This is great for researchers in Africa and the surrounding area, but it seems a simpler solution would be for the CS community to move towards placing greater

This is great for researchers in Africa and the surrounding area, but it seems a simpler solution would be for the CS community to move towards placing greater weight on journals, rather than conferences (like just about all other disciplines). It's not just researchers in the poorer countries of Africa that struggle. Even graduate students in the US can be put in difficult situations where a paper is accepted but they have no travel support from their advisor, department, or institution. As an anecdote, I recently had to put up $1,500 of my own money to travel to a conference in Italy because my advisor doesn't have any funding and my department only paid for registration. Luckily my wife works and it wasn't an issue paying for the trip, but it was still a frustrating experience.