Postgres Summit US2026

PostgreSQL is one of the most powerful open-source databases in the world but its real strength has never been the query planner or the MVCC architecture alone. It is the people. This talk tells the story of how communities across Africa are embracing PostgreSQL from the ground up: not waiting for permission, not waiting for a headquarters to ship a roadmap, but building local user groups, running meetups in Ghana, Madagascar and Kenya, translating knowledge into languages and contexts that work for their reality. I want to bring that story to Postgres Summit US 2026. It is a blueprint for what grassroots, human-centered open-source growth looks like at its best. This talk will move between the personal and the structural: why Africa's developers are choosing Postgres, what it takes to grow a healthy local community from scratch, and how the global Postgres ecosystem can embrace this movement.