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Grants:Simple/Applications/Wiki In Africa 2021

< Grants:Simple | Applications
Application or grant stage: Application
Applicant or grantee: Wiki In Africa
Amount requested: US$134,557.50
Amount granted: US$99,550.00
Funding period: 1 January 2021 - 31 December 2021
Midpoint report due: June 2021 + 15 days
Final report due: January 2022 + 30 days

Application

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Background

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Wiki In Africa (http://www.wikiinafrica.org) is a South African registered NPO whose work across the continent encourages the contribution of African content to global educational platforms, such as Wikipedia.

The programmes Wiki In Africa creates are specifically aimed at skills transfer and community building to bridge the content and contribution gap that perpetuates the digital divide that plagues Africa, thus decolonising knowledge and the internet through the online celebration and contribution of the information, cultures and histories of Africa under free licenses.

Its objective is to empower and engage citizens of Africa and its diaspora to seize their own agency by providing access to, awareness of, and support for open knowledge, the open movement and Wikipedia-related projects, working in collaboration with like-minded organisations. Thousands of participants across our projects collect, develop and contribute educational and relevant content that relates to the theme of Africa.

Through strategic layering that answers to specific needs, Wiki In Africa has created programmes that bridge the gaping content and digital skills divides. It initiates fun engaging programmes to create multiple pathways for people of varied ages, genders, backgrounds, cultures and access to resources. The programmes have intentionally assisted in the development of the Wikipedia communities in 23 countries across Africa by drawing people together around common goals and focusing on consistent regional in-person and online events.

Though each individual initiative is designed to stand alone, they are integrated and specifically designed to accelerate and develop the skills of online communities across Africa. Working closely with, and supporting the efforts of, Wikimedia Usergroups and volunteer groups, they encourage a culture of contribution from and about Africa to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects.

Wiki In Africa was legally established in 2017, however, the principals of the organisation have been working collaboratively since 2014 with the Activate Africa drive for WikiAfrica, which saw the launch of Wiki Loves Africa and a WIR-model community project, Kumusha Takes Wiki. Wiki In Africa was established to ensure a legal structure in order for the work across Africa to continue.

Annual Plan 2021

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Over 2020, the WIA team has been focused on organisational assessment and strategic focuses. While it is completely invested in the programmes that it currently runs, the focus until now has been on the benefits of each programme to the Wikimedia movement.

Over 2020, in order to scale and make the programmes more effective, we have focused on considering the benefits to the participants. With this in mind, the 2021 annual plan is to hone its focus on providing further, packaged resources that ensures that the participants reap the benefits of being part of each project, thus increasing retention, and assisting communities to become sustainable. The work we do will not only benefit the existing communities we engage with but will also benefit the wider community through the development of materials to assist. All Wiki In Africa programmes are designed to help emerging Wikimedia communities become more skilled and autonomous. Hence all of our projects include elements meant to increase Wikimedia leaders or future leaders.

Focus across the programmes will be on:

Skills development:

  • Training-the-trainer/teacher programmes
  • Documentary Photography
  • Leadership and organisational skills development
  • Community development and networking
  • A WM Movement information series in the form of webinars or vodcasts
  • Consistent WM network and sharing
  • Collaboration and Network scaling
  • Increased collaboration with WM Usergroups and Thematic groups
  • Collaboration and partnership with external cultural, education and gender-equity organisations to increase impact and expand its network

Additional elements to assist with the main strategic focus’ of the programmes as described below are:

  • Consultation with advisory groups
  • Research and development of proposed education programmes
  • Develop external funding and in-kind partnerships to expand and scale projects appropriately
  • Support the WM development across Africa through regularly hosting monthly catchup meetings of the African community around curated subjects of topics chosen from within the community.
  • Consistent programme assessment and reassessment for fit and impact
  • Ongoing visibility, communication and advocacy campaigns.
  • Organisational stability by supporting and mentoring a remote intern to support the organisation through additional tasks that include networking, communications, programme management, etc.

WiA programmatic areas of focus for 2021

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Wiki In Africa programmes address the following key areas:

  • Youth and education: WikiChallenge African Schools and WikiAfrica Schools – Since 2017, the francophone and primary school-focused WikiChallenge African Schools has rolled out in 9 countries, involving over 100 schools that has resulted in 139 articles and 600+ photos being submitted to http://vikidia.org and Wikimedia Commons, 17 schools received prizes. 2020’s edition has been merged into the 2021 edition due to COVID-19. We intend to expand it to Benin in partnership with Wikimedia Benin.
  • Gender gap: Wiki Loves Women – rolled out across 8 African countries in partnership with 76 civil society organisations since inception; Wiki Loves Women in 2021 will engage with 4-5 new usergroups and one continental network to pilot the new train-the-trainer and leadership programmes.
  • Diversity and Content – Contemporary society and cultural heritage – the Wiki Loves Africa photographic competition has had 6 editions with nearly 64,000 images contributed to Wikimedia Commons by 8120 photographers from across the continent. 82% of all contributors are new to Wikipedia, and the images have a life beyond the competition with Wiki Loves Africa’s images being viewed 81 million times on Wikipedia articles in May 2020 alone. Wiki Loves Africa in 2021 will continue with a focus on photographic skills and community leadership development.
  • Technological solutions: WikiFundi (with offline resources) and the award-winning ISA tool. Through 2021, WikiFundi will be translated into other language/s, and usage will increase beyond Africa. ISA tool will continue to bring structured data to Wikimedia Commons images through strategic online drives. Wikimedia SV has declared interest in further adding to the ISA Tool and has applied for funding from Swedish Innovation Agency as part of a GLAM improvement project.
  • Volunteer development and community support through all of the projects listed above and beyond; and knowledge transfer through consistent meetings, networking, programme support, and information opportunities.

Volunteer development and support in 2021: Africa Hour revival
Wiki In Africa proposes to resurrect the previous Africa Hour in order to reconnect, network, and drive sharing and collaborations across the continent.

  • What it is: a monthly online meeting of the African community, with 2-3 short presentations/updates from its members + news + discussions
  • How it will be run: organized by a few community members, facilitated by with the support of the WIA intern.

Previously, Africa Hour ran successfully for a few months, then stopped. It was revived after a discussion at WikiIndaba Tunisia where the majority of the community there thought it was useful, then it died again, due to lack of leadership and dedicated time. We believe:

  • it is still needed and still welcome in particular with those specific times (pandemic),
  • to be run consistently, it needs someone tasked with organizing it every month,
  • Wiki In Africa already has the tech platform (zoom), which works better than hangout previously used,

In 2021, it is intended that the Wiki In Africa intern takes ownership of this project, by coordinating and organising meetings, establishing topics and speakers, etc. with minimal support from the WIA principals. The intern will organize the tech set-up, promote the hour, seek for 1-3 speakers every month, and report on the meeting every month.

Budget Plan

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Staffing Plan

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Strategic plan

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The comprehensive, long-term Strategic Plan of Wiki In Africa can be accessed in detail on this page

Programs

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Gender-Equity: Wiki Loves Women 2021

Wiki Loves Women activates, trains, and encourages women across Africa to seize their own agency in addressing the persistent systemic bias that exists about African women online and in the media.

As a project, Wiki Loves Women answers the following strategic priorities for Wiki In Africa:

  • Increasing visibility
  • Addressing knowledge gaps and biases
  • Active focus on diversity, inclusion and empowerment
  • Developing emerging communities through capacity and skills transfer
  • Leveraging the mutual benefit of partnerships

Last years application: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple/Applications/WikiInAfrica_2020#Wiki_Loves_Women_(WLW)

Quick overview of past (skip if known)

Wiki Loves Women uses layered initiatives to bridge the digital gender divide by focusing specifically on participation and content creation. It encourages the contribution of meaningful content to the Wikimedia projects as a platform to transfer skills, build confidence and self-worth within a supportive community, and show the direct impact they make. Wiki Loves Women has been operating for five years across Africa, working with 76 gender-focused, cultural and community organisations in 8 countries: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, with two event programmes in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Wiki Loves Women was launched in 2016. In the first phase, Wikimedian volunteers and new Wikimedia communities were activated in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria through the venue and organisational partnership with the Goethe-Institut. The activities included organiser training, partnership identification and training, face-to-face content events, etc. There was also a global launch, and several contributions drives to increase awareness. All content and activity were tracked.

In the second phase, the team partnered with Wikimedia usergroups in Tanzania and Uganda. Due to the project budget being reduced there was no formalised organisational training, in the beginning, however, there was mentorship and guidance. As before, there was global drives, social media campaigns and awareness, and tracking by the teams on the dashboard.

Read more information on the need Wiki Loves Women answers and more detail on previous activities. During 2020, the team organised two global drives (the Tell Us About Her drive in March and #SheSaid in November). We supported the WikiGap Nigeria Online Challenge spearheaded by Wikimedia Nigeria UserGroup, invited, instated, and consulted with the Wiki Loves Women Advisory Committee, assessed on the past, consulted the former participants and reflected on the right way to scale the project beyond its current geographic limitations into the future.

On Strategy
Wiki Loves Women contributes towards the UN’s SDG 5 Gender Equity: achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

With in the 2030 Wikimedia Strategy, the Wiki Loves Women project works towards resolving the following recommendations:

See Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/List of Initiatives for reference

What is expected for 2021

In the past, training for WIki Loves Women leads has been provided as and when needed, either during in-person intensive week-long meetings (first iteration) or remote catchup or training sessions. Although presentations were developed and a myriad of subjects covered, the process of information and knowledge transfer was not formalised. This became a problem when working with the 2nd group of countries as there was not the financial support to have an intensive in-person training week that had been possible with the initial cohorts.

In 2021 we intend to formalise the initiation and on-going training process. This will ensure a more effective and efficient information transfer, and has the potential for more groups, beyond those expected to participate in Wiki Loves Women 2021, to use the materials to develop Wiki Loves Women and other gender-gap initiatives around the world. The training will be done remotely, and materials provided online for extension and home-based activities. If certificates issued, training programmes can also be used as a CV point for participants.

The focus of the training and information transfer is multi-layered, and will focus on:

  • Initiation programme: a train the trainer – skills transfer and local programme building for the rest of the year.
  • Leadership training and organisers capacity building, especially women
  • Webinars – building knowledge of WM movement initiatives and tools over the year
  • Podcasts – interviewing and celebrating local notable women and WM organisers (leadership validation)

The training programme will be hosted (on Wikimedia France's mooc platform) and supported. Communications will be ongoing and programmatic support will be provided in mentorship. We have already invited 5 of the newer volunteer communities to see if they are interested in being involved in this programme.

To ensure activities are sustained on the ground, the project will encourage the Usergroups to apply for Rapid Grants through the WMF grant structure. This is not only building vital skills, it introduces the groups into developing long term thinking and sustainable practice around the project from the on-set. For those countries that have challenging political spaces, we seek to support them from WIA in South Africa, via this programme funding.

WLW focus during 2021

We want to:

  • Create sustainable reusable training materials and inspire actions to ensure that digital skills and leadership are harnessed and transferred to stimulate gender-gap activities in Africa and beyond.
  • Organise and host train-the-trainer sessions and leadership skills activities to provide efficient and effective transfer of knowledge and skills, and stimulate gender-gap related activities in Africa.
  • Consistently transfer knowledge in a multi-layered process through training, webinars and podcasts to develop a deeper understanding of potentials available to organizers and participants.
  • Further integrate participation within the Wikimedia ecosystem, learn from other initiatives, and feed it back to the collective through various communication channels (e.g. Gender Gap portal on meta).
  • Explore ways in which to improve and develop, in partnership with tech and dev actors, the on-wiki assessment tools to consistently assess the gaps and make the tools more relevant and effective (e.g. Humaniki).
  • Identify new global, regional and local partners and supporters.
  • Increase sustainable gender-sensitive participation in Wikimedia projects from Africa (especially supporting female leaders, organisers and contributors).
  • Support the emergence of new active groups in Africa through multi-layered sustained activity that assists with their integration into the Wikimedia ecosystem.

SMART objectives

  • A minimum of 3 African WM volunteer teams and/or content networks agrees to run a WLW program with Wiki in Africa in 2021-2.
  • One train-the-trainer programme is successfully developed and hosted by the WLW team, using the Wikimedia France Mooc new platform (https://formations.wikimedia.fr) during the course of 2021.
  • A minimum of 4 gender-gap related webinars and podcasts are developed, presented and published to consistently transfer knowledge and inspire further action.
  • Two online drives are run during 2021 to accelerate global visibility and participation in the programme, and consistent content contribution.
  • A minimum of 3 participating teams successfully receive financial support to organize a gender related program in their country from the WMF Rapid Grant programme; the applications submitted with the mentorship of Wiki in Africa.
  • Feedback is collected and collated from the participating teams about the program, and includes constructive improvements to further develop and enhance the programme for 2022.

Diversity + GLAM : Wiki Loves Africa 2021

 
The International Jury Report for Wiki Loves Africa 2020

Wiki Loves Africa (WLAf) is an annual photo contest that takes place annually and is run across the African continent. Wiki Loves Africa encourages the ‘crowd’ contribution of local knowledge of heritage and communal cultures by entering media (photographs, video and audio) about their environment onto Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikimedia projects.

As a project, Wiki Loves Africa answers the following strategic priorities for Wiki In Africa:

  • Increasing visibility
  • Lowering barriers to contribution
  • Addressing knowledge gaps and biases
  • Active focus on diversity, inclusion and empowerment
  • Developing emerging communities through capacity and skills transfer

Wiki Loves Africa particularly encourages participants to contribute media that illustrates a specific theme for that year. Each year the theme changes. Themes are chosen from topics that are universal, visually rich and culturally specific, for example, markets, rites of passage, festivals, public art, cuisine, natural history, urbanity, daily life, notable persons, etc.. In 2014 the theme was Cuisine. In 2015 the theme was Cultural Fashion and Adornment. The theme for 2016 was Dance and Music. 2017 was People at Work, 2019 was Play and 2020 Transport! The theme for 2021 has not been decided, yet.

Programme Objectives for Africa-wide participation are to:

  • Change the visual narrative of Africa that exists on global knowledge sources and creative repositories, such as Wikipedia and its sister projects
  • Counter-balance the representation of universal topics with images that depict African examples
  • Provide easy access for creatives from across Africa to a globally significant platform in order to share their passion for and pride in their cultural heritage and the contemporary practices
  • Provide training for creatives to expand and challenge their professional oeuvre using the open movement as a training ground
  • Reward people for contributing the right kind of material to Wikimedia projects.
  • Engender pride in local heritages, traditions, cultures and communities across Africa.

Programme Objectives in support of the Wikimedia Movement are to:

  • Draw attention to, and increase the illustration of, subjects that relate to Africa on the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia in many languages.
  • Introduce the benefits of, and ability to, contribute to Wikimedia Commons to new communities.
  • Support new volunteer communities as they work together around an important local project.
  • Build capacity for leadership and organiser activity within the programme

Read more information on 6-years of impact by Wiki Loves Africa and more detail on previous activities throughout the programme. A full review of Wiki Loves Africa 2020 is available here.

On Strategy
Wiki Loves Africa contributes towards the UN’s SDG 10 Reducing Inequalities: Reduce inequality within and among countries. The SDG focus also depending on each year’s theme, for example in 2020, the Transport theme answered SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.

Within the 2030 Wikimedia Strategy, the Wiki Loves Africa project works towards resolving the following recommendations:

See Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/List of Initiatives for reference

With regards to organising the contest, from the beginning of the contest, there has been a concerted effort, from the beginning to Ensure Equity in Decision-making as well as consistent effort with regards to Managing Internal Knowledge to ensure that the process is transparent and that all participating communities are fully supported in their actions.

What is different for 2021

As with all programmes during 2020, strategic thought has been strenuously undertaken into who should (and how they could) benefit from our programmes.

The two types of WLA participants we can mostly support are the Wikimedia organisers and the photographers. Over 2021 we are interested in providing additional effort into developing materials, hosting online training sessions, and promoting partnership opportunities. Specifics include:

  • a photographic training programme to transfer – core documentary photography skills, licences and attribution, open movement ethos, etc., in partnership with Ynternet.org on the “Les Jardins” project between Switzerland and Cameroon. This project is partially funded by Movetia.
  • Wikimedia Leadership and Organisers training – how to run local contests, jury tools, social media leverage, etc.
  • Webinar series to increase knowledge and skills transfer – e.g. ISA campaigns, GLAM partnerships, etc.
  • Sustained WLA programme throughout the year: ISA drive, etc.
  • Develop stronger alliances with collaborating photographic and GLAM organisations, and
  • Aligned participation and support to sister-drives such as WPWP.

Why WLA training for photographers
Lack of visual representation of Africa by African photographers is not just an issue that affects Wikipedia and its sister projects; it is a problem across global media 1 2. Although there are socio-political issues at play, much of this could be protected against if there were African-driven solutions that provide training and exposure. Photographers need opportunities to extend and expand their craft, and platforms for people to see their approach. Wiki Loves Africa can provide these two elements, whilst introducing them to alternative practices and opportunities within the Open Movement.

New materials would be created to train new African photographers through the open movement, and in partnership with existing photography programmes, schools and groups. This would involve developing skills, giving them exposure, ensuring a certain standard of work and knowledge of the open movement. The training would assist in moving them from amateur to professional, the Wikiworld would become their training ground.

Nos Jardins
status: co-funded. officially launched September 2020
This project is brand new. It aims at providing photographer training between January 2021 and June 2021. This free masterclass will cover various topics such as Libre Culture, Wikimedia Commons (use of, upload of images, description), Wikipedia (integration of images), free licenses, and photographic advanced skills. It is targeted to professional or advanced amateurs. The trainees will be requested to actively participate in Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Earth contests. The trainers will be Anthere, Georges, staff members of Ynternet.org, and professional photographers. The masterclass will be done in part by webinars and in part by offline events. The masterclass will take place both in Cameroon and Switzerland, simultaneously. At the end of the masterclass, a peer-review process will select the best works produced by photographers (and submitted to WLX) and two photo exhibitions of the best of will be organized (in Cameroon and Switzerland). Outcomes of the masterclass will be published under a free licence (eg, records of webinars, presentations, assignments templates etc.). The whole initiative seeks to increase the skill set of photographers, promote and provide a better understanding of Commons and the free movement, and increase the quality of images submitted to WLX contests. Website : https://www.nosjardins.org; Project page on Wikimedia Commons : c:Commons:Nos Jardins.
Nos Jardins is a co-hosted initiative by Ynternet.org (a swiss non-profit, former fiscal sponsor of two Wiki Loves Africa contests) and Wiki in Africa. The initiative is partially funded by Movetia. Training programs will be created by user:Anthere and Nos Jardins will be locally run in Cameroon by Georges Fodouop.

WLA focus during 2021

We want to:

  • Provide the international information, marketing, communications, training, and on-wiki backend support, materials and mentorship to ensure the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 competition goes ahead as planned.
  • Provide clear information and pathways for seamless contribution by participants in a variety of major languages (community support dependent).
  • Develop information and training materials specific to encouraging Librarians to host WLA across Africa in collaboration with AfLIA.
  • Create sustainable, reusable and adaptable training materials and host a training programme aimed at photographer development (documentary skills, using open licences, correct attribution, intro to open movement, professionalisation, etc.).
  • Organise online opportunities (webinars, meetings, training sessions, etc.) for leadership skills transfer and capacity development within the WM movement, which in addition will ensure further understanding of, and integration by, the teams within the larger ecosystem.
  • Continue partnering in research and investigation using WLA as an example to improve and develop the on-wiki assessment tools to consistently assess the gaps and make the tools more relevant and effective (e.g. Knowledge Gaps research, WMF Campaigns team, etc.).
  • Run a transparent international Jury process.
  • Identify potential new global, regional and local partners, funders and supporters.
  • Ensure additional support and mentorship for all participating teams.
  • Increase and support the sustainable contribution to Wikimedia projects from Africa (especially supporting female leaders, organisers, and contributors).
  • Support the emergence of new active groups in Africa through multi-layered sustained activity that assists with their integration into the Wikimedia ecosystem.
  • Train photographers for better skills and increased understanding of Wikimedia and free culture. Target: pro and advanced amateurs in Switzerland and Cameroon. Partially funded by Movetia

SMART objectives

Wiki Loves Africa contest

  • The contest takes place in the first quarter of 2021 (theme to be decided).
  • A minimum of 15 African Wikimedia volunteer groups participate through local focused WLA activities.
  • At least 10k images are submitted to the 2021 competition.
  • Reuse on Wikimedia projects of at least 10% after a year (12 months after contest).
  • A masterclass results in the training of at least 10 photographers in Cameroon.
  • The international jury team has at least 5 international members and conducts a transparent process towards the final selection, and publishing of a jury report.
  • A minimum of 5 photography, organiser or wikimedia-related webinars are developed, presented and published to consistently transfer knowledge.
  • At least 2 post-competition events, on-line drives, or activities to extend the theme to improve reuse and add information to contributed images are run during 2021.
  • A survey is conducted amongst local team organizers, showing high levels of satisfaction with the contest. Constructive improvements to further develop and enhance the programme for 2022.
  • Documentation of best practices is completed and a final report published for the general public.

Nos Jardins:

  • At least 10 trainees in each country attend all sessions
  • all sessions planned take place (3 online, 8 face to face)
  • trainees participate to Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Earth
  • photo exhibitions take place in 2nd half of 2021
  • the final survey shows general satisfaction

Offline and Technology support: Wiki Fundi & ISA Tool 2021

The tech projects have been developed by Wiki In Africa in order to better support community engagement and to ensure that some of the outcomes of each project are easier to achieve. For the moment, our focus is on WikiFundi (with offline resources) and the award-winning ISA tool. This does not mean that other tech solutions might be considered and developed within the next year.

As key technology and accessibility projects, Wiki Fundi and ISA both answer to the following strategic priorities for Wiki In Africa:

  • Increasing visibility
  • Lowering barriers to contribution
  • Active focus on diversity, inclusion, and empowerment
  • Developing emerging communities through capacity and skills transfer
  • Addressing knowledge gaps and biases
  • Leveraging the mutual benefit of partnerships

In the case of WikiFundi, it was developed to facilitate outreach and education goals in places where access and data can be challenging. With regards to ISA this was developed to ensure that the images contributed each year to Wiki Loves Africa (and, in turn, other photographic contests, and GLAM collections) achieve their best potential placement on the Wikimedia projects through better labeling and descriptions.

Through 2021, WikiFundi will be translated into another language/s, and usage will increase beyond Africa. The ISA tool will continue to bring structured data to Wikimedia Commons images through strategic online drives. Wikimedia SV has declared interest in further adding to the ISA Tool and has applied for funding from the Swedish Innovation Agency as part of a GLAM improvement project.

On Strategy
WikiFundi contributes towards combining UN’s SDGs 4 and 10 Quality Education and Reducing Inequalities by providing an offline educational platform that facilitates training and digital skills lessons continues when data access is limited or not possible.

Within the 2030 Wikimedia Strategy, our projects works towards resolving the following recommendations:

See Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/List of Initiatives for reference

What is different for 2021

WikiFundi Last year, we mentioned exploring two directions: 1) set up an export system and 2) make the platform available in other languages

We have planned for 2021 an extension of the existing WikiFundi software, through a program that includes 4 main elements

  1. the translation of the platform into Spanish with the tech implementation (done by Kiwix),
  2. the creation or update of resources provided on the platform,
  3. the creation of a leaflet to describe the extent of the offline possibilities offered by our movement as well as guidelines to implementation, to come in support of the activities of the offline Wikimedia usergroup. This leaflet would particularly target professional librairies or documentation center (Aflia has expressed interest for such supporting documentation)
  4. several edit-a-thons organized with WikiFundi and raspberry Pi in poorly connected Spanish speaking areas, supported by two Wikimedia Usergroups : Noircir Wikipedia and AfroCrowd.

The project has been fully articulated in French and submitted for co-funding by Wikimedia CH (Wikimedia CH has expressed its wish to support, but final decision pending in December 2020, quality of WMCH fundraising dependant).

ISA No significant difference from last year: continued drives to support Wiki Loves Africa and other Commons’ based collections. Although as mentioned above, Wikimedia SV is potentially interested in scaling the ISA Tool and has applied for funding from the Swedish Innovation Agency as part of a GLAM improvement project.

Goals for 2021

  • Provide WikiFundi available in Spanish,
  • Promote this offline tool, foster new partnerships, install ambassadors for increased use and impact,
  • Promote offline activities generally, as well as the Offline Wikimedians Usergroup in the Wikimedia movement and beyond, and
  • Promote the ISA tool for use to improve many media files on Commons.

List of activities

  • Coordination with translator/s, and development team, test and debug.
  • Research, collate, interview, curate, translate, etc. appropriate additional resources for users to be placed on WikiFundi.
  • Coordination with other teams to get pilot used locally, usage documented, and collate user experience feedback.
  • Organise various small ISA-based contests to improve structured data descriptions of former Wiki Loves Africa contests.
  • Support and collaborate with Wikimedia SV in any improvements or extensions of ISA should their funding plans be successful.

SMART objectives

  • WikiFundi available in Spanish.
  • A leaflet about offline activities in the Wikimedia movement is published.
  • At least 50,000 edits done through ISA in 2021.

Education: WikiChallenge African Schools + Open Knowledge Curriculum 2021

Wiki In Africa’s education focus is based on a long-game strategy. Many of the volunteers coming into the movement must first un-learn and re-assess how copyright and knowledge platforms collate information and work before they can effectively contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The education programmes that we build and run in various communities and iterations are in order to provide an alternative view to how knowledge is created and shared, through absorbing open movement practices, and vital digital, research and writing skills in practical applications.

Wiki In Africa’s education programmes assists schools and teachers as they teach students how to write curriculum-relevant articles for Wikipedia. Thus students learn how to do research, analyze outcomes, collaborate, write real reports for a global audience and develop the technical and editorial skills to add content on local subjects to Wikipedia. In some cases, the programmes use WikiFundi, the offline editing environment that mimics the experience of editing Wikipedia, to navigate context-specific challenges. In other cases, this offline solution is not needed.

On Strategy
WikiFundi contributes towards combining UN’s SDGs 4 Quality Education by providing educational solutions that foster better digital skills transfer, a greater understanding of the open movement, and knowledge creation and dissemination through fun practical applications.

Within the 2030 Wikimedia Strategy, the Educations project works towards resolving the following recommendations:

See Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/List of Initiatives for reference

What is different for 2021

There are three Wiki in Africa Education initiatives we will be running in 2021
WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique
status: advanced - 4th year.
No significant modification from previous years in the way it is run. Fully supported by Orange Foundation

WikiChallenge Bénin
status: just born.
It was presented last year in our APG as a future spin-off of WikChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique, but instead of being run in partnership with Orange Foundation within a limited network (schools registered in Orange Foundation Digital School Network), with kids 9-12 years old, this initiative is meant to be run in partnership with Wikimedians of Benin, with a selected number of schools, with kids 9-17 years old. The partnership has been finalized and Wikimedia CH agreed to give us a small funding for this initiative. It was just in birth stage when Covid-19 hit and we had to delay the project till schools are safely opened again. Projection is that this initiative will successfully relaunch in 2021.

Open Knowledge Curriculum
status: nascent - research and development
Partner with a research institute through the supply of a research fellowship to conduct a feasibility study into the need and efficacy of OKC. Work with curriculum specialists to build curriculum after research findings.

Goals

  • Run the WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique contest in the school year 2020-2021,
  • Launch the WikiChallenge Benin spin-off and collect lessons for the following year,
  • Conduct a feasibility study for OKC through a South African university.

List of activities

  • Run the WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique. Targets : kids 9-13 in 8 francophone african countries. Fully funded by Orange Foundation
  • Run the pilot of WikiChallenge Bénin. Target: students 9-17 in Benin. Partially funded by Wikimedia CH
  • Open Knowledge Curriculum partner with a research institute to create feasibility study, work with curriculum specialists to build curriculum after research findings.

SMART objectives

WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique (for information, not included in metrics)

  • at least 8 countries participating
  • at least 40 schools participating
  • at least 100 articles produced and published on Vikidia
  • winners selected, announced, celebrated and gifted

WikiChallenge Benin

  • at least 4 schools participating
  • at least 20 articles produced and published on Vikidia or Wikipedia
  • the process is documented, results recorded and post-mortem established
  • the participants satisfied and willing to do it again

Open Knowledge Curriculum

  • one feasibility study is delivered by researchers
  • application of feasibility study to project plan and curriculum.

Grant Metrics Reporting

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Required. Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

Needs Request

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Midterm report

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The 2021 APG funding has been important in moving Wiki In Africa forward on its long term strategic plan that was reviewed and added to in 2020. With the addition of two new staff members, it has been exciting to see the programmes not only progress and scale, but to also expand into new spaces and reach the community in new ways.

Wiki In Africa’s strategic focus is to release the knowledge and cultures of Africa onto Wikipedia by activating and supporting African communities in fun, yet multi-layered projects. Our key purpose remains creating and sustaining continent-wide projects and interventions that encourage and support new and emerging communities by building skills and providing opportunities for engagement, growth and personal and community development. This has been done through the addition of overt training, mentoring and coaching elements to our engagement programmes.

Over the first half of 2021 Wiki In Africa’s main focus has been on the following programmatic elements:

  • The Wiki Loves Africa 2021 photographic contest was successfully held. Additions to the annual competition include:
  • Communications, community facilitation and support from the Wiki In Africa 2021 Intern User:Ceslause
  • Nos Jardins, a professional and open photographer development training programme in Cameroon and Switzerland (in partnership with Ynternet.org and WM Usergroup Cameroon, and funded by Movetia)
  • a celebration of Women’s Month through a ‘’Tell Us About Her: Women at Work’’ image caption drive on the ISA Tool,
  • the development and creation of the WLW Focus Group which started in May 2021,
  • The welcome and integration to the team of a new Wiki Loves Women staff member, User:Shoodho,
  • WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique, our French speaking Education programme, successfully took place over 2021 across 9 countries (operated by Wiki In Africa in collaboration with Wikimedia Usergroups in Mali, Tunisie, Guinée and Cameroon, and funded by Orange Foundation)
  • WikiFundi has been developed in Spanish (in collaboration with Spanish-language Wikimedias, Kiwix and funded by Wikimedia CH) (on-going project)
  • WikiAfrica Hour, our monthly vodcast to support the activities of the WikiAfrica movement and wikimedians across Africa, was created, launched and production on the monthly programme continues,
  • WikiAfrica Heritage program was created and launched, in collaboration with the Simon’s Town Museum,

Additional support for, and alliances with, Wikimedia groups and external groups examples include:

  • Speakers at Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation’s WikiGap and Wikimedia Foundation Nigeria Inc's International Women's Day Conference'
  • Speakers at Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation’s International Wiki Photo Talk (Virtual Conference)
  • The Wiki Loves Africa prize for Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021
  • Speaker at AfLIA pre-conference introducing Offline Tools + Resources for Education to Africa's Librarians, simultaneously presented in English and French.
  • Advisors at Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2021 to take place in the second half of 2021

From an administrative point of view, Wiki In Africa has done the following:

  • Doubled the team to include the Wiki In Africa Intern and Wiki Loves Women Intern with on-boarding, systems and processes. You can read about Ceslause and Candy here.
  • Submitted applications for additional project funding, and
  • Completed financial and narrative reports.

Please note: In this report we have included elements that were not part of the APG funding scope. We are very grateful for the Wikimedia Foundation’s support through the APG funding, however it only funds some of Wiki In Africa’s activities. We believe that it would not show the whole picture - and our community impact - if we did not include the projects that are funded externally.

Program story : Nos Jardins

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Nos Jardins is a training programme that develops the professional skills and open knowledge of Africa's photographers. It was developed as a pilot project to support and grow the Wiki Loves Africa community. It was developed by user:Anthere from Wiki In Africa in collaboration with User:Thanough from Ynternet.org and funded by Movetia. The project was conducted in Cameroon and Switzerland with Wikimedia Usergroup Cameroon being the primary partner, and User:Serieminou (Lontsie Minette) anduser:Leuwec (Carole Leuwe) the primary facilitators in Cameroon.

Nos Jardins is an international project launched in Q4 of 2020. Its main goal is to train civil society actors, with an emphasis on professionals and amateur photographers to increase their skills in both photography and free culture, notably copyleft and free licenses. Nos Jardins is also a wider partnership between various organizations in Switzerland and Cameroon, providing networking opportunities to its participants.

Trainings and other project activities have been taking place since early 2021, through a mix of online and in-person activities, and are done exclusively in French.
Webinars were open to all. Several training materials were created as part of the project. See for example this historical timeline created for the first webinar to present free culture.
As part of their practical activities and requirements, the Cameroon-based participants contributed over 300 images (of excellent quality overall !) to at least one wikimedia photographic contest, in this case Wiki Loves Africa. Running the project revealed a bit more challenging in Switzerland due to rather severe meeting restrictions in early 2021.

So far the follwoing activities have occurred:

The project activities will conclude with the organisation of two photo exhibitions in both countries. This is set for Sept/October.

Here are a few of the Nos Jardin's images that were submitted to c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2021

Links

Program Progress

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Gender Equity: Wiki Loves Women

 

Wiki Loves Women uses layered initiatives to bridge the digital gender divide by focusing specifically on participation and content creation. It encourages the contribution of meaningful content to the Wikimedia projects as a platform to transfer skills, build confidence and self-worth within a supportive community, and show the direct impact they make. Wiki Loves Women has been operating for five years across Africa, working with 76 gender-focused, cultural and community organisations in 8 countries: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, with two event programmes in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Wiki Loves Women answers the following strategic priorities for Wiki In Africa:

  • Increasing visibility
  • Addressing knowledge gaps and biases
  • Active focus on diversity, inclusion and empowerment
  • Developing emerging communities through capacity and skills transfer
  • Leveraging the mutual benefit of partnerships
What has happened in 2021

Wiki Loves Women activities kicked off in March, International Women’s Month, with two key activities - the launch of Wiki Loves Women’s Tell Us About Her image information drive on the ISA Tool, and support for Wikimedia Nigeria’s Challenge the Gender Bias for Women Empowerment online event.

 
The theme for the Wiki Loves Women's March drive this year was Women at work and it aimed at adding relevant Wikidata linked information to the images depicting women at work. The campaign information and results are available on the ISA challenges page. The Isa is a multilingual, mobile-first 'micro contributions' tool, that makes it easy for people to add Structured Data to images on Wikimedia Commons.
Results:
The Tell Us About Her : Women at Work drive on the ISA Tool saw 16295 images being described by 29 contributors, who posted 87,787 descriptions!!!
The top 3 contributors were:
Challenges:
We had to disqualify the 2nd placed winner due to an unexpected manipulation of the tool. He just applied random WikiData items to each image in order to artificially elevate his score. This was found out before any prizes were distributed. The physical prizes for all the winners could not be sent due to the postal restrictions currently happening in South Africa as a result of COVID.
  • WikiGap and Wikimedia Foundation Nigeria Inc's International Women's Day Conference
 
IWD Conference by the Wikimedia Foundations Nigeria Inc in collaboration with the Embassy of Sweden. Held on Monday, 8th of March, Wiki In Africa's Isla Haddow-Flood presented Mind the Gender Gap on Wikipedia about the impact of the Gender-Gap across the Wikimedia movement and what the movement is doing about it.
A Wiki Loves Women prize has been offered to winners of the writing drive being held across Nigeria.
  • Gender Gap portal
The WLW team used our social media channels to highlight other opportunities to be involved in content creation about women through March, as detailed on a collaborative Gender Gap events page.
  • Wiki Loves Women : Focus Group
 
The rest of the energy for the first half of the year was on employing and onboarding the Wiki Loves Women administrative intern User:Shoodho and planning the Wiki Loves Women activities for the second half of the year.
The Wiki Loves Women’s Focus Group was initiated in May 2021. The 2021 Focus Group is made up of 12 women from Botswana, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. The Wikimedian experience intentionally range from Dinosaur to Newbie. This new tactic is aimed at developing a self-supporting network of women from within the open movement and aligned organisations who will collectively supply the skills and knowledge to make their gender-equity Wikimedia-facing programmes sustainable and successful.
The Focus Group is a coaching programme that is just one part of a multilayered strategy to ensure that gender-equity is at the heart of open movement community programmes across the continent. Two working meetings have already been held by the group. These are planned monthly closed sessions with follow-up tasks and collaboration meetups. There are also office hour sessions offered as needed. There is also a telegram group to support on-going work. Focus group members have applied for Rapid Grants to host #SheSaid drive on Wikiquote in October 2021.
What is expected in 2nd half of 2021
  • Continued growth and activity from the WLW Focus Group,
  • The global online SheSaid Drive in October 2021,
  • The Organisers Event Toolkit: an online resource with step-by-steps, checklists and everything gender-equity partners need to host their own events within the gender active space,
  • Applications to fund the launch and production of the Inspiring Open Women podcast series,
  • The continued development of the Gender-Equity Wikimedia Mooc: this is in development until the end of the year and beyond, with the aim of being hosted in 2022. It is for Wikimedia organisers wishing to start gender programmes in their community; focus theoretical, meta subjects - information, visibility, knowledge transfer;
  • Promotion and visibility of the WLW initiative
  • Support to the independant initiative Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2021
Links

Diversity + GLAM: Wiki Loves Africa & WikiAfrica Heritage

Wiki Loves Africa

 
The annual Wiki Loves Africa photographic competition is pivotal to taking back the visual narrative by taking a massive and collective look at contemporary society and cultural heritage across Africa through the eyes of its citizens. Wiki Loves Africa has, over 7 editions, has seen the contribution of 72,000+ images to Wikimedia Commons by 9,277 photographers from across the continent. The images have a life beyond the competition, with images being placed in articles on Wikipedia, and the collective body of images being viewed over 713 million times since 2014; with 25 million views in April 2021 alone.
“Photography continues to play a key role in how we are seen, not just as Africans, but as black people from every corner of the world. Stereotypes and prejudice are incited by images, and if it’s used, yet again, to undermine those of us who are truly doing the difficult work, then we need to have some uncomfortable conversations.“
-- Aida Muluneh, Ethiopian photographer, Al Jazeera, 2017
What has been done so far
 
International 2021 competition poster in English
Wiki Loves Africa - the 7th iteration - was held from 15th February until 30th April 2021 under the theme Health+Wellness. The initial dates of the contest were decided on by the Wiki Loves Africa organizers community via a poll on Telegram. The 2021 theme was Health+Wellness. The Wiki Loves Africa’s 2021 theme was decided on through the Wiki Loves Africa 2020/Survey and we stressed that competitors should look at it through a positive, healthy (!) viewpoint of where we are and how we can be into the future.
As with every year, the Wikimedia volunteer communities are key motivators to the local success of the project. In 2021, 21 communities officially took part in preparing events and creating local noise around the contest. As usual, the media competition accepted entries from across Africa, and from people beyond Africa, as long as the images represented African-related material or content.
The contest resulted in 8,319 media files from 1,149 competitors in 47 countries. 76% of those competitors were new to Commons. The images have since been viewed 114,825 during April 2021, with 1,765,984 views since they were collectively submitted. Current usage of the images stands at 6.53% (543 distinct images have been applied to Wikimedia project pages).
National winners have been announced by some of the local teams, others are yet to finalise their selection. The International Jury process is ongoing and the resulting winners will be announced at Wikimania in August 2021.
Please note: the full report of the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 contest can be found on the Results and best practices page.
In 2021, webinars were organized to increase the skills and autonomy of the local teams, in particular in relation to copyright and legal considerations, and in relation to the qualification of images (featured images, quality images or valued image labels).
Partners

We are grateful to the partners and organizations that participated and hosted national events and online sessions this year.

 
Additional elements

Other elements have supported the expansion of the Wiki Loves Africa competition are:

  • the c:Commons:Nos Jardins photographer training programme that has been active in Cameroon and Switzerland. This project is ongoing and has been conducted in French by User:Anthere in collaboration with Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group and Ynternet.org. It is funded by Movetia.
  • Speaker at Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation’s International Wiki Photo Talk (Virtual Conference)
  • Wiki Loves Africa has for the second year sponsored a specific prize in Wikipedia Pages Wants Photo drive.
Links
What is expected in the 2nd half of 2021
  • WLA Winners announced and Jury report released (August-September)
  • Gifts to winners and thank yous to International Jurors (August-September)
  • Promotion of Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021 for suitable participation (July-August), results (September) and gifts to winners (end of the year)
  • Creation of survey to WLA local organizers (August), running survey (September), release of results (October)
  • Creation of survey to WLA participants (August-September), running survey (September-October), release of results (November)
  • c:Commons:Nos Jardins photographer training programme photo exhibitions (October-November)
  • Image information integration drive for Wiki Loves Africa 2021 images on the ISA Tool
  • Instagram takeover for past winners (Sept-Dec)
  • Quality, Featured, and Valued images team work
  • Seeking funding and partners for the extension of c:Nos Jardins photographer training programme into other countries
  • Preparation towards 2022 competition

NEW GLAM PROJECT : WikiAfrica Heritage

 
WikiAfrica Heritage introductory session
As an extension of the 2020 Finding GLAMs collaboration with the Simon’s Town Museum the WikiAfrica Heritage is a GLAM training and support programme that is being created for heritage professionals and enthusiasts based within the Western Cape, South Africa.
WikiAfrica Heritage is intended to be developed into a programme template with materials that can be adapted to GLAM training across Africa, and beyond.
The WikiAfrica Heritage’s inaugural session started in May 2021 and will take place monthly throughout the year. It is a collaboration between Wiki In Africa and the Simon's Town Museum, Cape Town.

Offline and Technology support: Wiki Fundi & ISA Tool 2021

Offline : WIKIFUNDI

 
For 2021 Wikimedia CH has funded an extension of the existing WikiFundi software into the Spanish Language. Consult the WikiFundi/2021 project page for the full extent of this ongoing project. This third iteration of the offline software consists of the following four elements:
  1. the translation of the platform into Spanish with the tech implementation (ongoing by team and Kiwix),
  2. the creation or update of offline resources provided on the platform (finalized),
  3. the creation of an updated leaflet about WikiFundi, in three languages (ongoing)
  4. the creation of a new leaflet to describe the extent of the offline possibilities offered by our movement as well as guidelines to implementation, to come in support of the activities of the offline Wikimedia usergroup. This leaflet would particularly target professional librairies or documentation center (Aflia has expressed interest for such supporting documentation, pending support)
  5. several edit-a-thons organized with WikiFundi and raspberry Pi in poorly connected Spanish-speaking areas (probably in 2022, supported by Wikimedia Chapters and UserGroups, dependant on date of new software release and pandemic situation)
 
The project is led entirely by User:Anthere with comms support by User:Islahaddow. It is supported by a small group of Spanish-focused Wikimedians and two Wikimedia Usergroups (Noircir Wikipedia and AfroCrowd). The project is still in progress.

Structured Data Tool : ISA

There has been no significant change to the software itself since last year. The Tool was the result of the Wiki In Africa concept being developed by a cross-Wikimedia team in support of Wiki Loves X competitions via the c:Commons:Structured Data on Commons project.
Impact (from inception until July 2021):
  • 299780 contributions
  • 481 users/contributors
  • 149 campaigns
As you can see above, the platform continues to be used to drive support for Wikimedia projects. Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Women and other projects and usergroups use the platform to run focus drives around Commons’ based collections. There have been 149 campaigns created so far, some of which being rather large tasks efforts with several thousands of pictures, whilst others are fine tuned smaller campaigns. This is the campaign @149 : Wiki Women Design (2020-2021)
In March 2021, the The Tell Us About Her : Women at Work drive took place using the ISA Tool. The drive resulted in 16295 images being described by 29 contributors, who posted 87,787 Wikidata-linked descriptions.
A similar drive is expected to take place for Wiki Loves Africa images in October 2021.

Education: WikiChallenge African Schools

 
The WikiChallenge African Schools encourages schools across Africa to compete by writing Vikidia articles about their city, town, village, suburb, a local landmark or a notable local person using the WikiFundi platform. The competition is a fun introduction to writing Vikidia articles and add information about Africa to the global online encyclopedia. The project was conceptualised and developed by User:Anthere and User:Islahaddow in 2017. It has since been managed by User:Anthere at Wiki In Africa and funded by the Orange Foundation as part of it’s Digital Schools offering.
In the first part of 2021, Wiki In Africa conducted the third edition of WikiChallenge African Schools writing competition across Francophone Africa.

The 2021 Contest

 
WikiChallenge African Schools in Cameroon
The WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique (WikiChallenge African Schools) is a multi-national writing contest running on Vikidia, the little sister of Wikipedia dedicated to children aged 8-15 years. It has been running for the 4th year.
WikiChallenge African Schools 2021 was organized in 9 African countries and resulted in 138 articles and 869 photos, drawings and videos being submitted by students from 100 schools.
The WikiChallenge African Schools contest is aimed at students between the ages of 9 and 13 that are attending primary schools in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Tunisia.
As always, the 2021 contest was conducted in partnership with the Orange Foundation and its local versions in the countries concerned, as well as Wikimedians and Vikidia members of Wikimedia Tunisie, Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group, Wikimedia Community User Group Mali, Groupe d’utilisateurs de la communauté Wikimedia Guinée Conakry, the Vikidia Association, and Wikimedians for Offline Wikis User Group.
 
Wrapped prizes

The 2021 International Grand Prize Winners are:

  • Madagascar: Vako-drazana – School for the deaf and dumb ADSF Antananarivo
  • DRC: Malewa – Primary School In Matonge
  • Senegal: Exploitation of honey in Bandia – Primary School of Bandia

The 2021 National prizes winners are:

Cameroon
  1. Mbil Bekon (The ghost hole), Rosa Verenini Catholic School
  2. Cassava stick, Obala Public School

Madagascar

  1. Canal des Pangalanes, Ilafy Public Primary School
  2. Fantsiolitsa, Maibahoaka Public Primary School
Mali
  1. Toguna, Banguetaba I School
  2. Manantali Dam, Manantali School 2
Senegal
  1. Lac Rose, Cité Imprimerie School
  2. Rônier, Elementary School of Baliga
Tunisia
  1. The traditional wedding feast in Djerba, Taourit School
  2. Shearing of sheep wool in Beni Mhira Tataouine , Ras El Oued Tataouine primary school
DRC
  1. Papa Wemba, Primary School 1 Matonge
  2. Kulunas, Primary School 1 Kamina
Ivory Coast
  1. Yam festival in Sanwi country, Eboakro d’Aboisso school group
  2. History of the Essouman, Mabianeha Public Primary School in Assinie
Guinea Conakry
  1. Eau Coyah, Coyah Primary School
  2. Bagataye, Saint David Primary School
Burkina Faso
  1. Baongo II , Ecole St Dominique de Guzman – Yamtenga
Links

Volunteer development and community support: WikiAfrica Hour

 
WikiAfrica Hour’s inaugural episode.
Newly launched in 2021, WikiAfrica Hour is a monthly programme broadcast online simultaneously on youtube and Facebook live where members of Africa’s Wikimedians can chat, learn and discuss all things Wikimedia and the Open Movement. The programme has been created and produced by Wiki In Africa and, whilst in its early stages, is receiving platform support from the Wikipedia Weekly team.
The format is split into two parts with a focus topic with guests or a panel of speakers, with audience comments and questions answered in real time by the guests. The topic focus is then followed by the latest Wikimedia news, alerts and opportunities.
WikiAfrica Hour is a concept that was developed by Florence Devouard (User:Anthere) and Isla Haddow-Flood (User:Islahaddow) and has been activated by the Wiki In Africa team to support, inform and build the knowledge of Wikimedia and Open members across the WikiAfrica movement.
It is hosted and facilitated by Wiki In Africa's Ceslause Ogbonnaya (User:Ceslause), with support from Florence Devouard, Isla Haddow-Flood and Candy Khohliwe (user:Shoodho). :Heaps of Wiki-gratitude from the team are owed to Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado) and the Wikipedia Weekly team for their gracious technical support.

What has been done so far

  • April - Episode 1: Katherine Maher's journey in Wikimedia - YouTube link
The launch episode was honored to welcome Katherine Maher, former CEO of w:en:Wikimedia Foundation
A bare-it-all session with some of Wiki Commons shining stars, and experts in Photography, as they share Commons-worthy photography tips and many more.
The WMF Board Elections take place in 2021. An opportunity to discuss the big elephant in the room, with some "been there, done that" guest speakers.
  • July - Episode 4: WikiEvents Unpacked (still to come)
A peep behind the scenes of two unmissable Wiki events, Wikimania 2021 and WikiIndaba 2021. Hear all about what is planned, how it benefits you and your work and what is involved in the organizing process...all unpacked!

Spending update Midterm

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In January 2021, we received 50% of the agreed grant from the WMF foundation. This was in order to mitigate against foreign currency fluctuations. The report below is based on the 50% figure. The 50% of the Simple APG funds we have spent during the grant period is:

  • 552 000 rands / 36 360 USD

You can find the documents here:

We are currently aligned with our global budget.
Our 6 months budget was 757 000 rands for the first 6 months, and our expenses are currently at 552 000 rands. This looks lower, but some staff payments and equipment reimbursement were made early July and are not reflected in this report ending June 30th. If we take those July payments into account, we are correctly aligned with the budget.

Looking more in detail, there is no unexpected differences within categories between budgeted and actual. No difficulties to report so far.

However, a change of budget allocation was implemented in April 2021. P2 staff allocated time went from 2.5 FTE to 2.0 FTE from May on. Also, first intern started working in March whilst the budget covered the entire year. With the freed money, we decided to hire a Wiki Loves Women dedicated intern to join the team. So whilst we had initially planned for one intern, we are operating with two (and that's great...).

Grant Metrics Reporting Midterm

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Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

Final report

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2021 was an exciting and fulfilling year for Wiki In Africa and its projects. The year saw the implementation of several newly honed approaches within the projects with regards to leadership training, skills transfer, and mentorship, community cohesion through access to discussion and knowledge, and varied opportunities for engagement, growth and support.

The programmatic elements were further enhanced through virtually doubling our team, greater organisational clarity around its mission, goals and objectives and how the projects work to fulfill these goals through an exercise that established our Theory of Change.

Clarity around programmatic and organisation direction facilitated better articulation of the importance of the work beyond the Wikimedia community.
This resulted in WikiFundi being awarded the 2021 the Open Asset award from the Open Education Awards for Excellence and a seed grant being awarded by the Goethe-Institut for the Wiki Loves Women Inspiring Open podcast series.

Further, despite travel bans and on-going COVID uncertainty, Wiki In Africa co-leads were able to support global Wikimedia community development programmes and Open movement expansion via such examples as contributing to the WMF Community Funds Committee onboarding DEI training, supporting WikiIndaba 2021, and providing insight into possibilities from presenting at the AFLIA pre-Conference, Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation Inc’s Challenge the Gender Bias for Women Empowerment event and Photography focus, and two Keynotes presentations for State of the Map Africa, and State of the Map Libya.

These essential organisational and programmatic developments could not have been possible without the consistent organisational funding offered by the Simple Annual Plan Grant and in 2022 the Community Fund. Thank you Wikimedia Foundation!

Administrative successes include:

Programmatic elements over 2021 included:

  • Access via technological solutions: Wiki Fundi and ISA Tool
    • WikiFundi has been developed in Spanish (in collaboration with Spanish-language Wikimedians and Kiwix. Funded by Wikimedia CH) and the English and French versions have been updated. For all three language editions, reading, teaching and training resources have been updated and expanded. Read about the 2021 releases here.
    • In 2021, WikiFundi was awarded the Open Education Award of Excellence for Open Infrastructure. Read about the Open Infrastructure 2021 award page here.
    • As intended, the ISA tool has been used by many Wikimedia groups focused on improving the use, details and descriptions of images in certain categories.
  • Community Cohesion: WikiAfrica Hour + Twitter Takeovers
    • WikiAfrica Hour - this was launched in 2021 as a live broadcast, interview format monthly ‘vodcast’ that aims to reconnect, network, and drive sharing and collaborations across the continent. The ‘show’ is currently hosted by Ceslause Ogbonnaya.
    • WikiAfrica Twitter Takeover - community support for Africa-based Wikimedians via WikiAfrica’s Twitter Take over programme in 2021
    • Gender-equity community support and visibility through the Twitter Takeover programme of Wiki Loves Women’s Twitter account.
  • Wikimedia training for GLAMs: WikiAfrica Heritage
    • Launched in May 2021, the WikiAfrica Heritage programme is a monthly introduction to and guidance in working with low-resourced GLAM organisation and heritage focused groups. It is conducted in partnership with the Simon’s Town Museum, Cape Town, South Africa.

Please note:'’
In this report we have included elements that were not part of the APG funding scope. We are very grateful for the Wikimedia Foundation’s support through the APG funding, however it only funds some of Wiki In Africa’s activities. We believe that it would not show the whole picture - and our community impact - if we did not also include the projects that are funded externally.

Program story: The launch and impact of WikiAfrica Hour

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In 2021, with the addition of the Wiki In Africa intern Ceslause Ogbonnaya, it was possible to launch the WikiAfrica Hour. WikiAfrica Hour is a live broadcast, interview format monthly ‘vodcast’ that aims to reconnect, network, and drive sharing and collaborations across the continent. Topics covered have ranged from the WMF board elections to UCoC to photographic usage to attending Wikimedia events, why portraits of notable people is a viable solution to interviews with key people such as the opening interview with outgoing CEO Katherine Maher.

Impact of WikiAfrica Hour episodes over 2021
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  • Launched in April 2021
  • The 2021 and 2022 WikiAfrica Hour host is Ceslause Ogbonnaya
  • 8 episodes + 2 x conference specials for Wikimania and 1 for WikiFrancophone Convention
  • 40 special guests covering all manner of Wikimedia-related topics
  • 1812 total views (30 Jan 2022)
    • 1,430 YouTube views for all 8 episodes + the two Wikimania special
    • 181 on Facebook
    • 201 views on Wikipedia Weekly's YouTube and Facebook channels
WikiAfrica Hour episodes
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#1: The lasting impressions of outgoing

Wikimedia Foundation CEO, Katherine Maher

#2: What's involved when sharing your

photographs on Wikipedia

#3: What it takes to be on the WMF Board, what this

means for Africa and who are our nominations

 
 
 
#4: Wikimedia events, even online, build communities in 2021 #5: Photographers from Africa tell the stories

behind their award-winning Wiki Loves Africa images

#6: Ever wondered what these things mean ...

UCOC, EDGR, SCF, U4C?

 
 
 
#7: WikiIndaba Special: Fund your Wikimedia projects.

WMF Community Resources team and Regional Committee tell us how

#8: How Wikipedia articles are illustrated –

making people who are invisible or ignored visible

#9 Offline technology bridges the access

challenges of the digital divide

 
 
 
Wikimania Special: The WikiAfrica Hour Xperience

pre-recorded recap of 6 episodes

Wikimania Special: The WikiAfrica Hour Xperience –

live session featuring impressions from the African Wikimedian community

WikiAfrica Hour at WikiConvention Francophone 2021
WikiAfrica Hour Guest list over 2021
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S/N Special guest Community/Organization Portfolio
1 Katherine Maher Wikimedia Foundation Outgoing CEO WMF
2 Sadik Shahadu Wiki Loves Earth in Ghana Project Coordinator WLE
3 Isaac Olatunde Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Project Manager & Coordinator of WPWP
4 Minette Lontsie c:Commons:Nos Jardins Cameroun Lead Nos Jardins
5 Anas Adam Nigerian Commons Photographers User Group Coordinator UG
6 Maria Sefidari Wikimedia Foundation Former WMF Board Chair
7 Florence Devouard Wikimedia Foundation Former WMF Board Chair
8 Zita Zage Wikimedia Foundation 2021 WMF Board election : Facilitation for Sub-Saharan Africa region
9 Mahuton Poussoupe Wikimedia Foundation 2021 WMF Board election : Facilitation for French language
10 Mohammed Bachounda Wikimedia Foundation 2021 WMF Board election :  Facilitation for French language and MENA region
11 Eliane Dominique Yao Wikimedia Foundation 2021 Board election 2021 WMF board election candidate (From Ivory Coast)
12 Reda Kerbouche Wikimedia Foundation 2021 Board election 2021 WMF board election candidate (From Algeria)
13 Ian Douglas Scott Wikimedia Foundation 2021 Board election 2021 WMF board election candidate (From South Africa)
14 Antoni Mtavangu Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team Wikimania 2021 Pre-conference Co-lead
15 Winnie Kabintie Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team Communications Support for Wikimania 2021
16 Gnangarra Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team Scholarship program lead for Wikimania 2021
17 Yamen Bousrih Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team Session submissions program and review support for Wikimania 2021
18 Iolanda Pensa Wikimania Steering Committee Chair of Wikimania Steering Committee
19 Geoffrey Kateregga WikiIndaba conference 2021 Core Organizing Team Communications & Publicity Support the WikiIndaba conference 2021 Core organizing team
20 Alice Kibombo WikiIndaba conference 2021 Core Organizing Team Program Lead for the WikiIndaba conference 2021 Core organizing team
21 Houcemeddine Turki WikiIndaba Steering Committee Member of WikiIndaba Steering Committee
22 Wilson Oluoha Igbo Wikimedians User Group Member of Igbo Wikimedians User Group
23 NIcky Newman Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Int’l Jury Member of Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Int’l Jury
24 Wilfredo Rodriguez Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Int’l Jury Member of Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Int’l Jury
25 Ewien van Bergeijk-Kwant Wiki Loves Africa Int’l prize winners Wiki Loves Africa 2021 1st prize winner
26 Ozavogu Abdusalam Khalid Wiki Loves Africa Int’l prize winners Wiki Loves Africa 2021 2nd prize winner photographer
27 Amuzu Joe Wiki Loves Africa Int’l prize winners Wiki Loves Africa 2021 3rd prize winner
28 Kevin Rack Wiki Loves Africa Int’l prize winners Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Traditional prize winner
29 Bouba Kam’s Wiki Loves Africa Int’l prize winners Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Best video prize winner
30 Max MBAKOB Wiki Loves Africa Int’l prize winners One of Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Special collection prize winner photographer
31 Patrick Earley Universal Code of Conduct WMF Universal Code of Conduct process manager
32 Sam Oyeyele Universal Code of Conduct Universal Code of Conduct facilitator for West Africa
33 Pascale Walter Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guideline Drafting Committee Member of Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guideline Drafting Committee (France)
34 Sandra Aceng Wikimania 2021 Core Organizing Team WikiIndaba conference 2021 scholarship manager
35 Kassia Echavarri-Queen Wikimedia Foundation Community Resources Director of Community Investment
36 Veronica Thamaini Middle East and Africa Grants Committee WMF Senior Programme Officer
37 Joy Agyepong Middle East and Africa Grants Committee Member of the WMF Grant Committee
38 Ndahiro Derrick Middle East and Africa Grants Committee Member  of the WMF Grant Committee
39 Sherry Antoine AfroCROWD Lead Organizer AfroCROWD
40 Alacoolwiki Les Sans pagEs Drawtobe Organizer LSP

Learning story

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1. Online Conferences: Getting the best from the opportunities of being together

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As 2021 closed, we were maxed out on the online conference frenzy that seemed to take place in the 2nd half of 2021. Despite being exhausting, being a part of all these online community events provided enormous opportunities for us to explain our focuses and celebrate communal successes. Besides providing the space and platforms to meet and collaborate with new people and old friends alike, it also forced us to challenge ourselves to create alternate ways for others to view and experience our work.

Lessons learnt:

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  • We maximized and were actively engaged in a lot of conferences in such a way that our projects gained visibility within the Wikimedia community at Wikimania 2021, Wiki Indaba 2021, WikiFrancophone Convention 2021, WikiArabia, Wikidata Con, etc.
  • We were also able to present in aligned open movement conferences, such as at the Open Education Global conference 2021, Creative Commons Summit 2021, the AfLIA Pre- Conference program, and finally in December 2021, two keynote speeches for State of the Map Africa and State of the Map Libya.
  • In many cases, we were asked to present, rather than applied. This was a change from usual practices, and is an endorsement of how the projects fill a need within the wider contexts.
  • Due to the shear numbers of presentations (you can review just some of them below) it felt to us like we were repeating the same message over and over again, however by choosing different formats (presentation vs. panel discussion; problem focus vs. project successes) we were able to make the insights we could provide exciting (or at least interesting) for the new audiences.
  • This is a community effort and we made sure to include community leaders and people working alongside our projects in order to make the conversations less about our projects, and more about the problems we are collectively trying to solve.
Wikimania 2021
 
 
Wikimedia and GLAM in the Global South (Part 1) – Wiki Loves Africa 2021 winners announced Wiki Loves Women Focus Group Members programme
 
 
Wikimania Special: The WikiAfrica Hour Xperience – pre-recorded recap of 6 episodes Wikimania Special: The WikiAfrica Hour Xperience – live session featuring impressions from the African Wikimedian community
 
 
Wiki Loves Monuments: 2021 and beyond One country in six pictures
Open Education Global 2021 WikiArabia 2021
 
 
Using offline tools to build open content and introduce to open knowledge movement WikiArabia 2021 – Wiki Loves Africa
WikiIndaba 2021
 
 
How to reach out to those offline Wiki Loves Women Focus Group Panel discussion
WikiFrancophone Convention 2021 Keynote: State of the Map Africa 2021
 
 
WikiAfrica Hour at WikiConvention Francophone 2021 Keynote: State of the Map Africa

2. Twitter Takeovers: Community cohesion through knowledge and sharing

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On the back of the success of the Wiki Loves Africa/OpenGLAM Twitter Takeover in 2020, the Wiki In Africa team decided to offer the general WikiAfrica and project-specific Wiki Loves Women social media accounts for Twitter Takeovers in the second half of 2021. The first, WikiAfrica was aimed at providing an additional audience for African-based or focused projects and initiatives. The second, Wiki Loves Women, was aimed at providing an Africa-focused platform for Wikimedia-based gender-equity projects that have either local or global focuses. The idea behind both being that we can and should all learn from each other.

Wiki Loves Women Twitter Takeover

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Three WLW Takeovers were organised between Sep and Nov 21. The Takerovers were organised by Wiki Loves Women’s Administrative Assistant, Candy Khohliwe with Greta from Wiki Women Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG, Camelia from @WikiDonne and Ashik from Wiki Loves Women South Asia. The key takeaways were:

  • @WikiDonne posted about 's #WomenInClimateChange 2020 campaign based on the 5 and 13 UN SDGs in order to cover one of the world's most hot topics to talk about today.
  • Participation in virtual conference like Wikimania and Wiki Indaba saw a spike in the coverage
  • Having Twitter Takeover with other like-minded communities created traction on twitter and helped us gain more followers and we collaborated with other communities.
Posted by Project focus date Tweet
Greta Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG Nov 26, 16:00 To celebrate #WomenInScience @SQWikimediansUG are very proud to see that as part of their activity in the last 2 years, there were created 167 new articles & improved 203 on Albanian Wikipedia (@sqwikipedia) with biographies of #WomeninSTEM. #wikiloveswomen https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1464262673571454981/photo/1
Greta Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG Nov 24, 16:00 WoALUG(@SQWikimediansUG) in collaboration with @SwedeninAL organized for 4 years in a row the event #Wikigap, to celebrate International Women's Day (March 8).🥳As a result,70 articles were written on #Albanian Wikipedia @sqwikipedia about women's biographies.🤗 #wikiloveswomen https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1463537905981440005/photo/1
Greta Wikiloveswomen Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG Nov 22, 16:00 As part of the WikiProject: Gratë(Women) #womenwikidays, created by @SQWikimediansUG, volunteers from #Albania and #Kosovo, wrote on @sqwikipedia around 700 women biographies. https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1462813122230636552/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 06, 13:30 Having less thean two weeks to win a prize during @WikiDonne's @WikiLVSFashion campaign. A @Wikipedia editathon about #WomenInFashion during #MilanFashionWeek & #ParisFashionWeek. Including a connection to @WikiConNA for #AdaLovelaceDay on October 8th https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Fashion_2021 https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445743293111877632/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 06, 08:00 Covering the #gendergap in sport topic, during @WikiDonne 's campaign @WikiLovesSport, 20 participants (15 competitors, 5 out of competition) wrote 476 new articles and improved 17 in 6 languages (it, ckb, ar, fr, hi, bn, en), giving 11 prizes https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Sport_2021/Participants/list@Coninews https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445660143945871363/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 06, 06:15 For the 27th anniversary of @dinosaurantonio discovery 🦖, the Tethyshadros insularis fossil, @WikiDonne interviewed its discoverer, the geologist Tiziana Brazzatti. And a new project dedicated to #FemaleFossilHunters started 🎉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGw-xzfp1Ss & https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:WikiDonne/Cacciatrici_di_fossili https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445633670325276672/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 05, 20:34 .@arfestival 's #WomenInComics exhibition in Rome was the opportunity for @WikiDonne to have a live show with cartoonists @Anarkikka and @NuttyIsa, organize an edit-a-thon (32 new entries in @Wikipedia) and launch a new project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dajwOjLZDM & https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:WikiDonne/Women_in_comics_2021 https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445487601549398024/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 05, 20:12 A live with female OSMers from Italy. For the first time @WikiDonne met the @cOSMopolIT_it group in a mapathon to support @Crowd2Map activities to support on-site campaigns aimed at stopping the practice of female genital mutilation @OpenStreetMapIt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kchMkaGTeoA https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445481920305958914/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 05, 19:29 .@WikiDonne interview to Alessandra Sarchi and Alberto Casadei analyzing Marco Santagata's last book. Followed an editathon in @Wikipedia about women in Dante's work #ledonneindante #dante700 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CREq5OREOl0 & https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:WikiDonne/Le_donne_in_Dante@Wikimedia @la_dante @Dante_Aligheri https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445471145688371205/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 05, 00:32 .@WikiDonne's #WomenInClimateChange 2020 campaign based on n° 5 & 13 @UN SDGs: more than 40 participants wrote and improved 86 articles in 5 @Wikipedia languages. A video about this campaign was presented by the @WikiSusDev at @Wikimania 2021 @Wikimedia @WikiWomenInRed https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1445185159813386242/photo/1
Camelia Bouban Wiki Donne Oct 01, 09:54 What did @WikiDonne's COVID-19 project more exciting were the 16 photos about the pandemic in Pesaro uploaded in @WikiCommons by author Alberto Giuliani. All declared featured pictures by the community and 3 of them elected Image of the day #wikidonnecovid19 #wikidonne https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1443876919192309761/photo/1
Ashik Wiki Loves Women South Asia Sep 08, 13:28 Interested in #Asia #women representation? Women empowerment? #Motherwood? #Gender equity ? #Feminism ? Reproductive #health? Participate to the Wiki Loves Women South Asia writing contest to improve gender gap in #Wikipedia. https://bit.ly/2X1bies https://twitter.com/WikiLovesWomen/status/1435595963142492163/photo/1
Lessons learned
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  1. We gained more traction during Twitter takeovers and new followers too due to collaborating with like-minded communities that are actively working towards bridge the gender gap space.
  2. We found out it’s best to identify  and  schedule the community reps way in advance for easy planning and to facilitate availability.
  3. A week-long twitter takeover builds momentum and keeps the community engaged unlike short twitter takeovers. The longer the Takeover the more attention it received from regular and curious new followers alike.
WikiAfrica Twitter Takeover
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The WikiAfrica Twitter account hosted 2 takeovers: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos and WikiGhonya.

Project Tweet link Date
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1419340427983998983 25th July 2021
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1420358437943271424 28th July 2021
WikiGhonya https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1431247650041606145 27th August 2021
WikiGhonya https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1431262748978057219 27th August 2021
WikiGhonya https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1431706915558600712 28th August 2021
WikiGhonya https://twitter.com/wikiafrica/status/1432083187409248271 29th August 2021
Lessons learned
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The positioning of both Ceslause and the first guest Isaac Olatunde in Nigeria in the midst of a Twitter war with the Nigerian Government did not create optimal conditions for the launch Takeover ;-).

The community and the WMF were supportive of WikiAfrica Twitter Takeover. People were happy to follow the posts, as they’re educational. So it feels like the service answers a need.

From an operational perspective, we had a  plan to have a takeover every last week of every month. We started WikiAfrica Takeover in July, and two held successfully and consecutively. It is very time-consuming to plan, so it was best to have Ceslause dedicated to managing it, by helping the anchors navigate around Wiki In Africa’s Hootsuite dashboard, and making posts on @WikiAfrica twitter handle via the platform .

We found out it’s best to schedule the anchors months aways from their scheduled takeover to enable them get ready way in advance.

We were able to cover topics that concern many people in real time.

Programs Impact

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Gender Equity: Wiki Loves Women

 

Overview

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. This two-pronged 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.

Wiki Loves Women has been operating for five years across Africa. Wiki Loves Women answers the following strategic priorities for Wiki In Africa:

  • Increased gender-specific content;
  • Raised visibility of gender and representation gaps; and
  • Transferred key digital and knowledge contribution skills.
Key project links:
 
Explaining the need for Gender Gap leadership on Wikipedia, March 2021

Activities over 2021

The Wiki Loves Women project was greatly boosted by the addition of an administrative assistant in the form of User:Shoodho. Thank you Candy for your work in 2021!

2021 Focus Group
 
WLW Focus Group Members Christmas party

Launched in May 2021, The 2021 Focus Group is made up of 12 women from Botswana, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. The Wikimedian experience intentionally ranges from Newbie to Dinosaur. The tactic behind the Focus Group is to develop a self-supporting network of women from within the open movement and aligned organisations who will collectively supply the skills and knowledge to make their gender-equity Wikimedia-facing programmes sustainable and successful. This was achieved through:

  • A monthly working session covering key skills on specific topics, along with collaborative tasks
  • Bi-weekly office hours to assist with any aspect of the tasks or anything Wikimedia related
  • A telegram group for discussion, chat, updates and friendly support
  • A central project – the SheSaid drive – to train toward and focus on
Focus Group Results and best practices for 2021.

Here is a quick summary of impact of the Focus Group activities around the SheSaid2021 campaign:

  • 9 out of 9 grants applied for were approved
  • 28 events were held
  • 143 editors were involved
  • 1,400 pages were created
  • 3,308 pages were edited
  • 12,438 edits were made
  • 3,57 million words were added
  • 1,425 references were added
  • Collectively, all the articles created or edited have received 4,7million views

Side note:

  • 3 of the grants required fiscal sponsorship (from Wiki in Africa) due to limiting international regulations
  • Activities in Sudan were postponed due to political instability and a ban on internet access.
  • All focus group members are keen to continue with the program in 2022.

Online campaigns: visibility and engagement

Although the geographical focus of Wiki Loves Women began with Africa, gender equity is a global problem. Our online campaigns are focused on ensuring that women and men around the world can change this persistent imbalance.

Tell Us About Her – Women at Work
 

Each March, Wiki Loves Women hosts an annual Tell Us About Her drive on the ISA platform. In 2021, the drive focused on images relating to Women at Work. The campaign information and results are available on the ISA challenges page.

Results:

The Tell Us About Her : Women at Work drive on the ISA Tool resulted in 16,295 images being described by 29 contributors, who posted 87,787 descriptions.

The top 3 contributors were: 1st place, User:Killy95 (34,08 descriptions), 2nd place is User:Rwebogora (18,018 descriptions) and 3rd place is c:User:Farida Takenzo (2,709 descriptions)

Challenges:

We had to disqualify the 2nd placed winner due to an unexpected manipulation of the tool. He applied random WikiData items to each image, with cycles of addiction and removing, in order to artificially elevate his score. The physical prizes for all the winners could not be sent due to the postal restrictions currently happening in South Africa as a result of COVID.

She Said 2021

The SheSaid campaign on WikiQuote was once again held by the Wiki Loves Women global community in the last quarter of 2021. The impact has been incredible in 2021 with nine different language communities contributing to the global drive– Italian, Tagalog, Ukrainian, English, Igbo, Spanish, French, Central Bikol, and Catalan. This is in addition to the 9 members of Wiki Loves Women’s Focus Group who held local training and participation for SheSaid with their communities. (View separate results here).

Other resources added:

  • bookmark templates created
  • How to add an entry on Wikiquote on YouTube
  • Wikiquote structure improved through the addition of numerous new categories related to women
SheSaid 2021 WikiQuote Results

Across the 9 language Wikiquotes a collective of 1,514 articles were created. This ensures that 1,514 notable women whose voices and wisdom had previously not been featured, can now be easily accessed. Articles for a further 309 women were improved. Read the article here.

Results for SheSaid 2021 on Wikiquote per language!

In addition, 638 articles featuring notable women were created on Kinyarwanda Wikipedia (Wikipediya mu Kinyarwanda).

Community Support and visibility

  • WikiGap and Wikimedia Foundation Nigeria Inc's International Women's Day Conference
  • Gender Gap portal - WLW social media platforms used to highlight gender-equity events across Wikimedia projects during March
  • Support of the independent initiative Wiki Loves Women South Asia 2021
Twitter Takeover

In 2021, Wiki Loves Women offered aligned gender-equity groups within the Wikimedia movement the opportunity to use the Wiki Loves Women twitter platform to share news and information about their projects. The main aim to host WLW Twitter take overs was to create awareness and increase women's voices online mainly bridging the gender gap issue.

In 2021 three Wiki Takeovers were scheduled with WikiDonne, Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG and Wiki Loves Women South Asia. Look at Learning Story 2 above for more details.

In development

Wiki Loves Women’s Inspiring Open podcast series

Funded by  Goethe-Institut and other partners

The Wiki Loves Women Inspiring Open podcast series will be launched in February 2022. Inspiring Open, a podcast series from Wiki Loves Women, celebrates women whose work and personal ethics intersect with the Open movement. Dynamic women who push the boundaries of what it means to build community and succeed as a collective.  Inspiring Open amplifies their stories, letting them take you on their personal journey in conversation with host Betty Kankam-Boadu. Join Inspiring Open as we raise the global visibility and profiles of women redefining and reclaiming the Open sector.  Be inspired, be challenged, be bold! Read more.

Funded by the International Relief Fund for Organisations in Culture and Education 2021 of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut and other partners. http://goethe.de/relieffund

Wiki Loves Women Gender Equity Mooc

The development of the Gender-Equity Wikimedia Mooc or Wiki Loves Women Mooc was begun with one module currently under work. Related, Florence successfully attended the WMF training session Identifying and Addressing Harassment Online.

Diversity + GLAM: Wiki Loves Africa & WikiAfrica Heritage

Wiki Loves Africa

 
Wiki Loves Africa 2021 competition poster also available in French and Arabic

Wiki Loves Africa (WLAf) is an annual photo contest that takes place annually and is run across the African continent. Wiki Loves Africa encourages the ‘crowd’ contribution of local knowledge of heritage and communal cultures by entering media (photographs, video and audio) about their environment onto Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikimedia projects.

Programme goals for Africa-wide participation are to:

  • Change the visual narrative of Africa that exists on global knowledge sources and creative repositories, such as Wikipedia and its sister projects.
  • Counter-balance the representation of universal topics with images that depict African examples.
  • Provide easy access for creatives from across Africa to a globally significant platform in order to share their passion for and pride in their cultural heritage and the contemporary practices.
  • Provide training for creatives to expand and challenge their professional oeuvre using the open movement as a training ground.
  • Reward people for contributing the right kind of material to Wikimedia projects.
  • Engender pride in local heritages, traditions, cultures and communities across Africa.

Programme goals in support of the Wikimedia Movement are to:

  • Draw attention to, and increase the illustration of, subjects that relate to Africa on the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia in many languages.
  • Introduce the benefits of, and ability to, contribute to Wikimedia Commons to new communities.
  • Support new volunteer communities as they work together around an important local project.
  • Build capacity for leadership and organiser activity within the programme
Wiki Loves Africa 2021: Health + Wellness
Wiki Loves Africa 2021 theme video

Wiki Loves Africa - the 7th iteration - was held from 15th February until 30th April 2021. The initial dates of the contest were decided on by the Wiki Loves Africa organizers community via a poll on Telegram. The theme was chosen as Health+Wellness giving the COVID-19 necessitated people to demonstrate healthy activities they were engaged in during the pandemic and feedback offered on the m:Wiki Loves Africa 2020/Survey.

This year, 19 communities officially took part in hosting 33 Wiki Loves Africa-related events and creating local noise around the contest. As usual, the media competition accepted entries from across Africa, and from people beyond Africa, as long as the images represented African-related material or content.

Results
 
Read the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 Jury Report

The contest resulted in:

  • 8,319 media files being submitted by 1,149 competitors in 47 countries.
  • 76% of competitors were new to Commons.
  • Collectively, the 2021 images have been viewed 1,7 million times since April 2021.
  • Usage of the images on Wikimedia projects in January 2022 stood at 10% with 811 distinct images being used.
  • 19 participating communities:
    • 15 via WMF grants
    • 4 despite no WMF grant (Egypt, Tunisia, Zambia, and Mali)
  • 33 events held by participating countries
  • National winners were announced by some of the local teams.
  • International team organised 1 introductory meeting with organisers and 2 webinars
The international jury process

The International Jury process was headed up by Isla Haddow-Flood with assistance from User:Ceslause, and the Montage team, User:Ciell and User:Slaporte.

8,319 images were reviewed. The first round of reviews was done by 22 Commonists and Wikimedians. The following three rounds involved a jury of 12 members from Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Uganda to the Netherlands and France. The mix featured professional photographers and experienced Commonists. The full International Jury report was created and can be found here.

The international prize winners 2021 are:

  •  
    1st prize: Crazy Love by Ewien van Bergeijk - Kwant
  •  
    2nd prize: Malaria microscopy training (Nigeria) taken by Ozavogu Abdulsalam Khalid under contract to eHealth Africa EHA Clinics
  •  
    3rd prize: Pupil (Ghana) by Amuzujoe
  •  
    Culturally specific or traditional representations of health or wellness: Oldest Healing Dance (Botswana) by Kgara Kevin Rack
  • Best Video Prize: Santé et Bien-être réalisé par Bouba Kam's
  •  
    Special collection prize: Laquintini Hospital, Cameroon, by Max MBAKOP, Happi Raphael, and Destiny Deffo, coordinated by Serieminou

Please note: A special collection category was added to the 2021 prizes. The new prize category was to celebrate the collective images of the photographers that took part in a photowalk of the Laquintini Hospital in Cameroon as part of the Nos Jardins training. The images by Max MBAKOP, Happi Raphael, and Destiny Deffo, coordinated by Serieminou represent the reality, professionalism, hope, and heartbreak of a working hospital. View more of the collection from Nos Jardins here. Prize sponsored by Ynternet.org.

New Elements for 2021
Focus on quality
  • Several online training webinars took place, in particular on the question of IP and legal considerations in English and French.
  • The Nos Jardins training program, including the masterclass on photography techniques provided new skills to several Cameroun photographers.
  • A database of photographers was set up and mailings were sent to invite them to join the contest. 2 emails were sent to them inviting their participation and to review the winners.
  • For the second year, we explicitly and thoroughly worked on ALL the images collected to make sure they were properly described, categorized etc. The coordination of that effort was done on Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2021/Images checking, using multiple queries to identify problematic cases.
  • We organized the ISA drive during the WLA MetaData weeks (end of 2021) to improve the addition of structured data to the images.
  • Finally, after several meetings, we launched an initiative to encourage the adoption of Wiki Loves Africa images as Featured Images, Quality Images, or Valued Images: WLA images under evaluation.

For a full review of Wiki Loves Africa 2021, please visit the Results and best practices page.

Photography training : Nos Jardins photography training initiative

Funded by Movetia

 
Un gif réalisé avec quelques unes des photos de la sortie à l'hôpital Laquintinie

Nos Jardins is a training programme for photographers that took place from the last quarter of 2020 until the end of 2021. The initiative focused on encouraging 21 Cameroonian and 14 Swiss photographers to develop their digital and collaborative skills by being involved with their peers through this exchange program.

The programme involved four training modules in 2021 that focused on:

  • Introduction to Free Culture
  • Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia
  • Free Licenses
  • Masterclass in photography

3 online webinars were organized. In each of the two countries, 4 face to face events were hosted, plus two final photo exhibitions.

A lot of material was developed and incredible images were contributed to Wikimedia Commons. For example, 765 images were published by the Cameroon team during the Wiki Loves Africa contest as part of Nos Jardins practical experience.  It wasn't surprising that some of the images uploaded by Nos Jardins delegates made it to the Top 10 among the entries received from Cameroon, and a group of photographers were selected for the Special Collection International Prize.

All pictures produced as part of the Nos Jardins project may be found here c:Category:Nos Jardins Images for Wiki Loves Africa and herec:Category:Nos_Jardins_Well-being.

The images for Nos Jardins were also included in a separate ISA Tool campaign – Les photos de la formation aux photographes "Nos Jardins" – which saw all 765 images that were contributed as part of the project described by 7,131 contributions.

Nos Jardins timeline

The project was launched in October 2020.

  • Project presentation in the Education Newsletter, planning for the training and preparation of teaching material, announcement of the training in Switzerland & Cameroon, and launching of the training were all achieved between October 2020 and January 2021.
  • On 16th January 2021, a webinar on the history of Open movement was held. An in-person workshop on Open Culture and Wikimedia Commons was held in Cameroon on 23rd January 2021.
  • On 9th February 2021, a second webinar, Copyright and legal concerns for your shared images under free licenses was held. A second in-person workshop,Copyright, Free licenses and contributing on Wikimedia Commons was held in Cameroon.
  • On 20th March 2021, a third workshop,Masterclass in photography was held in Cameroon. The Nos Jardins beneficiaries had a photoshoot at Laquintinie hospital in Douala, Cameroon on 27th April 2021, towards Wiki Loves Africa 2021. On 28th May 2021, Minette Lontsie from the Nos Jardins initiative was interviewed during the episode 2 of WikiAfrica Hour about the Nos Jardins project. An in-person Photography masterclass: the art of photography and sharing workshop was held in Switzerland on 29th May 2021.
  • On 1st June 2021, a third webinar, Reuse and integration of photos on Wikipedia took place. A 4th in-person workshop, Reuse and integration of photos on Wikipedia was held in Cameroon on 12th June 2021. On 15th June 2021, a practical workshop:sharing photos on Wikipedia was held in Switzerland.
  • In June 2021, an ISA tool campaign to improve descriptions of photos uploaded from Cameroon Nos Jardins Wiki Loves Africa 2021 photoshoots, was held. In August 2021, the winning photos of the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 international contest were announced, and three photographers from Nos Jardins won the Special Collection prize.
  • During episode 5 of WikiAfrica Hour on 3rd September 2021 titled Wiki Loves Africa 2021:Meet the winners, Minette Lontsie and one of the photographers who won the Special Collection prize, Max MBAKOP, were interviewed to share their experience producing the winning photos for the Special Collection prize.
  • On 2nd and 3rd September 2021, a workshop for teachers and students of École Mosaïc à Genève, Switzerland was held by the Ynternet.org team to present Free culture and Wikipedia projects.
  • A Nos Jardins Photo Exhibition theme Health and Wellness was held on 14th October 2021, at Laquintinie Hospital, in Douala, Cameroon. Up until 29th October, the Nos Jardins photo contest in Switzerland was on.
  • On 12th November 2021, three winners from the top 25 photos from Nos Jardins Switzerland were selected by the public during the exhibition at CICG during "The Tide is Rising" edition of TEDxGeneva. On that same 12th November the three photographers from Nos Jardins Cameroon, who won the Special Collection prize of the Wiki Loves Africa 2021 were handed their prize.
  • An Exhibition of Nos Jardins contest in Switzerland at the Labo Vivant Berber (Grandvaux, 1091 Bourg-en-Lavaux), is scheduled for anytime from January 2022.
ISA Campaign : Health + Wellness
 

Wiki Loves Africa MetaData Weeks is run by the WLA team and intends to improve the description of WLA images with structured data, using the Commons:ISA Tool. The Health + Wellness Campaign ran from 1st October to the end of 2022. Link to the campaign: https://isa.toolforge.org/campaigns/179

Results

The 8,163 images submitted to Wiki Loves Africa 2021 competition were loaded for the drive. At the end, there were 18,674 descriptions added by 23 contributors. The winners are: 1st place User:Rwebogora (7,146 contributions), 2nd place User:Kwameghana (6,366 contributions), 3rd place User:Farida Takenzo (3,614 contributions) and 4th place from User:Happiraphael(4,159 contribution).  HOWEVER, it should be mentioned that Wikimedia Cameroun Usergroup run an alternate event on the Cameroun pictures a few months earlier and had less opportunities to participate in this drive (given that their pictures were already largely described). Their winner was our 4th place winner with User:Happiraphael.

Wiki Loves  Africa 2022 : Home & Habitat

The Wiki Loves Africa theme for 2022 has been chosen as Home and Habitat. Calls for the submission of visual representations of home, habitat.

The theme celebrates the diversity and unique spaces and places both humans and animals alike consider home. Those quarters, lodgings, rooms, addresses, locations, dens, nests, burrows and caves. Those places of safety and peace where people and animals can relax, recover, rest, reconnect with family and community, and where they can fully express themselves, their tastes, their identity and heritage. The 2022 competition launches on 15th February and is open until 15th April 2022.

Activities for Wiki Loves Africa 2022 during 2021
Wiki Loves Africa’s support for WPWP

m:Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021 (WPWP) is a project run by another group. WPWP is an annual campaign where Wikipedia editors across the world, Wikipedia language projects and communities add photos to Wikipedia articles lacking photos.

Every year, the WLA team participates in the WPWP contest by providing a list of images to insert into articles and an additional Wiki Loves Africa prize category for the most active participant using Wiki Loves Africa images.

Results

According to the hashtag tool, we had (between July 1, 2021 and Aug. 31, 2021) there were 2,299 revisions with 1,308 pages being modified by 39 users on 118 Wikimedia projects.

Read the full report for the Wiki Loves Africa WPWP 2021 campaign.

WikiAfrica Heritage

WikiAfrica Heritage is a GLAM training and support initiative, initially created for heritage professionals and enthusiasts based within the Western Cape, South Africa. The programme is intended as a template that can be adapted to other programmes across Africa, and beyond. The initial programme started in May 2021 and will roll out throughout 2021 and 2022. It is a collaboration between Wiki In Africa and the Simon's Town Museum, Cape Town.

The main goals of the programme are to:

  • Develop a slow, manageable, collaborative, consultative and supportive programme with Heritage and memory professionals and enthusiasts to introduce and facilitate the integration of Wikipedia and Open movement practices into the Heritage sector in Cape Town
  • Provide knowledge, theoretical information, practical application and programme development support as alternatives in their community and education programmes
  • Inform and assist as heritage organisations put skills and knowledge into action:
  • in the form of content expansion and creation directly on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons and in the development
  • in the development of realistic community and education interventions that are adapted to their unique situations, limitations and resources.
  • Build a nurturing, self-sustaining and supportive local then regional network that helps and assists each other.
  • Share this model with communities across Africa to grow and develop the GLAM space.
Project links:
Project Impact (end 2021)

10 WikiAfrica Heritage Members representing 8 heritage organisations in the Western Cape, South Africa received an introduction to Wikimedia and the GLAM benefits for working with Wikimedia Communities over 4 working sessions.

Offline and Technology support: Wiki Fundi & ISA Tool 2021

The tech projects have been developed by Wiki In Africa to increase access to training and contribution and to better support community engagement. Both tools have received accolades from the very different communities that they support. For 2021, our focus remained on WikiFundi (with offline resources) and supporting the award-winning ISA tool.

WikiFundi

Funded by Wikimedia CH

Introducing WikiFundi

WikiFundi was developed to facilitate outreach and education goals in places where access and data can be challenging. WikiFundi’s goals are:

  • Enable access by using technology to provide access to Wikipedia and other OERs in an offline situation.
  • Lower the barriers to training and collaborative contribution by providing a similar environment to the MediaWiki editing interface (as seen on Wikipedia, with the same templates, etc) for offline situations.
  • Facilitate the transfer of key digital skills and best language and writing practices in offline situations.
  • Provide OERs that facilitate and support teaching and training in multiple situations
Project links:
WikiFundi in 2021 - Spanish build and English and French Update
 
The Open Education Award for Excellence in Open Education Infrastructure 2021

Throughout 2021, WikiFundi was translated and adapted into Spanish. The resulting Spanish version and updated French and English versions can be accessed by this link. Read about the WikiFundi in Spanish, English and French here.

It is difficult to assess the impact of WikiFundi due to the offline nature of the tool. We will be monitoring and requesting user experience through conversations with known users.

In 2021, WikiFundi was awarded the Open Education Award of Excellence for Open Infrastructure. Read about WikiFundi’s Open Infrastructure 2021 award.

ISA Tool

 
The ISA Tool won the 2019 Coolest Tool at WikiData Con

The ISA Tool was developed to ensure that the images contributed each year to Wiki Loves Africa (and, in turn, other photographic contests, and GLAM collections) achieve their best potential placement on the Wikimedia projects through better labeling and descriptions.

The ISA Tool continues to bring structured data to Wikimedia Commons images through strategic online drives.

At the WikiDataCon 2019 awards, the ISA Tool was named the coolest data tool.

The ISA Tool goals
  • Lower the barriers for new and experienced editors to describe images by linking them to WikiData items.
  • Enable communities to add community or culturally specific data to images via captions, rather than generic and lengthy terms.
  • Increase the usability of images contributed to Commons through more detailed descriptions, that are interlinked and searchable through WikiData.
  • Improve the descriptions and captions of Wikimedia Commons images, especially Wiki Loves X competitions and focus categories.
  • Provide a fun, easy-to-access, mobile-first way for Wikimedians to organise campaigns to improve categories of images.
Project links:
Impact of ISA tool on Wikimedia projects since 2019

In January 2022, the recorded impact of ISA since its launch in 2019 is:

  • 1,354,397 images reviewed in
  • 149 campaigns with
  • 370,941 WikiData descriptions and contributions by
  • 1,180 participants.

Education: WikiChallenge African Schools

 

Wiki In Africa’s education focus is based on a long-game strategy. Many of the volunteers coming into the movement must first deconstruct and re-assess how copyright and knowledge platforms collate information and work before they can effectively contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The education programmes that we build and run in various communities and iterations are in order to provide an alternative view to how knowledge is created and shared, through absorbing open movement practices, and essential digital, research, and writing skills in practical applications.

The WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique (WikiChallenge African Schools) is a multi-national writing contest that creates a fun way for students (9-13) to learn how knowledge is built by contributing to Vikidia, the little sister of Wikipedia (aimed at children aged 8-15 years). It has operated during the school year in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2021, and works with local Wikimedian groups and Orange Foundation staff as local facilitators.

This programme is designed, managed and hosted by Florence Devouard.

  •  
    Un enfant camerounais sur WikiFundi
  •  
    Les enfants gagnants à Madagascar en 2021
  •  
    Remise des Prix Wikichallenge 2021 Tataouine
  •  
    Remise des Prix Wikichallenge 2021 Djerba

WikiChallenge 2021 results

Funded by Fondation Orange

The third edition of WikiChallenge African Schools writing competition was organised in 9 African countries and resulted in 138 articles and 869 photos, drawings and videos submitted by students from 100 schools.

The WikiChallenge African Schools contest is aimed at students between the ages of 9 and 13 that are attending primary schools in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Tunisia.

Of course, the contest is far more than the results. Take a look at this article on An Untold Africa for more insight into the children that take part and the articles they have created.

Watch some of the awards ceremonies:

Volunteer development and community support: WikiAfrica Hour

Volunteer development and community support are essential aspects of the work of Wiki In Africa. Just some of Wiki In Africa’s priorities are to:

  • Active focus on diversity, inclusion, and empowerment
  • Developing emerging communities through capacity and skills transfer
  • Leveraging the mutual benefit of partnerships

Our Volunteer Development and Community Support activities pose Wikimedia-based solutions to address the following gaps as identified in the Knowledge Gap Index Taxonomy:

  • Contributors: Representation: Cultural + Geography
  • Contributors: Interaction: Tech skills + Role + Motivation

WikiAfrica Hour

In 2021, with the addition of the Wiki In Africa intern Ceslause Ogbonnaya, it was possible to launch the WikiAfrica Hour. WikiAfrica Hour is a live broadcast, interview format monthly ‘vodcast’ that aims to reconnect, network, and drive sharing and collaborations across the continent. The goals of WikiAfrica Hour are to increase the cohesion of the Wikimedia Movement across by :

  • Increasing the understanding of and sharing opportunities within the global Wikimedia Movement
  • Showcasing the global movement through an African lens by offering alternative perspectives, applications and solutions
  • Providing a platform where African solutions, contributors and leaders are showcased to the regional and global movements
Key project links:

Impact of WikiAfrica Hour episodes over 2021

  • Launched in April 2021
  • The 2021 and 2022 WikiAfrica Hour host is Ceslause Ogbonnaya
  • 8 episodes + 2 x conference specials for Wikimania and 1 for WikiFrancophone Convention
  • 40 special guests covering all manner of Wikimedia-related topics
  • 1812 total views (30 Jan 2022)
  • 1,430 YouTube views for all 8 episodes + the two Wikimania special
  • 181 on Facebook
  • 201 views on Wikipedia Weekly's YouTube and Facebook channels
  • 40 special guests covering topics from the WMF board elections to UCoC to photographic usage to attending Wikimedia events, why portraits of notable people is a viable solution, toa interviews with key people such as the opening interview with outgoing CEO Katherine Maher.

Look at the Program Story above for more details.

Visibility and Communications
WikiAfrica: Twitter Takeover 2021

Another pitch for community cohesion and knowledge sharing was the implementation of the WikiAfrica Twitter Takeover - where African-based Wikimedia projects or organisation could share their successes or opportunities with a different, but aligned, audience. The WikiAfrica Twitter Takeover’s aim is to feature projects or initiatives that are run within geographical Africa, with the aim of educating the WikiAfrica audience on such projects and initiatives.

In 2021, 2 take-overs were organized. The success of this project was mainly curtailed due to the Nigerian government’s conflict with the Twitter platform. Ceslause, who was managing this project, is based in Nigeria and therefore was limited in his ability to work through the necessary steps required to push it correctly.

Two projects were featured: Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos and WikiGhonya. Thank you for exploring this option with us! We will be doing more in 2022. Look at Learning Story 2 above for more details.

Spending update Final

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Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Link to our finances report

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period:

  • Theoretical budget : $99,750.00 / R1,514,274.00
  • Real budget (per amount received in bank) ; R1,476,445.00
  • Amount spent : R1,379,735.77
  • Unspent : R96,709.23 / $6,259 as of Jan 31st of 2022

Grant Metrics Reporting Final

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Metrics, targets and results: grants metrics worksheet here.

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