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Activate Africa

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Activate Africa is a network of grant-funded, staffed projects and initiatives that is aimed at accelerating the growth of communities that encourage a culture of contribution in Africa to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects. It creates toolkits and online courses, and uses a variety of different interventions and models to gather layers of information relating to the geographical features, demographics, heritage, culture, notable persons and other elements that make up communities across Africa.

The project takes place in many countries to encourages individuals, communities and institutions to create and contribute freely-licensed information, texts, data, images and media about their communities (villages, townships, suburbs, inner cities, so-on-and-so-forth) to an online platform.

Activate Africa was launched at Wikimania 2013 within a panel discussion (video starting 02:48) "to respond to the urgent need for Africa’s historic and contemporary reality to be truthfully represented on the world's most accessible encyclopaedia, written by those closest to it".

There are several elements to the Activating Africa project. All elements stand alone, but work to achieve the overall project's ambitions aims. The project is pan-African in scope and will transcend many cultures and languages.

Activating Africa is made up of several parts:

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