Iolanda Pensa
io@pensa.it
WikiAfrica: 30,000 African contributions reached on Wikipedia: Reply


1) Past. WikiAfrica has produced over 32,000 images and texts related to
Africa. The majority of the contributions are images on Wikipedia Commons (over
25,000 contributions). Those images can be used for Wikipedia in all languages
(and for all other commercial and non commercial purposes); at the moment the
images have been used around 5,000 times. The most notable contribution are the
articles on African cinema (thanks to films festivals) in Italian, Spanish,
English and French. We also produced a dataset of over 1,500 cities and
villages in Botswana; the dataset has been uploaded to produce stub articles in
Italian, Swedish and Dutch; the reason we worked with different languages is
because we needed to check how the communities would react to the dataset; the
dataset can be upload on any linguistic edition of Wikipedia (but is necessary
to find a volunteer who can produce the programme - bot - to upload it) and it
will contribute in the future to Wikidata (a more transversal data project to
enrich simultaneously all 285 linguistic editions of Wikipedia). We are at the
moment negotiating for the uploads on Swahili and Tswana Wikipedia editions but
we have no results jet. Please note that the 30,000 milestone only counts texts
and images we can directly relate to WikiAfrica (institutions that explicitly
supported the project or dataset, or uploaded we managed); we are not
associating articles from volunteers and contributors to WikiAfrica.

2) Future. We are currently developing the next phase of WikiAfrica focussed on
Primary School (2013-2015). The objective is to give students, teachers and
families access on Wikipedia to all the documentation needed to obtain the
primary school degree of their country, in the language of instruction. The
project focuses on all African countries and Italy. We are planning to produce
around 2,500 articles and all 28 languages used for instruction in Africa will
be represented. The project is linked to Wikipedia zero (distribution of
Wikipedia on smart phones for free; at the moment 18 countries in Africa and
Middle East are part of the project) and to Wikipedia offline (a growing
phenomena of offline distribution of Wikipedia on USB-plugs which also provide
other OER Open Educational Resources and some free software which runs directly
on the UPS-plugs and doesn't require very performant computers). To produce and
assess quality articles i'm thinking of a Wikipedia scientific journal to
develop and peer-review articles about African countries, general topics and
educational systems in Africa. We just completed a feasibility study about the
WikiAfrica Primary School project and we are setting up to start developing it
from January 2013. We are defiantly interested in collaborations with people
and institutions.

please do not hesitate to send further questions, remarks and suggestions also
to my address io@pensa.it
Regards,
iolanda pensa
WikiAfrica scientific director


Il giorno 25/nov/2012, alle ore 20:26, Lorna Zukas ha scritto:

> Franz Heimer
> franz.heimer@iscte.pt
> Saturday, November 24, 2012 To:
> WikiAfrica: 30,000 African contributions reached on Wikipedia: Reply
>
> ------------
> I agree it is important to free ourselves from the exclusive focus on
> writings in English, but in the case we are discussing here it is probable
> that more African contributions have been made to the Wikipedia versions
in
> French and Portuguese than to versions in African languages,
>
> Franz-Wilhelm Heimer
>
> -----Mensagem original-----
> De: H-NET List for African History and Culture
> [mailto:H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU] Em nome de Lorna Zukas
> Enviada: sábado, 24 de Novembro de 2012 18:21
> Para: H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU
> Assunto: WikiAfrica: 30,000 African contributions reached on Wikipedia:
> Reply
>
> Don Osborn
> dzo@bisharat.net
> Saturday, November 24, 2012
>
>
> Pleased to know of the progress of the WikiAfrica initiative, which
> certainly helps make Wikipedia and related Wikimedia projects more useful
> for Africa-related topics. Among other things, it is interesting to note
the
> connection with African studies instruction.
>
> At the same time, since Wikipedia is explicitly multilingual (with
separate
> editions for each of many languages) it would be interesting to know how
> many of the 30,000+ articles are in languages other than English, and in
> particular how much content about Africa has been developed in African
> language editions.=

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