Wiki In Africa/Focus

__Wiki In Africa__

Mission

Governance

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Wiki Loves Africa

Wiki Loves Women

Education

GLAM

Community

Climate

Access via Tech

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HOME (On Meta): Wiki In Africa
Website: www.wikiinafrica.org
Strategy: on Meta • Admin website
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Wiki In Africa team
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Project external links
Blog : WIA blog
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YouTube: Wiki In Africa channel
Linked In: Connect here
BluSky: Connect here
Instagram: @WikiLovesWomen
Facebook page: @WikiAfrica
Twitter: @WikiAfrica
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Access all updated strategy documents on our organisational website.

Short presentation of Wiki in Africa

Wiki In Africa (www.wikiinafrica.org) is a South African registered NPO whose work across the continent.

Its registered mission is to:

Activate and enable communities to ensure that open knowledge platforms reflect and represent the diverse cultures, peoples, biodiversities, and histories of the African continent and other previously marginalised and disenfranchised communities with the same depth and breadth as other knowledge systems.

To achieve this mission, it combats the digital divide across Africa through layered, strategically-focused programs that progress skills acquisition, leadership development, and community building.

Collectively the programs result in representative visual and textual content under free licenses that reflect previously skewed, misunderstood, or invisible knowledges, realities, cultures, and histories. The organisation’s core activities are geared towards activating sustainable contribution of content that relates to Africa (and similarly disadvantaged communities and populations) whose value and worth are decided by those communities and individuals. This content contributes to decolonizing knowledge and the internet.

Wiki In Africa’s activities supports the strategic goals of the Wikimedia movement. We support free expression, a free and open Internet, and the use of open licenses, and the protection of the public domain.

Thousands of participants across our projects collate, curate, and contribute content that relates to the theme of Africa and ensuring gender equity. This content presents new narratives of what ‘Africa’ and ‘gender’ really represent to African and global audiences. Access to this content by a diverse readership is assured through the contents’ integration into global knowledge platforms, such as Wikipedia.

Wiki In Africa’s activities supports the aims of the Wikimedia movement across Africa. We support free expression, a free and open Internet, and the use of open licenses and the protection of the public domain. Its beneficiaries are Readers, Students and existing and potential Wikipedians. Its target groups or audiences are the individuals and collective knowledge in Civil Society partners (content and network and educational), Wikimedia and Open aligned volunteer groups and education organisations.

Impact strategy 2030

In 2025, Wiki in Africa established its new Impact Strategy 2030. A very short summary is provided below.

Essential elements of the Impact Strategy involved:

• validating and recalibrating our initial aims and intentions,
• reinforcing our organisational values,
• reaffirming our position and role within the Wikimedia community,
• isolating the key expectations of our community,
• assessing internal and external threats,
• considering our stakeholders’ needs and expectations,
• consolidating our approach towards four strategic pillars, and
• ultimately our new Impact Statement.

Wiki in Africa 2025 Values

Wiki in Africa Core Values

• Constantly lead and innovate
• Africa first, but not only Africa
• Support the growth of sustainable communities
• Pursue social, cultural, and linguistic justice
• Strive for excellence

Our Core Values in detail may be found in detail on this page.

Wiki in Africa Strategic Pillars

• Activation: Creating entry points and return touchpoints that build interest, momentum, and integration into the Wikimedia movement.
• Enablement (support and service): The explicit and implicit support that our staff and programs provide, ensuring that communities thrive.
• Leadership and Capacity Building: Making explicit our investment in people, thus creating longer-term sustainability.
• Partnering: Building relationships that strengthen and sustain the wider open-knowledge movement.

Our Pillars in detail may be found in detail on this page.

Expected outcome of our work

• People are better able to contribute to knowledge
• People increase their digital literacy skills
• Representation gaps are bridged online.
• We collaborate to go further together.
• We foster connections and provide visibility.

Intended impact

• African and underrepresented people are confident to take ownership of their own knowledge.
• Global knowledge reflects the histories, cultures and experiences of these populations.

Programmatic Strategic Focuses

Our programs are loosely grouped into key strategic focuses:

• Representation and Knowledge Gaps
• Youth Activation and Open Education
• Tools and Technology (including Offline), and
• Community Cohesion and Care

Guided by this plan until 2030, Wiki In Africa will continue to support and hopefully expand its current range of projects in alignment with and through the lens of the recalibrated strategic pillars and the guidelines of the Impact Strategy.

Please do not hesitate to look at the detailed strategy here for more in depth information.

History of achieving the Wiki In Africa Mission

2021

Wiki in Africa developed its first Theory of Change

2022

In light of the Theory of Change developed during 2021, and considering our Swot Analysis as well as Risk Analysis, several overarching goals and objectives were identified in our Strategic focus.

The 2022 annual plan retained the focuses of the 2021 Annual Plan and expected to extend and scale these impacts into the future. In 2022 we became more focused on nurturing engagement, through our programs (and other Wikimedia initiatives) at every stage of the participant’s journey.

In 2022, we developed a Strategic Plan as well as our first Multi Year Plan 23-25.

2025

In 2025, the whole Wiki in Africa team reviewed the past work and analysed what was essential to carry forward. This process was conducted through thought-provoking workshops, asynchronous reviews, and community research – asking the Wikimedia community what they wanted and conducting multiple in-person interviews with key Wikimedians. The team participated in an Impact Strategy workshop with external consultants Skating Panda. The final Impact Strategy is detailed here.

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