WM ZA/Annual Report 2024-25

This report covers Wikimedia South Africa's activities for the financial year 2024-25 using funding from the 2024-25 annual grant provided by the Wikimedia Foundation. This covers the period from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025.

Mid term activity report

This mid-term report covers the period from July to December 2024. Wikimedia South Africa divides its activities into two activity types: Outreach and Community Support and Governance.

Governance

Annual General Meeting

see also: Wikimedia ZA AGM 2024

The Annual General Meeting was held on the 09th November 2024 in person as well as online to ensure inclusivity for all chapter members. In Johannesburg the AGM was held at the The Catalyst Hotel in Sandton. In Cape Town the AGM was held in the The Protea Hotel Breakwater Lodge. Both in person meetings were well attended. Wikimedia South Africa elected a new board for the year up to November 2025 in 9 November 2024.

Outreach

Outreach activities are those that support and enhance the growth and awareness of Wikipedia and the free knowledge movement in Southern Africa.

2024-2025 Afrikaans Schools Writing Competition

WMZA volunteers: Oesjaar

The outcome of the 2024-2025 Afrikaans Schools Writing Competition can be seen [|HERE]

SWIP Phase 1

WMZA volunteers: Bobby Shabangu & Derek Moore & Matete Lesele & Michael Graaf & Ingrid Thomson & Jeremiah Pietersen & Jan-Hendrik du Toit

see also: SADiLaR workshops 2023

In February 2023 WMZA was approached by SADiLaR with an exciting progect proposition. They suggested that we run a series of workshops with South African language translators, academics, and enthusiasts in all of South Africa's Universities covering as many of South Africa's official languages as possible. WMZA has a strong commitment to growing Wikipedia in South African languages. This presented its self as an excellent opportunity to do so at a time when most South African language Wikipedia's are experiencing very slow growth.

Later on the South African Language Board also joined this project and it was renamed SADiLaR WIkipedia Pan-South Africa Language Board or SWIP.

WISCom Retreat

WMZA volunteers: Bobbyshabangu

WikiIndaba 2024

WMZA Staff: Herschal Jackson (WMZA) & Indiphile Ntlyizombi (WMZA)

WMZA volunteers: Bobby Shabangu & Derek Moore & Matete Lesele & Michael Graaf & Ingrid Thomson & Jeremiah Pietersen & Jan-Hendrik du Toit

2024 saw the Indaba return home for the first time since its inauguration and the conference was celebrated as a success by all participants. The theme for the year was "!ke e:/xarra //ke" which means united in diversity. This was evident in the conferences dedication to ensuring equity in scholarships the event hosted and even split between gender as well as senior and junior editors.

Community

Community support refer to chapter activities that support and strengthen the local Wiki editing volunteer community.

Meetups

Johannesburg Meetups

Cape Town Meetups

End of year report

This section details actives done by Wikimedia South Africa for the six month period starting 1 January 2025 until 30 June 2025.

Governance

Chapter strategic retreat

see also: Wikimedia ZA Retreat 2024

The Board met in March of 2024 to reflect on what the chapter had previously completed and to ratify the 2024-2027 Strategy, additionally the board members practically met to isolate how it saw the strategy being implemented and to discuss the needs to professionalize the chapter.

Executive Director

In early 2023 the chapter identified a need to become more professional in how it operated. The first step in this initiative was to isolate the strategic direction the chapter wanted to proceed in. shortly after creating the Strategy the board saw a need to appoint an executive coordinator to start the work towards this professionalism.

In 2024, during the Retreat the board discussed and voted to appoint an Executive Director to propel the strategy forward and to lead the chapter with excellence in its journey to achieve the goals set out in the 2024-2027 Strategy.

The Chapters first Executive Director was appointed as an interim Executive Director on a year's contract in April 2025.

Board Committees

During the 2024-2025 WMZA Retreat the board members isolated the need to create Committees to focus on different areas present in the Strategy, the below Committees were created:

Language and Thematic Committee This committee will lead by Khethiwe Marais and will look to identify Language and Thematic champions from within the chapter to ensure representation and championing of all languages in South Africa. This committee will seek to create the framework for champions in the chapter and to determine the metrics for measurement in South Africa.

Communications Committee This committee will be lead by Jan-Hendrik du Toit and will seek to increase the communication both internally and externally by the chapter. This committee will create an communications strategy which will be implemented by the chapters intern.

Partnerships Committee This committee will be lead by Michael Graaf and will seek to identify potential partners and will create the partnership strategy utilized by the chapter.

Finance Committee This committee will be lead by Ingrid Thomson , Jeremiah Pietersen and Bobby Shabangu and will seek to create and ratify the Finance Policies for the chapter.

WMZA Administrator

WMZA Staff Herschal Jackson (WMZA)

Wikimedia South Africa has had a full time employee since April 2023 who performed all administrative duties in the Chapter as well as project management for all chapter Projects. The Chapter has realized the need for the organization to further professionalize to ensure further development on the existing governance standards and to deliver on the strategic goals of the chapter To assist the Executive Director in the implementation of the day to day administration as well the Executive Director Advertised and interviewed from within the community as well as from the public and appointed an Administrator. The KPI's for the Role are available here

With the appointment of the Executive Director all staff will be managed by the ED who in turn will report to the Wikimedia South Africa Board on a Quarterly basis.

Community

Community outreach activities have played a crucial role for Wikimedia ZA by helping us expand our reach, engage new contributors, and strengthen our local Wikimedia community. Our partners have been pivotal in these efforts, providing matching funding, resources such as space and internet access, and, most importantly, connecting us with audiences eager to learn and contribute.

Below outlines a list of outreach activities for Wikimedia ZA in the previous financial year:

Wikimedia South Africa 13th Anniversary Meetup

WMZA Lead Johannesburg: Herschal Jackson (WMZA)

WMZA Lead Cape Town: Ingrid Thomson & Jeremiah Pietersen

On the 13th Anniversary of the chapters creation the chapter members gathered to celebrate the anniversary, to reflect on the chapters achievements and to look toward the future and what it still can and will do.

13th Anniversary Cape Town
Relaxing in good company
No Celebration without cake!!!
... and engagement

Afrikaans outreach 2024-2025

WMZA volunteers: Oesjaar

User Oesjaar has played a pivotal role in advancing the Afrikaans languages in South Africa. Through the support from the Chapter, he was able to increase the number of Afrikaans articles by way of running schools writing competition and doing edit workshops.

SWiP Phase 2 Workshops

The SADiLaR-Wikipedia-PanSALB (SWiP) project represents a joint effort involving the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR), Wikipedia, and the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). Its aim is to unite language communities, including university language departments and other linguistic organizations, in the promotion and celebration of South African languages. Additionally, the initiative seeks to inspire active engagement from these communities in enriching the content of Wikipedia with contributions from diverse linguistic perspectives. In the 2024-2025 year the chapter embarked on the second phase of the Project. Noteworthy activities in the second phase are a train the trainer workshop aimed at training participants from Phase 1 workshop to identify future trainers outside of the SWiP workshops.

SWiP Workshops Completed:

SWiP Nelson Mandela University Workshop
SWiP University of Limpopo Workshop
SWiP University of Johannesburg Workshop
SWiP Train The Trainer Workshop
SWiP Mpumalangu & DBE Workshop

Statistics

SWiP Phase 1 Statistics July 2025
SWiP Phase 2 Statistics July 2025

Library Outreach

In 2024-2025 year quite a bit of work was conducted in the advocacy space, specifically in

Community

Fiscal Sponsorship

Meetups

Johannesburg

Cape Town

AGM

The Chapters Annual General Meeting was hosted in person at the Catalyst Hotel in Sandton on the . The meeting also allowed for online participation for chapter members who could not participate in person.

The main objectives of the general meeting is to review the achievements for the previous year as well as to agree on and plan for the new year.

Link to the AGM minutes and recording can be located [Here]

WikiIndaba 2024

WMZA Volunteers Bobbyshabangu, discott, IngridThomson, Herschal Jackson (WMZA)

The WikiIndaba conference is not funded thought the annual grant but instead receives funding from the Conferences committee of the WMF.

Financial report

End of year

For the fully financial year period from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. Budget # refers to the budget line item number as reflected in the budget.


Budget #	Item	Budget (Rand)	Spent (Rand)	Unspent (Overspend)
1	Support African languages	R261,000.00	R327,579.46	(-R66,579.46)
2	Community diversity	R73,200.00	R26,950.00	R46,250.00
3	Wiki Content Creation & Tech Development	R62,500.00	R7,708.00	R54,792.00
4	Wiki Loves (Science, Plants, Africa)	R30,000.00	00.00	R30,000.00
5	Community building & health	R16,000.00	R2,550.00	R13,450.00
6	WMF support & engagement	R23,500.00	0	R23,500.00
7	Wikimedia scholarships	R180,700.49	R196,760.00	(-R16,059.51)
8	Regional community development	R45,000.00	R55,525.00	(-R10,525.00)
9	Staff	R1,407,000.00	R759,390.16	R647,609.84
10	Communications	R492,000.00	R349,882.93	R142,117.07

	Total (South African Rand)	R2,590,900.49	R1,726,345.55	R864,554.94
	Total (US $)*	$147,609.48	$98,353.82	$49,255.66

* US$ value based on ZAR/US$ exchange rate of R18.02 for US$1 on the 04 August 2025.