Wikimedia South Africa/Offline Access & Hackathon 2023-24

Michaelgraaf (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Background

Offline Wikimedia access is vital from the point of view of reaching those who don't have reliable internet access, and also for the sake of resilience by those who do (reliability is relative!). Kiwix is the main means of providing offline access, not just for Wikimedia content, but almost any web content. Wikimedia-ZA has over the years undertaken or supported various Kiwix projects, and continues to do so, in conjunction with the global user group Wikimedians For Offline Wikis.

It should be noted that Wikimedia-ZA's activities in this field in the period have been funded by discretionary funds acquired by the chapter through fiscal hosting of other affiliates' activities, rather than grant sums budgeted for such activity.

2023 Activities

For much of the year, preparations were being made for the Over-The-Air Update Hackathon. Because WikiIndaba had never had a hackathon dimension before, these preparations were not so much concentrated on the technological aspects, as in building a community of support (including potential online participants). Details of this community are given in the post-event report and it should be possible to revive it for the next WikiIndaba hackathon.

The report also details some of the lessons learned regarding procurement. Again, the equipment is now available for the next hackathon.

I also promoted Kiwix at a "Girls in ICT Day" event held by Internet South Africa.

2024 Activities

In addition to submitting the proposal for this year's WikiIndaba hackathon, I have promoted Kiwix in several meetings with communities who are at various stages of creating their own community WiFi networks, under the auspices of Yetu Infotech Collective.

I am currently in the process of arranging to supply content for, and training in the use of, Kiwix hotspots for the National Youth Development Agency which wishes to place them in schools.