The Power of Mass collaboration — COMBAT COVID-19 African platform — Offers Free Cloud Resources
Since November of 2019, when the first case of the COVID-19 virus infection was recorded in the City of Wuhan in China, the virus has continued to spread rapidly across the world. Fast-forwarding to today, there have been 1 536 979 confirmed cases, with more than 95718 deaths and no continent has been able to escape this virus. The impact of the Coronavirus spread on the African Economy is already seen with the weakening of many African currencies, such as the rand reaching it’s recorded low of R19.35 to the dollar. Other than that, we are seeing many families unable to support themselves with imposed coronavirus lockdown where the poor are hit the hardest.
Within a couple of months, we’ve seen many platforms, smart internet applications, and solutions that have been developed to help combat the spread of the virus; however, this has been done in isolation across many countries. In an age when more than a billion people connect over a network, the distance between the people, machines is no longer a barrier to how people can work effectively. As a result, complex solutions and innovative products can be designed, built and assembled from different parts of the world.
We are seeing a lot of repetition of solutions with no or limited collaboration across borders. With connectivity giving rise to new models of collaboration and online networks, there is certainly a need for a collaborative platform that will change the way people work together. In order to fight the spread of the coronavirus, and to manage effective collaboration, Africans need to work on a common interest, sharing of information, and skills across borders. Collaboration is very important at this stage, both stakeholders at large, people who are able to write programs or implement internet solutions to manage the chaotic environment that we are now facing due to the COVID-19 virus.
Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often standardized parts or independent units that can be used to construct a more complex structure. COMBAT COVID-19 is a collaborative content management platform being developed for health practitioners, service providers, data donors, software engineers and any other individual who would like to fight against the spread of COVID-19 virus across the African Continent. The platform, which is planned to be launched on the 20th of April 2020, offers free cloud resources and tools and encourage API driven development. Projects will take place over the internet and where necessary, it will require the assistance of the community as well as the country’s authorities, NGO and people in the health sector. Through the help of the different stakeholders, we hope to create an African platform that will unlock the creativity, innovation, and knowledge sharing of individuals and groups across the African continent.
Nevertheless, such a platform can only be effective with more participants. The more people work on the platform or projects, the faster issues are addressed and solutions are deployed. The COMBAT COVID-19 platform requests the participation of the community to register as either digital volunteers, data donors, and stakeholders. www.combatcovid-19.africa
We as The COMBAT COVID-19 community, are putting an initiative together to encourage and promote collaborative actions rather than individuals. I myself I’m a digital volunteer and together we can fight the spread of COVID-19 across the African continent.
