Concept 2004
In 2004 I started my first Malawi Project in Blantyre. I initially defined a so-called “Jokerproject” as semestrial project for my studies at the New Media Department of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Zurich one year before my diploma at the very same school. I was asked by a friend, if I wanted to join him for a political engagement in the country of Malawi in Central Africa. So I prepared myself, organized computer hardware to take there for our work. A week after I’ve arrived to Blantyre the project was abruptly ended by the project leader. So I had to decide, if eiter I wanted to go back to Switzerland and end the project, or if I wanted, out of nothing, to define an other project. During 2 weeks of research I talked to many people, that work in the IT industry of the country and learned, that there is an incredible presence of american NGO, that introduce proprietary software to the countries educational institutions. Coincidentially I met people from the University of Malawi The Polytechnic and hered, that the migrated Computers, that were donated by HP and Microsoft to a Redhat Linux, because Microsoft wanted them to pay the Licence fees after 2 years of all the donated Computers. Thats where I came up with my project and got immediately employed at the University in Blantyre, wehre I offered my free duty.
There is an Interview done by Ramon Cahenzli and me can be downloaded (pdf) here or read it on this site.
