At a meeting on Sunday, South Africa's minister of public services, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, accepted an invitation to be a patron of the Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA).

The South African minister of public service and administration on Monday addressed the opening of the Idlelo 3 free software conference in Dakar Senegal, saying software patents posed a considerable threat to the growth of the African software sector.

The KDE e.V. and KDAB are happy to announce continued collaboration on the Free Desktop, with KDAB becoming the latest new Patron of KDE. KDAB is known for its high-quality software services.

In conjunction with Software Freedom Day, the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) has made a call for governments to purchase hardware that will not limit its choice of what software to run.

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) has called on African governments and standards bodies to abstain in the balloting, due to close Saturday, on whether a file format based on Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) should be an international standard.

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) recently elected a new executive which will sit for two years until the Idlelo 5 conference in 2012. Tectonic spoke to the newly elected officials about the successes of the past, new challenges and hopes for the future.

German Development Organization InWEnt is partnering with FOSSFA (The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa" ) on a new training and networking programme called "ict@innovation". Both partners signed an according Letter of Intent at the third African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons – Idlelo 3.

The administration of the Bolzano region in Italy will discuss its IT strategy with advocates of free and open source. The director of the IT department has accepted an invitation by the regional Linux user group (Lugbz) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

FOSSFA and OSIWA, in their Free and Open Source Software for West Africa and Beyond (FOSSWAY) project are set to invest in FOSS research in West Africa.