Projects

Status: active

Wiki Loves Africa (WLA) is an annual contest where anyone across Africa can contribute media that is relevant to their experience to Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wiki Loves Africa encourages participants to contribute media (photographs, video and audio) that illustrate the specific theme for that year. Each year the theme changes and is chosen by the community from a few universal, visually rich and culturally specific topics (for example, markets, rites of passage, festivals, public art, cuisine, natural history, urbanity, daily life, notable persons, etc)

Link
* contest page : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa
* website: https://www.wikilovesafrica.net

Status: active

Since 2016, Wiki Loves Women activates and trains leaders who, through a series of layered activities, build the awareness and skills of participants. By doing so, participants can seize their own agency and address the persistent systemic bias that exists about Africa’s women online and in the media. In addition, Wiki Loves Women hosts a series of easy-to-access content contribution drives that draws attention to specific gaps in the WIkimedia projects. Since 2022, Wiki Loves Women also host a podcast, Inspiring Open, featuring exceptional African women leaders.

This approach targets two critical aspects of the digital gender divide: participation and content. Whilst Wiki Loves Women has an intense focus on Africa, the program is international in reach and intention.

It informs, mobilizes, and trains people to contribute factual information about women and women’s issues to open knowledge platforms. In doing so, celebrate the pivotal roles that women play in each country or region’s political, economic, scientific, cultural, and heritage landscape.

Encouraging the contribution of meaningful content to the Wikimedia projects is a tool to transfer skills, build confidence and self-worth, and show the impact they can make.

Status: active

The SheSaid is a drive run by Wiki In Africa as part of the Wiki Loves Women initiative. The campaign aims to celebrate and recognise women by focusing on enhancing their representation and visibility on Wikiquote. Through this drive, the WLW initiative encourages the creation and improvement of Wikiquoteentries related to these influential women, thus contributing to a more inclusive and diverse representation of their voices and perspectives.

The impact of the #SheSaid campaign on Wikiquote has been truly remarkable, with over 27,109 new articles created or edited in 22 different languages across the last three editions. This impressive achievement reflects the collective effort and dedication of the Wiki Loves Women initiative and the different participating communities in celebrating and increasing the visibility of women leaders.

The continuous growth in the number of articles created or edited with each edition showcases the sustained success of the campaign. It indicates a growing awareness and commitment from contributors around the world to bridge the gender gap in representation and recognition.

Status: active

The Inspiring Open Women podcast series has been funded as part of the Goethe-Institut's International Relief Fund 2021. This podcast series is a showcase to celebrate Inspiring Open Women. It will showcase the exceptional women leaders across Africa and beyond, by hearing, in their own words, their journey and achievements, challenges and motivations. It is available on all the usual podcast platforms. 

All details of the episodes may be found on the website: https://podcast.wikiloveswomen.org 

Status: active

Wiki In Africa's WikiAfrica Hour is a monthly live discussion that supports the activities of the WikiAfrica movement and Wikimedians across Africa. 

WikiAfrica Hour's intention is to:

• Share current updates and highlights of Africa Wikimedians' activities

• Interact with guest(s) (if any), and take questions from community members

• Promote synergy within the Wiki community by discussing topics, projects, constraints, collaborations, and opportunities.

WikiAfrica Hour is activated by Wiki In Africa in support of Wikimedia usergroups across the WikiAfrica movement since 2021. It has been initiated and facilitated by Wiki In Africa's Florence Devouard (User:Anthere) and Isla Haddow-Flood (User:Islahaddow). Donia Domiaty is the WikiAfrica Hour production facilitator.

Link:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAfrica_Hour

Status: active

ISA is a fun, multilingual, mobile-first microcontributions tool that makes it easy for (groups of inexperienced) people to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons. ISA was originally built to provide better multilingual and structured descriptions of Wiki Loves Africa images. But it is also developed to be useful to all of the Wiki Loves X competitions, and eventually ended up being meant for all media files on Wikimedia Commons. ISA was developed as a collaboration between Wiki In Africa, Histropedia and the Structured Data on Commons project. It is a GLAM pilot for Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. The ongoing facilitation and communications for the ISA Tool are by the Wiki In Africa team.

Link:https://isa.toolforge.org

Status: active

WikiFundi provides an offline editable environment that is a similar experience to editing Wikipedia online. WikiFundi allows for training on, and contribution to, Wikipedia when technology, access and electricity outages fail or are not available at all. The project is currently operational in 16 countries via two programmes: Wikipack Africa (where it assists the outreach work of Wikipedians in Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda) and the WikiChallenge African Schools programme that is part of the Orange Foundation’s Digital Schools Project). The creation and pilot project has been funded by Foundation Orange, supported by Wikimedia CH in 2016. A version 2 was under development in summer 2018 with a release in fall 2018, with the support of Wikimedia Foundation. In 2021, a new release in Spanish language has been produced, in collaboration and with the support of Kiwix and Wikimedia CH, the promoted in 2022.

Status: active

The WikiChallenge African Schools is a writing competition for pupils aged 8-13 in French and English-speaking African countries.

Through the Vikidia platform - Wikipedia for children - pupils write encyclopedic articles about their immediate environment, such as their village, city, or local landmarks. Articles are published on Vikidia, which has been developed for over 12 years on the same principles as Wikipedia but tailored for young audiences.

The competition is run within the Orange Foundation’s Digital Schools network, most of which operate offline with the WikiFundi platform. Participation is supported by teachers, digital facilitators, and sometimes Wikimedians, who provide training, guidance, and help gather the children’s work.

The WikiChallenge not only builds writing and research skills but also encourages quality education, reduces inequalities, and supports youth development across Africa.

* 14 participating countries (Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Ivory Coast, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, and Sierra Leone)
* 1216 participating establishments
* 792 texts proposed by children and published on Vikidia
* 4098 photos, drawings and videos published
* 112 winning schools, for the direct benefit of the hundreds of students and staff of the schools
* Skills acquired by all participating students

Link:
* meta explanation: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiChallenge_Ecoles_d%27Afrique/en
* contest page in French: https://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Projet:WikiChallenge_Écoles_d%27Afrique

Status: active

In 2020, Wiki in Africa published a French Wikibook Ressources pédagogiques relatives au droit d'auteur. We created teaching materials and assignment models to support teachers in the introduction to authors' rights, Creative Commons licences, and licensing attribution. The target audience is aimed at students (10-15 years old) in French-speaking Africa.

The project was selected as one of the 6 projects supported by the Creative Commons Open Education Platform Activities Fund.

The Wikibook offers a curated set of resources to support teachers in their lessons on and introductions to the concepts of intellectual and artistic works, copyright, Creative Commons licenses, and the best attribution practices to use when reusing works produced by others. The resources and lesson plans are presented in the form of 3 modules, of increasing difficulty. The first module is intended for 9- to 13-year-old children, while the subsequent modules are intended for classes of 11- to 14-year-old children.

The training materials include:

• information resources on copyright for teachers,

• materials to use in class with the students, and

• suggestions and instructions for activities to be carried out with the young people.

We are encouraging local communities to use the resources and translate them into local languages as needed.

All resources can be accessed via the Wikibook at this link: https://w.wiki/rn6. 

Status: In Development (funding dependent)

The Open Knowledge Curriculum is a project planned to create a new, multi-year senior school program that will be offered to provide scholars with a deep and meaningful deep dive into the knowledge that they consume online by placing global online information in context through analysis, review, practice, and contribution. The project will provide materials that give teachers the ability to immerse learners in a layered and thorough understanding of how global knowledge is captured, created, disseminated, and used. The program will be designed to impart essential skill sets that range from digital literacy, analytical thought, and writing skills (that include research and citations) to choosing the right copyright for the context, capturing community voices, and content creation and dissemination. The curriculum will be specifically tailored to be taught both by well-resourced schools that have access to the internet, and under-resourced schools (with intermittent or no internet access) through the use of WikiFundi.

The project has been workshopped with the community at Wikimania 2019 and Creative Commons Summit 2019.

Status: suspended (funding dependent)

A 6-month pilot (May to October 2017) to collaboratively develop an intervention that trains and supports willing schools and institutions to incorporate a WikiAfrica Schools programme into their work within the curriculum. Each school built the model they will use to incorporate contributing to Wikipedia as a tool to develop and strengthen their curriculum-aligned teaching by using the WikiFundi offline editing environment. The pilot project was supported by lettera27 (later Moleskin Foundation) in collaboration with African School of Excellence and the Global Teachers’ Institute in South Africa.

• 2020-21: Research and development on : Open Knowledge Curriculum

• January 2018: Pilot phase for Moleskine Foundation funded programme in South Africa closes.

• March 2018: Pilot phase report submitted to funders. Second phase application submitted to Moleskine Foundation for review.

• April 2018: WikiAfrica Schools Collaboratory closes and report submitted after successful consultation with education stakeholders in South Africa.