Why Futzs sponsors PyCon Togo

Futzs is a bronze sponsor of PyCon Togo 2026, which runs 28–30 August in Lomé: a day of hands-on workshops on Django, FastAPI and Python fundamentals, a day of talks, and a speakers’ dinner to close it. Our name sits on the partners page alongside AWS, the Django Software Foundation, the Black Python Developers Community, and a row of Togolese organisations doing the actual work of putting it on.

The short version

Everything we sell runs on Python. GAPPS, the library our Workspace add-ons are built on, is Python. The add-ons themselves are Python. None of that was invented here — it is decades of other people’s unpaid work, handed over for free. Sponsoring a conference is one of the few ways a small company can put something back that is not a pull request.

Why Togo specifically

Python conferences in Europe and North America are well funded. Their sponsor lists are long, their venues are large, and one more small logo changes very little. A regional PyCon in West Africa operates on a different scale, where a bronze cheque is a real fraction of the budget, and where the marginal effect of a sponsor is measured in workshop seats rather than in banner placement.

The other reason is more selfish and worth stating plainly: the people who will maintain the libraries we depend on in ten years are, some of them, sitting in that Lomé workshop room this month. A tech community grows where someone pays for the room.

What sponsoring does and does not buy

It buys a logo and a link. It does not buy us a keynote, an endorsement, or any say in the programme, and we would not want one. PyCon Togo is organised by the Python Software Community Togo — Wachiou Bouraima and the volunteers around them. Our part is to make their spreadsheet add up slightly better.

If you build on open source too

The bar for sponsoring a regional conference is lower than most companies assume. Bronze tiers at events like this one cost less than a month of the SaaS subscriptions you have forgotten you are paying for, and the organisers will answer your email the same day. If your product is a thin layer over open-source work — and most products are — the arithmetic is not complicated.

We build in the open where we can, take pull requests on GAPPS, and now write cheques where the money is scarcest. That is the whole policy.