Like Shuttleworth pointed out, most European open source contributors are hobbysts while most developers in Africa are busy trying to make ends meet for themselves and their extended families. With such an incredible burden of responsibilities, the African developer will stay up late writing code or adapting an existing code base for a project so as to make the money he needs to and after that is done he will quickly move on to the next project to make a little more money.

Now, had he made enough money in the first project he probably would have taken a holiday, and then a few days into the holiday it would hit him "I can commit the changes I made to xx project back to the community".

A more practical approach to tap the sub-saharan potential would be to create incentives for developers from third world countries to contribute their modifications/hacks/bug fixes back to the community at the `eureka` moment. Seeing that the incentive is obviously financial (or the prospect thereof) , the question is whether it can be met for the African developer. Or do we just leave it to those among us who have plenty of time on their hands ?

Another question : is money the only incentive that an African developer needs ?