Kim Tucker (45) is a soft-spoken South African, with a long pony-tail, and extremely passionate about the potential of Free Software and free knowledge in education. He comes from the Open Source Centre at the Meraka Institute of the African Advanced Institute for Information & Communications Technology in Pretoria

"My job is that of Open Mentor. That's the job title," explains Tucker. "The big entity (where I work) is the (South African) Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research or CSIR, and within the Meraka Institute is the Open Source Centre. That centre was created to accelerate Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) adoption in South Africa, Africa and beyond."

This is where unusual terminology and concepts come in.

The centre has three focus areas. One is called Open Speak, which is about advocacy and informing people about FLOSS. To a point where they can make informed decisions about whether they are ready to adopt it, and how to go about it.

The next focus area is Open Project which is enabling access by facilitating, catalysing and stimulating projects. These projects could be either by NGOs, individuals or governments. The third is Open Mentor, which is concerned with empowering people with the knowledge needed to be successful with Open Source.

"Through these focus areas we try to achieve our mission and vision: empowerment through appropriate FLOSS technologies," says Tucker.

South Africa really seems to be undertaking some impressive projects in the world of FLOSS. When did this all begin?

"Something happened in 2001. Our (national) president was involved, and I think Finland (the home of the Linux kernel) was involved at that time. From that meeting there was some statement made, and a loose policy process started evolving from that," says Tucker.

At that time, the focus was that Open Source and Open Standards were a critical issue for addressing the digital divide in South Africa. That was a focus taken by the National Advisory Council on Innovation. "Then came the second NACI document, and the idea to set up a task-force on FLOSS. The last big action that happened was a workshop around August-October 2005," explains Tucker.

He adds: "We then came out with a declaration on Free/Libre and Open Source Software, FLOSS. See http://wiki.go-opensource.org/taskforce Now, we're putting together working groups to implement this strategy. We also did a survey of what's happening in the world in those areas."

Clearly, their priorities are training, and education and skills. The where the role of the mentor comes in. In facilitating, and inspiring the use of FLOSS. Both in education, and also skills and training for using FLOSS.

In real life, Tucker sees these three focus areas supporting each other. The first informs, advocates, raises the "hype level", and tells people it's great stuff. It encourages people to form the networks. The Open Project side involves getting into projects where FLOSS is involved. "Right at the beg ginning, we try to give FLOSS an equal chance in the project," he says.

Tucker adds: "We do a lot of things. We get involved in the government tender process for an ICT system; we get someone in our team to be in the tender process, and just check that Free Software and Open Source is getting its chance. Essentially, the policy says, if all things are equal, then take the Open Source route."

Tucker argues that his personal view favours a stronger approach. "We should say, go FLOSS. If there isn't an equivalent programme, then we should make one (in the world of FLOSS). And do it with partners in India, Brazil, China and other countries promoting FLOSS."

Interesting, the South African http://go-opensource.org campaign was an attempt to really make people in that part of the planet think in terms of FLOSS." It was really about advocacy and awareness. We produced a TV series. There were 13 episodes explaining different aspects of FLOSS, between 2004-05," he adds.

There are a number of initiatives underway. First, this network is looking at an Open ICDL (international computers driving licence). They've launched a project called Free Knowledge Communities, which believes in generating and storing knowledge that is free to use for any purpose -- see http://communities.libre.org

Explains the site: "Libre implies freedom to access, read, listen to, watch, or otherwise experience the resource; to learn with, copy, perform, adapt and use it for any purpose; and to contribute and share enhancements or derived works."

As Tucker puts it, the whole copyrights, patents approach is threatening progress in Africa.

"We've got people talking about the African Renaissance, and a New Partnership for African Development. Some of us feel that we'd make much more progress if we have free knowledge policies. Where African communities can create their own knowledge resources, they can take other free knowledge resources from anywhere in the world -- such as the Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia), which is free knowledge -- and localise that to local conditions. And create their own knowledge resources and, in turn, share them freely," he adds. "Some of us feel progress and innovation would be much higher if we do that."

These initiatives have got some official support in South Africa. Now, they're looking for "partners across the world" who would "buy into the mission and vision".

Kim is a man of many talents and backgrounds.

He puts it modestly: "I often describe myself as one of the most mixed-up people around. When I left school, I studied psychology and computer science. I grew up in Zimbabwe. then, I became a head of a department of computer science in a school. We taught O and A levels, computer science."

His next move was to a University (of Transkei) in South Africa. He was a lecturer in computer science, and lectured computer students. Tucker was also involved in zoology and botany, and curriculum design. Then, he did a Masters' in conservation biology. Then he got a job with the CSIR as an environmental scientist. Realising his IT skills, he was also involved in that sector. After six years, he decided to make a career in IT anyway. He stayed on in the South African CSIR, but moved to its ICT-oriented business unit, now called the Meraka Institute.

Meraka is a Sotho language term it refers to an open area of land which the communities just share, mainly for commons.

"We intend to contribute to the digital important. The Tragedy of the Commons was a tragedy because of the finiteness of resources (in earlier times). In the digital world, I don't think a tragedy would occur on account of lack of resources," he adds.

"On a personal note", he's a runner and does triathlons.

One of the ideas that South Africa has worked on is the 'education out-of-the-box' concept. Tucker introduces it: "It's a project to produce a set of CDs for use in learning. Both in terms of software and content. Education is less about content and more about the activities that students do."

So, they create our their own content. "If we get the content, we can dump the Wikipedia on a DVD and take it to some rural area where they don't have access (to the Net). And they can enhance that."

There are other tools for education too. Including Moodle -- a course or learning management system, from the Free/Libre and Open Source Software world. Then, there's the Future Learning Environment (FLE3) from Finland.

KEWL, also a knowledge management system whose acronym spells out as Knowledge Environment for Web Learning, is another useful option. "It's much like Moodle but with a lot of nice features," as Tucker puts it.

There are some digital library systems, like Koha, and Greenstone. South Africa has also been looking at EXE, the Elearning XML Editor, a tool that makes it easy for educators to create educational content and store it in standards-compliant formats. "Users don't need to understand anything about XML or standards or anything. They just create their learning designs easily. It's a nice idea," explains Tucker.

South African initiatives have also been spread to other parts of the continent. The next developer road show will be in West Africa, probably around March 2006.

Says Tucker: "Education is of paramount importance in Africa. But we had an interesting discussing, where we realised there's a lot of energy around education in Africa. But there's a critical shortage of teachers. And Education Out Of The Box and Free Knowledge Communities are both aimed at helping people in communities learn. That's independent of the formal systems that might be there. It could help to get everybody teaching everybody. We've got a slogan, 'Enabling individuals and communities to enable theme selves with knowledge'."

That's the dream. And, with determined individual like Tucker around, they're slowly moving towards that distant goal.

Contact ktucker at csir.co.za