Wikipedia:WikiProject WikiFundi Content/WikiFundi:Wikimedia activities in Africa

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia and is hosted by a non profit organisation called the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Participants to Wikipedia are called wikipedians.

The WMF host other projects, collectively called Wikimedia projects.Wikimedia projects include Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, WikiVoyage etc.

We refer to wikimedia movement or wikimedia community when we talk about all the contributors to and participants of Wikimedia projects.

Members of the movement can organize themselves in to structured groups, called Chapters or UserGroup or ThematicGroup (see Wikimedia in Africa to read more about those organisations).

Every wikimedian can organize activities around Wikimedia projects if they wish so. It is not mandatory to be in an organization to do so (but often, that can help...).

There are several Africa-based Wikimedia groups and organisations across Africa and beyond, that run a host of projects that help to contribute information and images about Africa to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects so that people on the continent can see their realities represented and people outside of Africa can see the many different peoples and cultures that make up the continent. This page list some of the activities organized by wikimedians that either happen across Africa or add content about African subjects to Wikimedia projects, specifically Wikipedia. Feel free to join in, or let them inspire yourself if you want to organize a new activity. If you want to find out about

Some examples of wikimedia activities available the African continent

It would be difficult to name them all. The examples listed below are there to give some ideas of on-going projects.

The WikiAfrica Movement

The WikiAfrica movement is an international and collective effort to encourage contribution of knowledge from Africa onto Wikipedia. The movement has brought together many people and organisations to inform and train people in how to provide on-going contributions to Wikipedia with content from Africa. Some of the projects below are WikiAfrica movement projects, others have been instigated by other groups or organisations. Read more at http://www.wikiafrica.org

Wiki Loves Africa

Wiki Loves Africa (http://www.wikilovesafrica.net) is an annual photographic competition, taking place towards the beginning of the year across the entire African continent. To participate to this competition, keep an eye on: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa

Wiki Loves Women

Wiki Loves Women focuses on the African woman. It encourages active contribution from women and allows the general public to have access to existing and verified cultural and educational content about women that is present in public institutions, civil society or organisations, but that are poorly visible or inaccessible. The content and the data collected focuses specifically on women and their contributions to politic, economy, sciences, culture and heritage or on the actual socio-political status of women in each country. This project took place in 2016-2017 in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana, the following years in Tanzania and Uganda, then moved to more countries such as Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe... To find out more : http://www.wikiloveswomen.org

WikiGap

WikiGap is a global campaign that celebrates local women around 8th March for International Women's Day events. WikiGap is organised by the Swedish foreign missions in countries around the world and Wikimedia Sweden, and supported by Wikimedia volunteers around the world. The intent is to gather people from around the world to add more content to Wikipedia about women figures, experts and role models in various fields. Read more here : http://www.swemfa.se/wikigap/

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments (http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org) is an international photo competition taking place yearly in September with the aim to promote and valorise Heritage properties. Since its creation in 2010 in Netherlands, the event encourages people to take photos of historical monuments and Heritage sites of their region and to then upload them in the Wikimedia Commons repertoire. Several african countries take part in the competition each year. To know everything about this competition: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments

Wiki Loves Earth

Also a photo competition (www.wikilovesearth.org) ... more recent than Wiki Loves Monuments. Wiki Loves Earth is an international photo competition taking place yearly in May with the aim to enhance the natural Heritage. Since its creation in 2013 in Ukraine, the event encourages people to take pictures of natural Heritage and to then upload them in the Wikimedia Commons repertoire. Participating countries from Africa include, Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

WikiChallenge African Schools

WikiChallenge African Schools is a writing contest in 8 African countries that creates a fun, engaging way to learn about contributing to Vikidia and Wikipedia. Since 2017, the contest encourages students from the same school to work together to create an article about their area. Their article could be about their village or suburb, a notable person or a local historic event or a geographic feature. https://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Projet:WikiChallenge_Écoles_d%27Afrique

WikiAfrica Schools

WikiAfrica Schools introduces schools to WikiFundi and Wikipedia by incorporating local article-writing programmes into their curriculums to build the next generation of Wikipedians and online knowledge contributors. www.wikiinafrica.org/wikiafrica-schools

Competition « Villages of Cameroon » (#Wikivillages)

Wikivillages is an encyclopaedic writing competition based on the theme 'villages of Cameroon' and organised by Agripo from the 20th of May to the 20th of November 2016. The village forms the basic administrative and cultural structure of Cameroon which counts around 13000 of them, all linked to 360 towns. Yet, in May 2016, less than 80 villages had one article in French available on Wikipedia, 36 in English. At the same date, Wikimedia Commons – the database common to all the projects –, was hosting only 266 photos about 31 identified villages. Through a competition open to public, this initiative from Cameroon - pioneer in Africa - aims to give to villages their well deserved place in the 'largest encyclopaedia in the world', by creating new articles, uploading new images, in accordance with the strict rules of Wikipedia (neutrality, production of sound sources...) and of Commons (images free from copyright...). Participating is simple. If you are Cameroonian, you have no excuse to not feel involved :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikivillages_of_Cameroon

Afripedia

Afripédia was a project sponsored by Wikimedia France, the French Institute and the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie with the support of Kiwix. Its aim was to give an off-line access to the Wikimedia Foundation projects contents and to Wikipedia especially, as well as providing training to contribute to these projects in the French speaking Africa. This project has been terminated. To know more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afripedia_Project

Contribution Month

For the French speaking countries, there is an activity and a group named WikiFranca. WikiFranca is a collaboration between Wikimedia French speaking chapters and its affiliated working groups.This collaboration aims to encourage activities in French in different Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and its sister projects on the Web and on the field. It not only allows working groups which do not have chapters in their countries to organise activities and events in their location and their own language, but it also allows to build a bridge between the countries who participate to the French language projects of Wikimedia. WikiFranca organises every year the French Speaking countries Month (which takes place in March). It gives the opportunity to organise training or Wikipedia's contributions workshops in French speaking countries. In 2015, workshops have been recorded in France, Canada, Morocco, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guadeloupe, Madagascar, Nigeria, Russia, Senegal, Switzerland and Tunisia. To know more: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Mois_de_la_contribution

Medinapedia Sfax

MedinaPedia consists in digitizing the historical richnesses of the Medina of Sfax and thus bringing them into the world of virtual collective knowledge. These meetings will take place in various places of the medina like the cultural center Dar Siala. For the references, Dar Jallouli's library, Dar Ben Achour's library and the medina of Sfax's safeguarding association opened their doors for us to scan their books and use the content. The project is going to tackle 6 categories of monuments of this historical city: The gates, the mosques, the palaces, the mausoleums, the hammams (public baths) and the souks (Markets).All this will be possible through a series of workshops for the recruited local volunteers about Wikipedia, Wikimedia and other tools that can promote the goal of the project: Sharing free knowledge. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Tunisie/MedinaPedia_Sfax

WikiLeaders

WikiLeaders is an educational project that aims to memorize the legacy of the tunisian leaders who contributed in the process of building the modern Tunisia we all know now, in all fields : Medicine, politics, litterature, Technology, etc. The project is divided into phases according to the fields our leaders innovated in. And in The project aims to engage tunisian university students to write and know about our human heritage. That’s why every phase will be conducted with a local partner : a university student’s organization, to facilitate the communication, co-organize the workshops and recruit the volunteers. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaders

Conferences and other meeting events

The Wikimedia community gathers regularly, to simply have a relaxing drink and chat in the evening or to organise photoshoots all day or during national and even international meetings.

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Wikimania

At an international level, the Wikimania conference is organised once a year and has been going on for more than 15 years in different places each year. https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania

WikiConvention francophone

At a French speaking countries level, WikiFranca organise every year a French speaking WikiConvention. To know more (and look at the interventions, people involved etc): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConvention_francophone

WikiIndaba

Wiki Indaba is an annual conference for representatives of Wikimedia communities and projects across Africa. The maiden edition was held in 2014, in Johannesburg, while the most recent one was held in 2019 in Abuja, Nigeria. Topics of presentation and dialogue typically include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge, free content and how these projects affect the African continent. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Indaba

WikiArabia

WikiArabia is a three days conference where participants from the Arab region expose their experiences and perspectives on Wikimedia projects in the Arab countries. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiArabia