[Foundation-l] Invitation to participate in Wiki Africa project!

[francisa at africacentre.net]

Dear Wiki colleagues,

I am excited to invite  members of Wikimedia Foundation to participate  
in the  Wiki Africa project that will expand and increase the contents  
of Africa information in Wikipedia. Through this invitation we hope to  
build a strong partnership in promoting African content in Wikipedia.

WikiAfrica is an international collaborative project between Africa  
Centre and Lettera27 that is designed to Africanize Wikipedia by  
generating and expanding 30,000 articles over two years. The project  
promotes a new method of acquiring and sharing knowledge that is  
fully-inclusive, mainstream, intercultural and relevant to  
contemporary and historic Africa. The initial two years are focused on  
encouraging external Africa-based, cultural organizations, museums and  
archives, as well as bloggers and journalists, to contribute their  
knowledge to Wikipedia.

These initial two years focus on content related to literature,  
poetry, art, cinema and other cultural products. WikiAfrica will not  
exclude anything that falls outside of these categories, but focuses  
most of its energy in these areas. At the same time, the WikiAfrica  
project expands the African content that is already available online  
and improves existing articles by combining sources and promoting the  
participation of experts. WikiAfrica contributes to the aims of  
Wikimedia projects online (especially the WikiProject Africa,  
WikiProject African diaspora and the Africa Portal) and also works  
externally with texts, quotes, images, audio and video.

The project will be approached and achieve its goals via the following  
four activities:

     -Create partnerships with organisations that have existing  
archives that are readily accessible and that are predisposed to  
placing this content online;
     -Motivate the adaptation of a copyleft or Creative Commons  
approach to intellectual property.
     -Activate new Wikipedia users and editors in Africa through  
marketing and promotion; and
     -Create training tools and establish the mentorships required to  
activate a new team of users and editors of Wikipedia (wikipedians).

Click on Get started  
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Get_started ) or  
the Project page  
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Projects) to  
contribute to Wiki Africa and become a member of Wiki Africa!

Please visit our incubator at  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Incubator for a step  
by step guide on how to start your articles for new authors.

We look forward to working with all Wikimedia members interested in  
developing African content through knowledge exchange, participation  
and contribution to this project.


For any questions don't hesitate to contact me.


Thank you


Francis Awinda
Administrator and content manager Wiki Africa
Email:francisa at africacentre.net
Tel:+27793087519