Dear friends
It is my pleasure to announce the launch of a new project, "Kumusha
Takes Wiki".
Kumusha Takes Wiki is a project that aims at activating communities
across Africa to create and contribute freely-licensed information,
texts, images and media about their communities (villages, townships,
suburbs, inner cities, etc). It will use community journalism to gather
community-relevant information on heritage, culture, notable persons,
geographical features, among other things. It will give each community
an online presence that is 'owned' by the community, provide information
that can be pulled into Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects or OpenStreetMap
databases, and it hopes to add immeasurably to the understanding of
Africa to every human being on the planet (from the people in the
village to the person in New York, Mumbai or Milan). This project gives
a public voice to communities across Africa, empowering them to share
their own histories and, through training, to acquire valuable and
transferable skills.
The project was designed by Isla (South Africa) and I (France), with the
support of Iolenda (Italy) (yeahhhh, three wikiwomens !)
Without going much into details (see links below), let's say that this
project will involve Wikipedians in Residence in two African countries
(Ivory Coast and Uganda), training in South Africa, local events in the
two above listed countries and a big photographic contest involving the
entire African continent.
More information here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki (available in French
and English)
For those unaware, the official languages of Uganda are English and
Swahili, whilst the official language of Ivory Coast is French. Our
project being bilingual is not a bug, it's a feature :)
I should probably outline that our goal is not so much about getting
african content in Wikipedia but more about outreach and awareness in
the field.
As such, the Wikipedians in Residence will not so much focus on getting
in touch and establishing partnerships with institutions in big cities
so that content may be freed and added to our projects (see the current
wikipedia description of a WiR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence).
Our "Residence" will be the "Kumusha" (a Shona term meaning "the place
where you come from"). Our WiR will rather try to activate the local
communities to help them discover our projects and share their heritage
with us. As such, the events are more likely to take place in little
villages, suburbs, shantytowns, camps, agricultural communities, than in
big cities. Participants are more likely to be teenagers with cellphones
than middle age men in suits. Data collected is perhaps more likely to
be geographical and social related data about a little city than high
level politics.
The project is financially supported by the Orange Foundation (France)
for Ivory Coast and Uganda... starting 1st of October !
A good part of the original submission made last spring is available
here for those interested :
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Activate_Africa_(Orange_Foundation)
I am very glad to have the opportunity to work on that project :) It is
a long way from my presentation back in Wikimania 2005 (Wikimedia
projects in the developing world:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-FD1)
As for Isla, she is involved in the WikiAfrica project
(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAfrica_Cameroon) through the Africa
Centre, and some of you met her at Wikimania Hong Kong where she lead a
panel about Activating Africa
(https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Activating_Africa).
Our twitter handle is @KumushaWiki
You are naturally welcome to comment, criticize, relay, participate,
support and copy :)
Anthere
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