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WikiAfrica is an international movement that takes place on the African continent and beyond. It encourages individuals, interested groups and organisations to create, expand and enhance online content about Africa. This involves motivating for the representation of the continent’s contemporary realities and history, its peoples and its innovations on the world’s most used encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. WikiAfrica is not owned by one organisation and it belongs to all people and organisations contributing to its scope.
In its various guises and hosted at several institutions (including Lettera27, Africa Centre, Ynternet.org, Short Story Day Africa and Wikimedia CH), the WikiAfrica movement has consistently instigated and led multi-faceted innovative projects. These projects have activated communities and driven content onto Wikipedia. Examples include Share Your Knowledge, #OpenAfrica training Courses and Toolkits, Kumusha Bus (in Ethiopia and Ghana), WikiEntrepreneur (in Ethiopia and Malawi), Kumusha Takes Wiki (Cote d’Ivoire and Uganda) and Wiki Loves Africa.
Over 2016/17 it is working on Wiki Loves Women (in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut), WikiPack Africa, WikiFundi and the WikiChallenge African Schools (funded by the Orange Foundation), Wikipedia Primary (funded by SUPSI) and Wiki Loves Africa.
A proverb from Mali says La Palabre is precious, because in the afterlife there is none. The proverb emphasizes the importance of dialogue, verbal exchange, socialization, and mediation. It is in this spirit that WikiAfrica wishes to operate, helping to expand and improve information available about Africa online.
See m:WikiAfrica (WikiAfrica on meta)
Why WikiAfrica
Africa, with nearly one-billion people, represents the world's third-largest market after China (1.3-billion) and India (1.1-billion), and is widely recognized as the last frontier for global economic growth. It is also where humanity began. And yet it has the lowest and least informed profile of any region on the internet; moreover, what does appear is often selective, lacks context and reinforces outdated stereotypes. Africa deserves a new deal – and especially in Wikipedia.
Over the last ten years, Africa’s users of the Internet have increased nine times faster than European and twenty times faster than North American users. There are over 110 million people living in Africa today actively using the Internet on a regular basis, with an expected annual increase of 10 million new users per annum. Uniquely, much of this growth is happening via cell phone technology with Africa representing the highest mobile Internet usage patterns of any continent on the planet.
Unfortunately however, Africa remains the least visible continent on the Internet. Comprehensive, current and eclectic information on Africa is conspicuous by its absence. This invisibility is apparent whether we look for events, people and places of global historic importance, literature, science, art or any other information, or for present day activities, accomplishments, thoughts and news. The two billion people now using the Internet as their primary source for research, information and knowledge cannot access a broad, deep, rich understanding of what Africa was, what it is today and what is possible in the future.
Since 2001 Wikipedia has emerged as the single most important online source of information freely accessible to anyone anywhere. Wikipedia is the most popular online reference system, the most effective secondary source, the most edited and discussed encyclopaedia online and one of the first entries on search engines. The project was originally a collaboration between lettera27[1] and Africa Centre[2]. The WikiAfrica project was initiated by Lettera27 in 2006. Both organizations believed that Wikipedia was the ideal tool for addressing the problems of Africa’s absence on the Internet.
Related projects
- WikiProject Africa
- WikiProject African diaspora
- Africa-related regional notice board
- WikiProject African studies journals
References
External links
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