ICT for development

• do you have a sense of adventure?
  
  
• tired of your current job?
  
  
• looking to do something more interesting?
  
  
• interested to help africa move forward through building skills?
  
  
• then think about coming to ghana and training a small software team in the best practices of software development...

What we do:
BusyLab is a small software company engaged in building innovative products for the african market. We are currently supporting and extending africa's largest market information service (www.tradenet.biz) which delivers commodity prices via web and SMS in 17 countries and will soon enable mobile commerce. We are also building a C++ application that manages cybercafes and acts as a service delivery channel for bill payment, money transfer, advertising, distance education and more...

What we need:
WE are looking for an experienced software developer who is interested in trying something different and who is willing to come and share their knowledge about the processes and best practices of software development. We have a young team of extremely intelligent and enthusiastic developers who need the benefits of an experienced developer to share insights on the following:

• code management
• bug reporting and testing
• time management
• technical specifications
• release management
• implementation of utilities to support processes

We are NOT looking for someone to come down and 'do' the work. Rather, we need someone whose experience will help our young team build their capacity into a world class software development team through best practices. As such, you must be a good communicator, good with process, and interested in sharing your knowledge. The technologies we use are PHP, C++, ColdFusion, MySQL. But the key area we need help with is in our process -- getting the right steps organized to become efficient software developers who are able to release bug-free clean code. We think a six month engagement would be ample to establish some of these best practices and train our team.

What we can do:
We are willing to cover air travel, accomodation and spending money while here. For more details about that, please don't hesitate to contact us. Accomodation would be in a spacious quiet three bedroom house in the center of Accra, with cook, cableTV, airconditioning, wireless broadband. You'd be encouraged to invite friends down to visit.
*THIS IS NOT A SALARIED POSITION*

Your skills:
- at least five years of software development experience
- experience in managing & collaborating with other developers
- knowledge of PHP, C++, MySQL important
- good understanding of code management, code authoring, specifcation process, scheduling, testing, release practices, bug management
pluses:
- zero-downtime remote upgrades of long-running systems
- plugin architectures (eg eclipse's plug-in framework)
- client/server system
- distributed programming
- advanced c++
- programming for testability
- release mode debugging

Why you might not enjoy this:
- if you find it hard to adapt to new environments
- if you tend to be inflexible
- if you've never travelled before

Our Working Environment
BusyLab is located within its sister company, BusyInternet. BusyInternet was established in 2001 as Africa's largest private technology center and acted as host and incubator to over 25 different IT companies in Ghana. Busy is a unique working environment - an old gas bottling factory, it was converted into an IT hub to sponsor and witness the development of local IT initiatives and capacity. To find out more, and read about busy in the NYTimes and Wall Street Journal, visit our website. BusyLab has the same founder and same goals: to create new opportunities for wealth in africa by developing IT capacities. BusyInternet does it by providing high-tech facilities. BusyLab does it by providing innovative software solutions.

The Country
Ghana is located on GMT time just north of the equator. It's hot and humid! The coast line is famous for its beaches and slave castles. The country is recognized as one of the safest and friendliest of all african countries. It was the first country to receive independance from colonial powers in 1957, and the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, has a bold vision for African Unity that the continent is still struggling to realize. There are many fascinating trlps that can be taken around the country to national parks, the amazing Akasombo Dam, beautiful waterfalls, the Kakum national forest canopy walk, and the seat of the Ashanti Kingdom in Kumasi. Other trips to Mali Dogon country, Benin's Ouidah, Niger's Sahara are among a few that should be attempted -- and Lagos is a thriving exciting metropolis just 40 mins by plane. Accra can be reach in 6 hours from london by daily flights on British Airways, Ghana International, KLM, Lufthansa and Al Italia.