User:Anthere/unesco

Florence Devouard presented 3 initiatives led by the Wikimedia community to promote use of and participation to Wikipedia, the freely-licensed encyclopedia, in developing countries. Ensuring participation from inhabitants from all nations is deemed essential as Wikipedia goal is to "imagine a world in which every human being would share in the sum of human knowledge".

Wikipedia Zero is a project by the Wikimedia Foundation, to provide Wikipedia free of charge on mobile phones, particularly in developing markets. The goal of the program is to reduce barriers in access to free knowledge, in particular with data-usage cost. The program was launched in 2012 and currently operates in over 40 countries. Wikipedia Zero is made possible through a partnership between the non profit organisation hosting Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, and over 15 different private Internet providers.

Afripedia has a dual objective of increasing the off-line dissemination of Wikipedia across central and western Africa and of training people to contributing. It involves the set up of plug computers in 20 universities in 15 countries. The plug computer, which is the size of a phone, is directly pluggable on the power network and it can regularly update a version of Wikipedia hosted on the computer. The plug computer provides a public wifi hotspot allowing every person with a wifi network card and a device to surf and download Wikipedia. The project is a partnership between Wikimedia France, the Institut Français and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie.

Kumusha Takes Wiki is a project that aims at activating communities across Africa to create and contribute freely-licensed information, texts, images and media about their communities. It features hiring and supporting Wikipedians in Community to promote Wikipedia, to train and foster content contribution from the layman about specifically targeted communities in Africa. This project is run by a South African based non profit and funded by a French private foundation, the Fondation Orange. It currently runs in Uganda and Ivory Coast.