Since 2021, WikiAfrica Higher Education Initiative has held 13 training sessions, encouraging African youth to share accurate and diverse information about Africa on Wikipedia. By mid-2024, the initiative had engaged 112 editors among university students, teacher, journalists and professionals across the continent.
The success of these sessions has been possible due to the professionalism of the trainers, including confirmed Wikimedians Tochi Precious Friday and Aboubakar Keita Abouvar, and the recent addition of Tomas from Rovuma University.
Through a first English session in March 2024, followed by a French session in April and a Portuguese session in May, the editors have achieved the creation of 613 articles, 441,000 article views, and 187,543 bytes of content. These results show that the initiative is empowering the African youth and has the potential to make a positive impact locally and globally. When asked if they would recommend the WikiAfrica Higher Education Initiative to their peers, participants said:
“For me, the knowledge I have gotten is awesome and it has added great value to my life. I have always wanted to learn about Wikipedia and how it works, fortunately, I have this golden opportunity. I’m glad that I utilize it.”
“Significantly for a university colleague because I found it very useful and important to write technical information and scientific articles in it.”
“It will be very useful for language documentation and cultural preservation”.
The WikiAfrica Education programme aims to promote access to information and encourage the sharing and preservation of knowledge, to give greater visibility to Africa on Wikipedia and to expand the quantity and quality of information that can be found online about the African continent. The programme is jointly implemented by Moleskine Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation and Fondazione Aurora.