Over the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of expanding my open source developer advocacy to include countries in the Global South — Brazil last year, and Nigeria this year. What struck me during these trips is that a country lagging behind wealthier, industrialised economies doesn’t mean being left out of technological progress. Quite the opposite. Cutting-edge technologies are very much present. Yet, a closer look reveals a distinctive pattern: gaps in the usual technology adoption timeline. Take communications, for example — wireless networks are everywhere, and often far more reliable than wired infrastructure has ever been in those countries. The lesson is clear: as they advance, Global South countries don’t need to follow the same incremental path taken elsewhere. They can leapfrog transitional technologies and move straight to the most advanced solutions.
This was the essence of my message to the audience at OSCAFest 2025 a few weeks ago. During the event, which took place on August 15-16, 2025 in Lagos, I had the privilege of presenting on the Eclipse RISC-V embedded ecosystem. At the Eclipse Foundation, we host a broad portfolio of open source projects that cover virtually every need of an embedded developer—from a safety-certified real-time operating system to a modern IDE, along with specialised middleware for IoT, industrial IoT, and software-defined vehicles. The slide below, taken from my deck, provides a concise overview of the presentation.
On the software side, the value of open source for developers in the Global South is clear. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they can build on proven, widely adopted technologies and participate in the global ecosystem. Eclipse ThreadX is a prime example. Once a commercial product, ThreadX RTOS has powered more than 12 billion devices since the late 1990s, including systems certified for safety-critical applications. Today, with ThreadX available as open source under the permissive MIT license, developers gain an accessible and cost-effective path to building and certifying devices that meet rigorous standards such as IEC 61508 and ISO 26262, among others.
This even extends to hardware. Twenty years ago, the idea of a locally funded and owned silicon manufacturer from the Global South would have been a pipe dream. The introduction of the RISC-V architecture removed barriers to entry in that market, providing a well-defined, industrial-grade foundation for chip designers everywhere. The open source processor cores and processor IP hosted at the OpenHW Foundation make things even more accessible. You can now find professionally-verified embedded and application-class cores on GitHub! Armed with the appropriate FPGA, anyone can run, evaluate, and modify those cores. Yes, getting a new chip to market is still an expensive, complex, and time-consuming project. However, the OpenHW Foundation’s building blocks open significant opportunities for the Global South. After all, most silicon design firms nowadays are fabless, even in North America or Europe.
OSCAFest was an absolute delight. I had memorable conversations throughout the conference and returned home feeling energised. Compared to many technology events I’ve attended in the past, the audience stood out: noticeably younger, with greater representation of women. While not everyone I spoke with was focused on embedded systems or IoT, those who were impressed me with their depth of knowledge and, often, significant experience. That is why I’m convinced that African developers — empowered by open source hardware and software — are well-positioned to drive the next wave of IoT innovation. If the talent I encountered in Lagos is any indication, some may even leapfrog their peers in more affluent regions.
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