The kickoff session

The event kicked off on day one with an Africa Meet & Greet session + Accra city tour. Can you believe every country representative had to come up and introduce themselves.

African countries represented: Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Benin, Togo, Namibia, South Africa and a few more I couldn't get.

Foreign countries represented: Italy, Germany, USA and others

Touring Ghana and connecting

Then we had a full tour of Accra city. We saw the national theatre, beach, Accra market, tower and lots of other interesting places seen. Did I mention that I tasted Banku for the first time. I reserve my comment because I will like to visit Ghana another time. it's a nice place. During the tour we got to network and socialize and I made some amazing new friends: Dustin Haffner, Mei Li (whom I already booked as a speaker in our upcoming event Abia MeetPy), Daniel Roy, Abigail, Aaron, and many others.

The Technical Sessions

Day Two was the conference proper. Talks and workshops. I attended a lot.

• Currying in Python by my new friend, Dustin
• Code Refactoring by Nick
• Django Crash Test by Loek Van. This particular workshop was a true eye opener as it introduced me to the beauty of the Django framework. (I am definitely doing my next project with Django)

Other talks I attended included:

• Bridging the talent gap between tech communities and industry by Kelvin Oyanna (Lead, Python Nigeria)
• Data Visualiation by Rising Odegua
• Accessibility Test by Adeyinka (A deaf software engineer with Britecore)

Meeting the brain behind it all

I met Marlene Mhangami, the chair of Python Africa and a director at Python Software Foundation - the person responsible for bringing together the entire African Python community. And Yes, she is a woman! and young and beautiful and passionate. It was a pleasure to finally meet her and exchange ideas with her. She is simply phenomenal

Marlene Mhangani is a software engineer and community leader based in South Africa. She is best known as the chairperson of PyCon Africa, an annual conference for the Python programming language community in Africa. Marlene has been involved in the tech industry for over a decade and has worked with various organizations, including the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Mozilla Foundation.

One of the things being at the #PyConAfrica in Ghana taught is that everyone has a story. The challenges we face in life are only the stories we will use to inspire someone tomorrow.

The last day concluded what was a nice and inspiring experience. I have never been in one room with lots of people from different countries, cultures, languages, background etc, before. This conference has granted me that opportunity and I am thankful. I look forward to being in PyCon Africa 2020. Goodbye Africa! If you want to see the 1000+ official photos take at the event, Check out this link: Pycon Africa Photos

Photo credit. KoPhi Photography