Ethiopian Encyclopedia
A Foreword with a note from Prof. Vigano
Amharic is the lingua franca in Ethiopia, a huge Country of amazing ancient history and unexploited cultural development potential. Over 87 languages are spoken here by a population soon to reach one hundred million, the second most populated land in Africa well before Egypt and under Nigeria. Amharic is no secondary world language. I once challenged an examiner on an Italian foreign office consultant evaluation panel, who stated my Amharic was utterly secondary on my cv telling him I had found the way to the hall by asking a lady on the Rome bus, in the Ethiopian language. It was true, and the same may happen to anyone meeting a generally exquisite Abyssinian in almost any prominent world city. There are at least thirty million Amharic speakers all over the world, plus over sixty million in Ethiopia, making it a language more widely spoken than my examiner’s Italian. The Italian wiki has over 750.000 entries, the 4th in the world edged by Polish, above Japanese. The Amharic wiki is the unreadable blot that lies third in the wikipedia frontpage, down, when you get to those minor languages with only 1000+ entries. You would not have I believe like most, Amharic characters. Yet, Ethiopia, a fast developing place with a need for cultural growth, shows any observer an amazing hunger for knowledge widespread across ethnic divides, has an amazing past of chroniclers and novel and theater writers, albeit little own scientific innovative production. It is well organized with schools and local Kebele or administrative posts owning limited libraries over its often remote 1,100,000 square kilometres of stunningly beautiful lands, from deserts of black rock, immaculate sands, salt and sulphuric acid lakes at 160m below sea level to over twenty peaks and range parts above 4000, many seasonally snowcapped.
Proposal
I have, over a seven year teaching period, had a few hundred students in Addis Ababa. I know practically all of them, as so many more around our capital town are perfectly able to produce competent wiki entries largely by translating material from other wikis. Drawing from secondary schools former pupils in Addis alone, selected articles by importance could be translated and widely simplyfied to fit in our context from English, Italian, French, Nordic languages and German, all obviously major encyclopedias. It will take a rented space the size of a small classroom, ten old PCs, a good net connection and some twenty full or part time wikipedians to realize a 60,000 to 80,000 entries Amharic wiki. Within the record time of less than two years. A secondary yet significant result will be enriching the whole wiki system with hundreds of entries and thousands of wikimedia images and files on Ethiopia, e.g.: a set of 1400 photoes. The two novelties that may appear as obstacles is that the wiki contributors will have to be paid. No one in practice, even me, has the luck to be able to dedicate totally free time to this effort in Ethiopia. And that as no one, absolutely, has access to a PC in over 90% of our Country, the Amharic Wikipedia will also be PRINTED. So it will be used, as a cheap yet invaluable paperback in a few thousands Kebele administrative posts, and in even more schools all over the swiftly changing Country. Now with an available extra mean to raise itself up from devastating want, an Encyclopedia, the first diffused tool for consultation, reading, learning in our own language. As most would positively agree the best way to get out of the poverty trap for any community is breaking ignorance.
Total costs could be detailed at around 100,000 USD, less than half for salaries and the remnant for a first thousand copies printing.
Some tentative costing indications:
local buy of 10 good used PCs USD 1500
rent of a suited room USD 200 monthly
salary of a dedicated wikipedian USD 70 monthly
Printing of a paperback 10 volume edition with around 60.000 entries, average 10-12 entries per page, indicatevely 500 pages per volume could amount to somewhere in the order of 60 USD per Encyclopedia, for a one thousand first edition.
Proposed by[edit]
Prof. Marco Vigano, Ahmed Zacariah; Ato Cherinnet Tilahun, the Proposed Danilo Dolci centre for Culture and Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Alternative names[edit]
wikiEthio
Amharic wiki becomes a printed paperback Encyclopedia, to potentially reach tens of millions in rural Ethiopia. In our language, Amharic.
Domain names[edit]
www.etio.webs.com, temporary host for project development at the page http://etio.webs.com/ethiopianencyclopedia.htm
Mailing list links[edit]
Our doubts, possible solutions[edit]
Will accuracy of entries fit in wiki or encyclopedia standards?
We know from reading a fair sample those few entries available, 6500, have been generally scrupulously peer reviewed. So there already exists a structure securing entries correction and evaluation. A member of the team will be in charge of checking the last day's entries alone.
How to fit in the scope and semplicity of a consultation tool adapted also to the countryside?
This is our task. Before printing, the publishing team as a whole will see editing, entries should always be well structured and comprehensible.
Demos[edit]
The Amharic wikipedia. 6500 entries written over seven years. A yearly growth of just around 900 entries we plan to equal every week, until we reach some 60,000 entries. Overall checking and adapting to a level of simplicity appropriate to the proposed capillary diffusion in the Country will lead to the first General Ethiopian Encyclopedia.