Kasper, I am on sw-wikipedia. At wikiindaba in Joburg I gave an overview about African language wikipedias. Cf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/African_language_Wikiped...

There are 6 with more than 10.000 entries. Of these Malagasy and Yoruba have lots of fake content, their statistical numbers hide a lot of empty shells. The small but fairly solid one is Afrikaans, Swahili a bit shaky but not doing badly. Amharic has a lot of chances (but hampered by very poor internet access in Ethiopia). Masri I have no judgement...... Somali, although hardly existing, also has a good chance once there is a bit of peace (fantastic viewer share amongst ALWs).

You wrote about workshops for West African languages. I am cautious. These tiny wikipedias need content for casual users to join in. My impression of wikiindaba (my first Wikimedia meeting ever) was: lots of people who like conferences, to communicate and organize but do not produce content. Few producers. A workshop (especially if you pay the participants and the participants are not paying you) CAN be a starter for a language but if it does not take off afterwards you probably will not force it by repeats. East African SW-experience was similar. Great workshops in Kenya, lots of material produced when there was an incentive (google promised some laptops fo winners of an article writing competition), lots of lousy Swahili uploaded (horrible google-translate stuff), and after the competetion: quiet. Very, very few who registered for competition ever showed up again. If - only rarely.

If there is a need to have a Wikipedia in a language it will come.

I think it is worthwhile to prepare structures and starter sets online for people to kick in. But no amount of workshops etc. will overcome lack of internet access, inability to read and write a widely spoken language, and the contempt for own culture.

Cheers, Kipala - Ingo

-----Original Message----- From: african-wikimedians-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:african-wikimedians-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of african-wikimedians-request@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sonntag, 30. November 2014 19:07 To: african-wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: African-Wikimedians Digest, Vol 5, Issue 2

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Afripédia Douala (Kasper Souren) 2. Re: African-Wikimedians Digest, Vol 5, Issue 1 (kayode yussuf) 3. Re: Afripédia Douala (Enock Seth Nyamador)

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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 13:40:30 +0100 From: Kasper Souren kasper.souren@gmail.com Subject: Re: [African Wikimedians] Afripédia Douala Message-ID: CAB6=QMnwpLUywqxaRQ1L0X7x3vS=v7FzM5MUJNnQv-bAqAW95A@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

My email was sent too quickly. There are few more things I wanted to bring up:

I'm curious about (creating) connections between Francophone and Anglophone contributors. It seems WikiAfrica has mainly been about the English Wikipedia and Afripédia is almost only about the French Wikipedia. How many people on this list speak French? How many have contributed to French language projects?

And then there is the question of African languages. Personally I think this is where Africa can gain most. How many of you have contributed in African languages? Which languages Any obstacles?

There is a mailinglist list about Wikipedia in African languages which has been active since 2006: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Afrophonewikis