[Foundation-l] Introduction to the WikiAfrica project in Wikipedia

[francisa at africacentre.net]

Dear Wikipedian,

As you know, with nearly one-billion people,Africa represents the  
world's third-largest market after China (1.3-billion) and India  
(1.1-billion), and is widely recognized as the last frontier for  
global economic growth.  It is also where humanity began.  And yet it  
has the lowest and least informed profile of any region on the  
Internet. What does appear is often not complete, selective, lacks  
context and reinforces outdated stereotypes.

Africa deserves a new deal – and especially in Wikipedia.

The Africa Centre in collaboration with Lettera27 would like you to  
participate in a ground-breaking project that is designed to  
Africanise 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. This initial phase of  
the project is focused on encouraging external Africa-based, cultural  
organisations, museums and archives, as well as bloggers and  
journalists, to contribute their knowledge to Wikipedia.

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

• Create partnerships with organisations that have existing  
digitised content that is readily accessible;
• Motivate the adaptation of a copyleft or Creative Commons approach  
to intellectual property.
• Activate new Wikipedia users and editors in Africa; and
• Create training tools and assist with the mentorships required to  
activate a new team of users and editors of Wikipedia. See more on  
this at the Africa Incubator  
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Incubator]

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 WikiAfrica and become a member!

Through WikiAfrica we aim to increase the content of Africa articles  
by engaging content partners and individual Wikipedians in the project  
as a way of improving participation to Wikipedia from the African  
continent.


Thank you



Francis Awinda
Wikipedian in Residence
(user:  Awinda)
Skype: Awinda
Twitter:AwindaF
Email:francisa at africacentre.net
Tel:+27793087519
www.africacentre.net