Board members
The African Commons Project board members are a talented grouping of people who come from the business, academic and non-profit sectors.
ANDREW RENS
Andrew Rens thinks and writes about the interaction of law, knowledge and innovation, and blogs his thoughts at Aliquidnovi.org. Currently the Intellectual Property Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation Andrew has worked in academe, private practice and non-profit organisations. He has been the founding Legal Lead for Creative Commons South Africa, a co-founder and director of The African Commons Project, a charter member and director of Freedom to Innovate South Africa,a fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and a research associate at the LINK Center at the School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand.
Andrew is qualified as an attorney in South Africa, and was awarded a Master of Laws from the University of the Witwatersrand where he where he subsequently taught Master’s courses in Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Space and Satellite, and Media and Information Technology Law, before spending several years in San Francisco, California.
NHLANHLA MABASO
Nhlanhla Mabaso has worked in a range of areas in the information and communication technologies space. After completing his B.Sc. (Computer Science & Applied Maths) at the University of the Witwatersrand, he worked as a software engineer for an airline, later becoming a systems’ analyst for an internet service provider, working on a range of areas including systems administration, internet hotline, online databases and strategic consulting.
Following completion of his Masters in Business Adminstration, Nhlanhla moved into the area of management within both the private and public sectors, where he was Chief Information Officer for the Department of Public Administration. Nhlanhla has also been involved in the Meraka Institute’s Open Source Centre initiative hosted at the CSIR and has also served as the co-ordinator of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA).
MATTHEW BUCKLAND
Matthew developed a passion for all things digital at an early age when, as a seven-year-old, he began programming on his first computer (a ZX Spectrum 48k). He has spoken and guest-lectured on online media issues around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Ireland, Kenya and South Africa.
Matthew is currently the GM of Publishing & Social media at the country’s largest online operation, 24.com, previously having headed up South African online news publisher Mail & Guardian Online, the oldest on the African continent and co-owned by the UK’s Guardian Newspapers Ltd. He is a former chair of the local Online Publishers Association and co-founder of award-winning editorial blog Thought Leader (a 2008 Webby Honoree) and blog aggregator amatomu.com. Matthew has been involved in the online medium in various capacities for more than 12 years and is a prominent blogger at matthewbuckland.com.
Holding a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes University, Matthew is a new media graduate who knows no other medium! His favourite colour is still red.
HEATHER FORD
Previously Executive Director of international charity,iCommons, Heather has worked in the ‘technology for development’ field around the world, focusing specifically on the relationship between open content and innovation.
Co-founder of the African Commons Project, Heather is now working on building collaborative systems for digital innovation in South Africa.
EVE GRAY
Eve Gray is an Honorary Research Associate in the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town and Chairperson of Creative Research and Development, a non-profit association working to improve access to knowledge, learning and creativity.
Eve is involved in a number of donor-funded projects dealing with scholarly communications and open access in South Africa and other African countries. With a background in academic publishing, she brings to her promotion of Access to Knowledge (A2K) an awareness of the value of the professional skills that publishers bring to knowledge dissemination. Eve also sees the potential for digital media to transcend both the limitations of traditional publishing models and the knowledge barriers that face the developing world.
In 2006-7 Eve was an International Policy Fellow of the Open Society Institute, Budapest, in the Open Information Working Group, producing a Policy Paper on research publication policy in South Africa.
HILTON THEUNISSEN
Hilton Theunissen is an ICT4 Development specialist with a focus on the Education sector. Hilton serves on several IT related Not for Profit organisations in South Africa. Known for the award winning open source in education program, tuXlabs, Hilton continues to consult, promote and assist schools and community based programs to gain the benefits of this technology.
This social entrepreneur continues to find new and innovative ways as Director at Inkululeko Technologies to bring open and inclusive technologies to South African citizens.
