Hi Teemu
I would like to point out that the below statement is possibly slightly misleading. So please allow me to point out that in Anne sentence below:
"The WikiFundi team has been working on the product for a couple of years now, with support from WMF and the Orange Foundation."
the "WikiFundi team" is actually NOT Kiwix. The "editor" of WikiFundi is "Wiki in Africa" :)
And actually, the first version of WikiFundi was NOT based on Kiwix at all. Back then, I asked Emmanuel to actually work on WikiFundi V1, due to his experience, but the software was based on MediaWiki, not on Kiwix at all; also, at version 1 release, the Kiwix association did not exist yet... Emmanuel invoiced his time directly, as an individual.
However, for version 2, the Kiwix association was born, and we (Wiki in Africa) asked help from the Kiwix association to do the technical management. Aside from the tech management, the WikiFundi project directly benefit from various elements developped as part of the Kiwix project the past year. In my perspective, we (Wiki in Africa) clearly benefit from a stronger and more reliable Kiwix association.
Teemu, you are right that we should never consider people from the offline world as merely readers, but should try as hard as we can to get them become writers.
This is why I conceived WikiFundi. When Isla and I were working with some new african wikipedians, or when working in schools and libraries over there, or when organizing edit-a-thons in cultural centers or museums, we run MANY times into the situation where the internet was down, or missing, or unstable. That was very frustrating. Hence the idea of having a plateform that could help bridge the gap between online and offline.
This is by no means a perfect solution, but a solution that help go into the right direction.
I invite you to read
* https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/03/10/digest-wiki-fundi/ Which was the blog published when we released WikiFundi V1
* https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/05/10/offline-access-wikipedia-wikifundi/ Which is an interview of myself by Anne a few months ago
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiFundi_Generic_Poster-A2.jpg This is a brand new poster, released at Wikimania Cape Town, showcasing WikiFundi
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_Africa_Schools_Subs_-_Final.web... This is a video that outline some of the uses we have of WikiFundi (English, subtitled French)
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiChallenge_poster-High_Resolution... This is a brand new poster, released at Wikimania Cape Town, which showcase one educational project we made with WikiFundi (in French)
There are ongoing discussions to set up asynchronized systems that would automatically collect (when possible...) content written offline to transfer them on an intermediary server, from which we could populate the online wikis. It sound super complicated I fear. But at the moment, our best shot is to *train* the future users and make it possible for them to write content collaboratively on offline plateforms.
Flo