Nigeria’s Mustapha Rufai to Speak at FOSS Backstage 2026 in Berlin

By Salami Adeyinka

Nigeria’s software engineer and open-source community strategist, Mustapha Rufai, has been selected among global speakers for FOSS Backstage 2026, scheduled to hold in Berlin, Germany, on March 17.

Rufai’s expert workshop on contributor growth was accepted after a rigorous peer-review process by the conference organizers.

FOSS Backstage is a leading international forum known for attracting senior-level project maintainers, foundation leaders, and technology executives.

Being featured as a speaker at this platform underscores Rufai’s growing influence and measurable contributions to the global open-source ecosystem.

Rufai will lead the workshop, “Docs, Demos, and Mentors: Growing Open Source, a session that provides project leaders with actionable frameworks to solve the critical bottleneck of contributor scalability, a key challenge for open source sustainability.

He said his methodology is informed by direct experience: training over 2,000 developers across Africa and Europe and co-hosting “Write the Docs EMEA”.

“Contributing to FOSS Backstage is a recognition of practical, inclusive community engineering,” said Rufai. “This is where the field’s systemic challenges are addressed, and I’m honoured to add a vital perspective on global contributor growth.”