Mark Surman, expert on collaboration, community building and social technology talks to us about how the Shuttleworth Foundation is kick starting South Africa's knowledge economy by using the principles that have made open source so successful.

I would like to thank all the people that commented on my previous post titled "Another Social Network for Development Cooperation?". For me, the contributions confirmed the need for (and non-existence of) the open social platform for development cooperation organisations that I am proposing.

I will need two blog post to explain why and respond to all the comments and questions that I received:

CIDIN has done a study about private initiatives in development in Ghana and Malawi. Their conclusions are not all that positive about the effectiveness of these much applauded initiatives. See my (Dutch) summary here http://www.rijneveld.eu/2007/11/do-it-yourself-ontwikkelingswerk-onder.h... incl. link to the English report.