Dagbani Wikimedians User Group/Annual Reports/2021-2022

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Introduction[edit]

The Dagbani Wikimedians User Group has had a productive year in 2022, organizing various activities to help both experienced and new participants contribute to Wikipedia with ease. The user group's efforts have helped to grow the initiative and Wikipedia as a whole. Throughout the year 2022, we focused on supporting our language communities as well as onboarding new communities such as the Kusaal and the Dagaare Wikimedia communities. The success of the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group in 2022 was due to the collaboration with its sister communities, including the Moore and Gurene Wikimedia communities. This collaboration has helped to ensure that the group's activities are inclusive and cater to the needs of all the language communities. This report serves as a testament to the hard work and dedication of members of the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group in promoting Wikipedia in local languages and creating a community of editors who are passionate about preserving their culture and history. The projects implemented by the group in 2022 have not only helped incubate other language Wikipedias but also helped get the Gurene Wikipedia out of the incubator.

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group 2022 Annual Programs(July, 2022 - January 2023)[edit]

We embarked on our approved annual programs, starting with the key programs among the programs. We started implementing the programs in July 2022. We successfully implemented a tele-education program dubbed Dagbani Wikipedia Saha, lexicographical data (Abstract Wikipedia), community building and leadership training, Wiki Loves Monuments 2022, and community engagement activities. We ended the year with Get Together and the awards ceremony as the first half of the programs and are waiting to continue with the rest of the programs in the first half of 2023.

Wikidata Tenth Birthday for Gurene Wikimedia Community and Sister Communities(November 2022)[edit]

Wikidata 10th birthday celebration in Ghana

The Wikidata's tenth birthday celebration project was held among three Wikimedia groups, namely the Moore, Gurene, and Dagbani Wikimedians Community. Community members connected and socialized among themselves, they were also introduced to some Wikidata tools via in-person workshops. There was a short demonstration on how to use the SPARQL query service and Wikidata quick statements.

Wiki Loves Folklore 2022 in Ghana(February 2022)[edit]

Dagbani Wikimedians on photo walk at Bolga Market

The walks focused on taking photos, audio, and videos of various cultural groups from the northern part of Ghana, where Wikimedia activities are less covered. Their food, music & dance, rites, games, work, and festivals were covered.

Wiki Loves Earth 2022 in Ghana(May 2022)[edit]

Dagbani Wikimedians on photo walk at the White Volta in Gamabaga, North East Region, Ghana

This project contributed images of local natural heritage, landscapes, plants, and animals from the northern part of Ghana to Wikimedia commons. Members of the Dagbani User Group, the Moore, and the Gurene Communities took part in the event.


WikiVibrance International Youth Day (IYD) 2022 in Moore Wikimedia Community/Ghana(August 2022)[edit]

Wiki vibrance winners by Moore Wikimedians

This project sort to celebrate young Wikimedians and those who are shaping them. It also creates an opportunity to bridge the knowledge gap on the theme of intergenerational solidarity, "Creating a World for All Ages" by leveraging the capacity of 1.8 billion young people taking action to solve pressing issues in different corners of the world. This local campaign will also serve to increase youth participation, diversity, and capacity in the Wikimedia Movement, helping to ensure its sustainability. We celebrated young Wikimedians and the people and communities who are helping them contribute to Wikimedia projects. This includes researchers, language translators, students, community groups, lecturers, software developers, and more.

Dagbani Wikipedia Saha(May 2022)[edit]

Wikimania 2022 in Tamale, Ghana

This program tries to teach Wikipedia via Television. It promoted the Dagbani Wikimedians initiative, engaged volunteers, and instructed those interested in contributing to the Dagbani Wikipedia. This allowed those who were unable to attend our in-person workshops due to their distance, time, or location to still be involved.

Wikimania 2022(August 2022)[edit]

Team for Dagbani Wikipedia Saha

The project supported members from the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group to support its members from the Dagbani, Gurene, Moore communities and the university of education Wiki hub to participate in Wikimania 2022. This grant will help support our communities before, during and after Wikimania events.

Internet Governance Forum by Dagbani Wikimedikans User Group, Ghana (November 2022)[edit]

The Internet Governance Forum brought together members of the Dagbani Wikimedians community in Tamale to join the global celebration hosted in Adisa Ababa and remotely hosted in several countries across Africa to discuss issues relating to the Internet. The sister communities of the Wikimedians User Group were invited to the satellite event. The challenges and opportunities of the digital age were discussed at the conference. The theme of this year's IGF was "Resilient Internet for a Shared, Sustainable, and Common Future", which brought participants from diverse backgrounds to reflect on how a resilient internet society could help create opportunities and partnerships for sustainable development.

End-of-year get-together and award ceremony (December 2022)[edit]

The end-of-Year Get-Together was organized to socialize, connect, reflect, and celebrate our achievements as a user group. It was marked by an award ceremony for the members of the Wikimedians User Group to show appreciation for the massive contribution to Dagabni Wikipedia and Wikimedia at large. Participants in this celebration were the members of our sister communities, thus, the Gurene, Moore, Kusaal, and Dagaare Wikimedia communities. It was a colorful event where participants were entertained and motivated to contribute more for in the year 2023.

Celtic Knot Conference (July 2022)[edit]

The Dagbani Wikimedians User Group, in collaboration with the Gurene and Moore Wikimedia Communities, hosted a one-day workshop and trained participants on how to create Wikidata Lexemes as well as translate Wikidata properties into different languages. Participants learned more about Wikidata, Lexemes, and Wikidata lexicographical data in general. Participants were able to create Lexemess in Dagbani. added descriptions and labels to Wikidata items in Dagbani and Gurene (Frafra). They were able to create Wikidata items. It was impactful as participants gained an appreciable amount of knowledge within the period of the event.

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group Report 2020-2021[edit]

Introduction[edit]

The User Group was registered by the Registrar Department in Ghana with the help of trustees in 2020. The User Group Satisfied all the requirements for the registration of a non-profit organization in Ghana.

This report highlights key activities by The Dagbani Wikimedians User group for 2021. The initiative has organized a lot of activities for both old and new participants to help them edit on Wikipedia without challenges which will help grow the initiative and Wikipedia at large.


Activating Local Language Communities/Dagbani (September 2020)[edit]

Winners of 'My Northern Achiever' contest 2020

As part of the Dagbani Wikimedians initiatives about Improving Local language Wikipedias, We organized a month-long writing contest to add/improve articles in the Dagbani Wikipedia incubator as a new strategy to reactivate the Dagbani Language Wikipedia community that has been dormant for the last 6 years since 2014. Being one of the 28 Oti–Volta_languages, Dagbani is an almost lingua franca in the northern half of Ghana as well as in parts of southern halves of Burkina Faso and Benin, primarily because it is mutually-intelligible with the languages in some of these regions comprising 12 million speakers. We aim to have it become an inspiration for smaller nearby-language communities to emerge; including Kusaal, Dagaati, Moore and Gurunɛ.

Dagbani Bachinima (December 2020)[edit]

We organized a month-long editathon to upload 4000 words to Wikimedia commons using the Spell4Wiki android application. These words are used in the Wikidata Lexicographical data curation and would be very useful for future digital dictionaries or Wiktionary. The applications of this project include: Support for Dagbani Wiktionary Words can be added to Wikipedia articles Words can be added to describe items on Wikidata; e.g. Q98185154#P443 or Q105#P443 Support for Wikidata:Lexicographical data We exceeded our target by uploading audio recordings of more than 4020 words spoken in the Dagbani language as against our proposed 4000 words. produces audio recordings of more than 4000 words spoken in the Dagbani language. We crawled the internet for Dagbani language corpora, including the dictionaries prepared by Roger Blench and Tony Naden. We extracted and dumped all the words in a spreadsheet and removed duplicates while also fixing and reformatting special Latin characters that were rendered incorrectly.


Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 in Ghana (February, 2021)[edit]

The Dagbani Wikimedians User Group were the main organizers for the 2021 Wiki Loves Folklore in Ghana. The month-long contest introduced participants to Wikimedia Commons and Creative license. We organized 3 photo walks across 3 regions in northern Ghana, Oti, Savannah and northern regions. Due to covid-19 restrictions, we invited only 10 participants for each photo walk. A total of 1,278 photos were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The set target was exceeded by 878 photos and over 30% of the total images were used across Wikimedia projects, Dagbani Wikipedia (incubator), English Wikipedia and Wikidata Lexemes. 15 Dagbani Wikipedia articles, 6 Wikidata items and 11 Wikidata Lexemes were created.

Translating MediaWiki most used statements on TranslateWiki.net[edit]

We organized online and in-person workshops to help educate participants on Translatewiki.net in order to help translate the MediaWiki source so the community can have the option to access Wikimedia projects in Dagbani. At the end of the project, we had all mediawiki most used statements translated into 100% and changed the interface and buttons on wikimedia platforms especially when you set your language to Dagbani.

WikiForHumanRights 2021 in Ghana (June, 2021)[edit]

Canoe ride at Mognori eco village
Dagbani Wikimedians group at Mole National Park


This was a month-long writing contest to add/improve articles in Incubator (Dagbani Wikipedia) as part of WikiForHumanRights 2021 in Ghana. The contest focused on adding and improving content on topics that are related to the “right to a healthy environment” which is the theme of WikiForHumanRights in 2021. This was important for the Dagbani Wikimedia user group in Ghana because it was an opportunity to recruit new editors and engage existing ones. We also had an opportunity to create basic content related to the environment and human rights in the Dagbani language Wikipedia, and to enrich content about Ghana on Wikidata. Not only written articles were part of the contest, but photos were also taken and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group Community Engagement Activities (2021)[edit]

Dagbani Wikimedians /team and community engagement to expand Wikimedia engagements in Ghana for a duration of three months by a. supporting Dagbani Wikimedians Team Meetups b. Increasing Opportunities for Community Capacity Development. c. Organizing Physical workshops/trainings for community members.

Afrocuration, the Solution Will Not be Televised[edit]

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group Partnered with Moleskine Foundation to gather 50 young people to create articles in Wikipedia relating to the Coronavirus Pandemic. This created awareness of the coronavirus pandemic in at least 3 African Languages. We joined the Moleskine Foundation to hold a 5-day editing competition from December 7th to December 11th.. Winners of this competition received recognition of a dedicated post displaying a short story about them and their achievements across Moleskine Foundation social media channels as part of the global campaign.

Wikimania 2021 (September 2021)[edit]

Dagbani Wikimedians at Wikimania 2021
Dagbani Wikimedians at Wikimania 2021

Dagbani Wikimedians User Group secured a scholarship from WMF to support its members and to participate in Wikimania 2021. The user group also hosted a post Wikimania event to brainstorm on what went well and what didn’t. The goals of the project were met and participating volunteers were full of excitement since this was the first time almost all the participants took part in Wikimania virtually.

Software Freedom Day (November 2021)[edit]

We organized workshops for the Gurene Wikimedia Community to help its members translate all most commonly used mediawiki messages from English to Gurene on translatewiki.net. We recruited new members for the community and also educated people on the power of open source resources.

Dagbani Wikimedians End of Year Get-together and AWard Ceremony[edit]

The User Group for the first time organized its end-of-year get-together and Awards ceremony to recognize the most dedicated and outstanding contributors within the community. We also use the event as an opportunity to officially launch the Dagbani Wikipedia. Community members received gift vouchers and awards such as Tablets and mobile phones.

Press Releases[edit]

2021-2022[edit]

2020-2021[edit]

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