About

The iSummit '08 team, Sapporo, Japan

‘Empowering communities through technology’

The African Commons Project is a registerd South African non-profit  organisation based in Johannesburg,  with the goal of mobilising communities through active participation in collaborative technology.

Until recently, The African Commons Project has been the host organisation for iCommons, a UK charity that has run three major international iSummits around sharing and collaboration in Rio de Janeiro, Dubrovnik and Sapporo.

Goals

Our aim is to turn communities into active participants in the digital economy and to defend, protect, support and encourage the freedom of South African societies to create, build upon and share knowledge. We aim to promote the highest levels of open access to intellectual products for organisations and individuals – especially those with a public mandate.

Core work areas

1. Events that put a spotlight on the work of  like-minded organisations that are building the internet into a resource for human creativity and development.
2. Research that investigates the potential for networked technologies to rapidly change business models, and illuminate opportunities for wide-scale non-commercial production for the global common good.
3. Projects that experiment with new ways of producing and distributing knowledge and creativity in a networked age.