Yesenia (00:01.56)
Hello and welcome to What’s in the SOSS? OpenSSF’s podcast where we talk to interesting people throughout the open source ecosystem, sharing their journey, experiences and wisdom. So Yessenia, one of your hosts, and today I have an amazing guest for us today. A guest who has started early on in his career at OpenSSF in the BEAR Working Group and today is leading his very own SIG. Welcome Prince.
Let’s start off with introducing yourself to the audience. Can you share your background and journey into tech and open source?
Prince (01:33.339)
All right, so thanks very much, Yersinia, for inviting me and having me on this podcast. I’m really excited to be here. Thank you to the OpenSSF for this wonderful opportunity. I really enjoyed this podcast a lot, it’s a dream come true to be here. Yeah, so I’ve…
I’ve honestly been fascinated with computers for as long as I can remember. And my first real encounter with a computer was back in primary school, class one in Ghana. And I immediately fell in love with it. I didn’t have access to my own computer growing up.
Prince (00:00)
But whenever I could, I’d use my friend’s laptop, go to internet cafes, play games at game centers, basically anything that kept me close to technology. And that early curiosity never really left. After senior high school, I wasn’t able to continue to the university for financial and economic reasons. And that was a really hard moment for me.
So the question I asked myself was, what can I do regardless of my current situation? So to still get into tech or to get to use or be a part of this technology that I’ve been very much interested in. So I started searching on my own and go to cafes, look up resources and basically try anything that I could find.
So that’s when I discovered edX in 2017. And I took my first real course there on the edX platform.
Prince (05:36.131)
I took this introduction to computing with Python from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which had a free version of the course. And around that same time, I had a friend who was a software engineer, though I didn’t know what that term meant back then. I saw some of his books, asked about them, and he shared them with me.
Between those books and online courses, I would say that’s where I truly began learning to code. So the journey hasn’t been or wasn’t smooth, I should say. Constant challenges made consistency hard and there were long stretches where I couldn’t practice as much as I wanted,
But, I kept going, obviously. And then in 2022, when I was actively looking for ways to gain real-world experience, I came across Open Source. I first encountered or I started with Data Umbrella from a search on Google. And that led me to the Data Umbrella PyMC project. And that was my first real exposure to what open source meant. I didn’t really feel skilled enough to contribute code at the time, but the people in Data Umbrella on the PyMC project encouraged me to start with documentation. I had, I made a small documentation change, which got merged. And honestly, that moment changed everything for me.
So, it showed me that I could contribute in a community of diverse people without having to be perfect. And I learned that what open source meant was basically showing up with and willing to do what was available or work on whatever was available to work on.
From there, I explored other projects like GreenStand and worked on features, learned through community, just kept growing. Then in 2024, this part is very interesting to me, in 2024 I found the OpenSSF while trying to reconcile my interest in both software engineering and security.
And that’s truly got me into the security open source ecosystem. Through OpenSSF, I’ve met people like Christopher Robinson, who was really my first point of, I would say first contact in the OpenSSF community. And he pointed me to Jean Robert – a member of AfricaCERT in Africa obviously. And yourself, Yesenia and Marcella and Stacey Potter, David Wheeler and a number of people who have mentored me and challenged me up until this point. And I’ve also opened doors that I didn’t know existed, especially when it comes to open source. Yeah.
Yesenia (09:50.487)
So that was a beautiful journey that you shared with us, you know, through tech and as someone who’s come from immigrant parents, I can resonate a lot with paraphrasing the question you asked yourself, but what can I do given my circumstances? You know, not everybody has the opportunity or the finances to move through going towards their goals. And I really appreciate the resilience that you have in your story.
Like, alright, I can’t do this now, but how do I keep going? And I think what you shared are a lot of defining moments that you’ve had to lead to where you are today. And I can speak from OpenSSF. We’re very grateful to have you on our team on this journey. And you know, within the last couple of years from us chatting through the BEAR working group, you brought up a lot of challenges that yourself and other members have been facing when it comes to Africa and being able to do external speaking and finding those opportunities locally.
So I’d love to hear and share with the audience your origin story. Like how did open source security Africa get started? Like what were the problems that you were seeing in your ecosystem that made you say, you know, we should probably build something.
Prince (11:10.554)
Thank you very much for asking that. I will be meaning to talk about that a lot. So OSSAfrica really started from frustration, I should say, but also from hope. In 2025, that was last year, I had several opportunities, just like you mentioned, to attend major open source and security conferences.
So I submitted my first ever conference paper to VulnCon and it got accepted with support from Christopher Robinson, who’s been really incredible. Like I mentioned earlier, instrumental in my growth. The openness itself even explored or mentioned sponsoring. They actually did sponsor my travel, which felt like a defining moment for me.
But then I couldn’t attend and it was basically because of visa issues. Then the same thing happened with OpenSSF Community Day and again with Open Source Summit in the Netherlands. And every time there was opportunity, was this opportunity that I had, but access wasn’t available. I didn’t have access. And…
That experience really forced me to confront a reality many people acrOSSAfrica face. There’s talent and readiness. Talent and readiness exist, but structural barriers keep people locked out. So I started asking this question, why don’t we build something locally?
Not, instead of global spaces, alongside global spaces or alongside them. Something rooted in Africa that connects people into global open source and security ecosystems without requiring borders to cooperate first. So around the same time, I was working with a colleague, Seth Mensah, who had a similar vision around building Linux communities in Ghana and beyond.
So we brought in another friend, our colleague, Aaron Will Djaba, and started shaping what would eventually become OSSAfrica. Of course, when we started talking about this, we had a lot of names in mind and all that.
But, then we eventually settled for OSSAfrica. And this was not as a single organization, but as a community of communities. So I shared the idea with the OpenSSF BEAR Working Group on the OpenSSF BEAR Working Group chats on Slack and Marcella, who is a co-lead with yourself and Jay White suggested that we formalize it as a special interest group. We did all of this in October of 2025. By December, after community voting, OSSAfrica became an official OpenSSF Special Interest Group (SIG). That moment marked the real beginning of OSSAfrica.
So today, OSSAfrica exists to connect..our goal is to try to connect, empower, and amplify African contributors in open source and security. Whether through existing communities or new ones where none exist yet. Our goal is to build a connected Africa where contributors are visible globally, African voices are heard, and local innovation meaningfully shapes the open source ecosystem.
And honestly, none of this would exist without the early belief and support that people like yourself, Yesenia and Stacey, Marcella and Sally Cooper, four incredibly powerful advocates in open source, who helped guide and legitimize this work from the beginning. So yes, that’s basically how we started.
Yesenia (15:58.051)
I really like this because it’s a story of community, right? So it’s, we see one member in our community struggling or we saw, we actually saw multiple members of our community struggling to get their voices on the stage and the community came together, you know, brought together ideas and possibilities on how to solve this problem. And you and your team just went off and executed. I know that. you started in October, but from what I’ve seen, you know, I’ve been having from front row seats to Open Source & Security Africa since its inception.
It looks like you have a good growth of numbers. Like I think we’re looking at like what 10, 15 people so far.
Prince (16:42.618)
So we currently have about 90 plus people in our community on Discord. Yes, and we’ve had a number of people reach out organizations and just recently there’s this community founder who reached out, Kiala. I think there’s a lot that will have to we just started out in our conversations. So we see how that that goes. But growth on that front looks really, good. And we had a community lead for a community in Mauritius also reach out to try to partner with us. And yeah, we’ve had a number of people show interest, so we can really gauge our numbers by the number of people on our Discord channel. We’ve really seen people show interest in us.
Yesenia (17:53.039)
Yeah, but I think it really shows the necessity for this type of organization. mean, you’re four months in and you’re, you know, you’re already getting reached by, you already have about 19 active members. You know, you’re being reached by different organizations and partnerships. And I know I connected you with the Afro Adventures with Quiana that is running it, which I think that’s fabulous, you know, to see what comes out of that.
So, big kudos to you with that. This is what the open source world is, right? It’s a group of folks coming together, trying to solve a problem and getting a vision and executing. You guys are doing that.
Prince (18:38.287)
Yeah, yeah. I’m really excited about what our trajectory looks like, where we are going.
Yesenia (19:01.71)
Yeah, so start looking forward. What are you seeing? How are you seeing OSSAfrica impacting? Like what kind of impact do you want this community have locally, globally this year and the next few years? Like what does the success look like for you?
Prince (19:29.178)
So, mean, by the end of 2026, success for me looks like African contributors being visible and trusted and embedded across critical open source projects, not as exceptions, as maintainers, as trusted collaborators and leaders and open source community and space. Locally, I want OSSAfrica to be like a launch pad where people enter with curiosity and leave with skills, confidence, mentorship and real world impact.
And globally, I want OSSAfrica to be recognized as a serious contributor to software supply chain security, open source system sustainability, and community governance and security discussions. And in the long term, the goal is to build something institutional. Something not personality driven, but durable systems and leadership pipelines and partnerships that continue to continue creating opportunity long after any individual like myself steps away from the organisation. I’m never hoping, I’m not hoping to step away from the organisation, but I’m hoping that we become a strong and trusted institution globally.
So in the short term, we are focused on building strong foundations locally, especially in Ghana and West Africa. We want to do this through events and community programs and partnerships that help spark curiosity and bring people into the open source ecosystem. From there, we plan to expand across the continent, over the next few years. Yeah.
Yesenia (22:00.643)
This is amazing. I’m going to quote my mom and then I’ll translate it, “Mándame fotos, por favor.” So “send me pictures, please.” Because I would love to see the growth of this community. I’m every time my mom’s like, send me photos. So I’m getting a little emotional on this side because this really…Your story, the growth of source, open source security Africa is really representing what open source can do. So for the folks listening right now who want to contribute, they could be developers, security engineers, student, just anyone curious that wants to support, how can they get involved and meaningfully contribute to the cause?
Prince (23:32.154)
The easiest way is to just show up. We currently have, like we mentioned earlier, we currently have a public Discord community. We have a GitHub organization. We have open meetings and really essentially these are beginner friendly contribution pathways.
You don’t need to be a senior in any field in the tech space to show up or to join. If you are a student, if you are a career switcher, if you are a designer, a writer, a security practitioner, a community builder, or just about anyone trying to find your place in our world, you are welcome to join. So everyone has a place in OSSAfrica.
We want to help people find a place where they can work and connect with the community at large, which is aligned with their interests and pair them with people who can guide them into meaningful contributions. I mean, what you contribute to OSSAfrica depends, it doesn’t depend on any seniority skill level…whether it’s documentation, tooling, or education or research or community operations, there’s a space for you in OSSAfrica.
Yesenia (25:34.092)
This is awesome. Yeah, so you can always check out the OpenSSF calendar and join the calls. I believe they’re on Wednesday. And then there’s also the Slack channel on OpenSSF where a lot of movement is happening as well.
Prince (25:51.311)
Yes, yes. And thank you very much for adding those ones I nearly forgot about. We just created our Slack channel for the special influence group for SS Africa. The SS Africa special influence group. So that is a great thing to also collaborate or contribute your voice and perspective and how we can shape this amazing community that we are building.
Yesenia (26:22.766)
So you heard it from Prince folks, join OpenSSF Africa and help them move along. So we’re gonna move on to our rapid fire part of the interview. pew, pew.
Prince, I’m just gonna ask you some questions. You’re gonna say the first thing that comes to mind and we’ll go from there. So first question, books or podcasts?
Prince (26:43.3)
Thank you.
Prince (26:47.478)
I really like a mix of both, but I would go for podcasts.
Yesenia (26:56.342)
Awesome. Favorite programming language.
Prince (26:59.268)
Python
Yesenia (27:02.574)
Good choice. I’m a little biased on that one. Comfort food.
Yesenia (27:10.54)
What is your comfort food?
Prince (27:16.71)
So there’s this local rice, sorry, local food, sorry. There’s this local food called waakye and I really enjoy it. If you were asking about comfort food, what I eat to comfort myself, right? So then it’s basically, it’s waakye. I really enjoy Wachi and nuts and you should have it sometime. It’s really nice. It’s rice and beans.
Yesenia (27:31.085)
Yes.
Prince (27:43.608)
with some herbs, some African leaves. And it’s really nice. You should have it sometimes.
Yesenia (27:52.258)
You got me on rice and beans. I’m Cuban. I love rice and beans. Sweets or sour?
Prince (27:54.138)
Um, sweet.
Yesenia (28:07.682)
Are you an early bird or a night owl?
Prince (28:13.946)
I like to sleep early. I like to sleep early, so yeah. I mean, that’s my response to that.
Yesenia (28:32.236)
There you have it folks. That’s another rapid fire. And Prince, let’s end this with, you you’ve gone through an impressive journey through your tech and open source, right? You you shared it earlier, your resilience. And so what advice do you have for the next wave of folks, for folks that are entering tech and cybersecurity, you know, those that might just feel like an outsider, what advice would you give them and how can open source accelerate their growth and confidence?
Prince (28:58.618)
Okay.
Prince (29:02.572)
Okay, so first, feeling like an outsider doesn’t mean you don’t belong. It usually just means that you are early in the environment or you are in a new environment. And second, open source is one of the strongest accelerators, especially in my opinion, that I have ever seen.
You don’t need anyone’s permission, credentials or prestige. You don’t need anyone’s approval to join the open source space. All you need is curiosity and being showing up consistently and being humble to be willing and willing to be guided by those who are already in this space.
My advice, all you know is start small, learn in the public space, ask questions, and don’t wait until you see your regime. Usually it’s very difficult even if you are in the environment. It usually takes a lot of time. I took a lot of time before actually seeing anything in the community. that really helped me much.
So I would say speak up, ask for help, and then also read issues. And even if it is a small change in documentation that you can make, it really matters a lot and is very much welcome. You should also attend community calls and try to build relationships very early.
And most importantly, this is community that welcomes everyone. So find your community. And one last thing I would say is that growth compounds when you are not alone. So try and find your community. Yeah.
Yesenia (31:34.498)
That’s a good quote right there. Good compounds when you’re not alone. Prince, thank you so much for your time today, for your impact and contributions to our communities. I am so excited for OSSAfrica and to see its growth, its community and contributions this year’s and the upcoming. Thank you so much for your time today and folks, we’ll catch you on the next episode.
Tracy Ragan is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of DeployHub and a recognized authority in secure software delivery and software supply chain defense. She has served on the Governing Boards of the 
Jeff Diecks is a Senior Technical Program Manager at The Linux Foundation. He has more than two decades of experience in technology and communications with a diverse background in operations, project management and executive leadership. A participant in open source since 1999, he’s delivered digital products and applications for universities, sports leagues, state governments, global media companies and non-profits.
