The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) has called on African governments and standards bodies to abstain in the balloting, due to close Saturday, on whether a file format based on Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) should be an international standard.

The paper-ballot process is being undertaken under the auspices of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). FOSSFA is urging African countries to abstain, as part of a wider effort to participate more effectively in the global debate on open standards.

FOSSFA made the call to encourage public involvement in the open standards debate at the national level throughout Africa in a statement following a conference in Dakar, Senegal, that ended last week.

Participants at the workshop, whose theme was "Making the Knowledge Economy Work for Africa," agreed that open standards allow for interoperability, promote innovation and economic growth and help users avoid being locked in to proprietary products.

FOSSFA encouraged African governments to facilitate the debate on open standards and involve national experts in decisions regarding technology standards. The organization also urged African governments to seek a collective African voice prior to taking positions on open standards issues.

Recalling that the ISO meeting on OOXML in February in Geneva had little representation from Africa, and that some African countries have voted in the past to approve OOXML without thorough and more inclusive discussions on the issues, the organization is calling for more active public engagement of the issues in the future.

African countries including Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe have the right to participate in the ISO's OOXML balloting.

However, if most countries vote to approve, OOXML will go forward as an ISO standard.

FOSSFA was founded under the auspices of the Bamako, Mali, bureau of the African Information Society Initiative, within the mandate given by African governments in 1995 to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). FOSSFA promotes the use of FOSS and the FOSS model in African development. The organization supports the integration of FOSS in national policies. FOSSFA members may be individuals, organizations, development agencies or government FOSS bureaus.

(Additional reporting by Peter Sayer in Paris.)