, and experts in the upper echelon in the tech industry; assembled at the venue, discussing OpenSource, Blockchain, Python 101; as some experienced and new coders participated in various technical track and workshops on the pre-conference day.

Developer Advocate at Anaconda, Cheuk Ting Ho presented on how the Python language is used in programming in aspects of IoT. The presentation was centered on the #pewpew game and how it works. Participants of this workshop had access to the #pewpew documentations and the device used in playing the game and participants got to keep the devices to further experiment and tinker with. She also conducted a Humble Data workshop on Data Science for beginners.

PyconGhana 22 started on the 13th, through to the 15th of October, 2022. This three-day was packed with 'deep mind thoughts' , writing codes, networking and also a new dawn on Ghana's Tech industry.

Research Program Manager at Google, Abdoulaye Diack who gave the closing Keynote of Friday posted on Linkedin sharing his experience "I Had a great time at #pyconghana2022. I talked about my experience with open source with my early days of Linux and its impact on my career. I also shared my thoughts on the emergence open source AI and the latest on AI for Code research. It was great to meet AI/IoT startups based in Ghana and members of the Python community. I ended my speech with a fun interactive demo of generative AI using the Stable Diffusion and Craiyon models."

On an eye account, I felt the humble man, Abdoulaye, after giving his keynote speech, he didn't rush and leave; however, he waited in the hallways and made himself available for everyone to network and share insights on conversation AI and opportunities.

For the Junior track during the conference, students were introduced to a programmable hardware called - Micro:bit. The Micro Bit was designed to encourage children to get actively involved in writing software for computers and building new things, rather than being consumers of media. It was designed to work alongside other systems, such as the Raspberry Pi, building on BBC's legacy with the BBC Micro for computing in education; MicroBits works well with the Mu-Editor.

Principal Engineer at Anaconda, Nicholas Tollevery, led this for first-timers (students), on how to use Microbits to build interesting projects such as shaking the device and it displays an angry face; Playing Music and lighting on the LED of the microbits with a few python codes and lots more cool projects.

Professor Nii Quaynor, is the Chairman of Ghana Dot Com; a descendant company of Network Computer systems (NCS); a company established since 1988, Network Computer Systems has been a leader in West Africa and the pioneer of internet service in the sub-region. Prof Nii Narku Keynote was on "Internet and Identifiers of Blockchain". This session highlighted how the regulatory policies affect the operation of blockchain systems in the country, Ghana, and what we would do to solve it. He highlighted the Payment and Gateway Services - The first product of GDC in 2007 was a payment processor called eShika building on previous efforts of NCS. It was also the first local payment processor. Since then many new services have evolved to serve the payment needs of merchant online websites. The concept has been further extended to add gateways to other services.

PyCon 22 was crowned with other interesting speakers in various group sections, Discussing Pyclick with Afi Abigail, Supabase.py with Joel Lee, Building your software career to the Top with Prince Dorcis-Akpaglo and so much amazing speakers.

Catch up all the amazing moments at community open album photos. PyCon Ghana Photos. Can't wait for the official release.