Wiki In Africa/Organisation

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Wiki In Africa is an organisation that runs fun, easy-to-access programs that encourage content contribution, training, and community development across Africa and beyond. Wiki In Africa was not officially registered in South Africa until March 2017, but many of its projects have been operating since 2014. The reasons behind our activities and the history of Wiki In Africa and the WikiAfrica movement are comprehensively covered on this History page.
 Read about Wiki In Africa's strategic process

Wiki In Africa Organisation

The constitution of the organisation Wiki In Africa

Official Organisational Address:

114 Runciman Drive
Simon’s Town
Cape Town
7975
South Africa

Status

  • non-profit voluntary organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa in 2017
  • Registration number with South Africa's Department of Social Development: 187-625 NPO
  • requesting Usergroup status from Affcom (mid-2018) as Wiki In Africa Usergroup

Wiki In Africa History

  • 11 November 2016: Founding AGM meetup in Cape Town with Iolanda Pensa, Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood
  • 23 March 2017: South Africa’s Department of Social Security authorises the registration of Wiki In Africa as a voluntary organisation and official NPO (187-625 NPO).

The board members of Wiki In Africa


Isla Haddow-Flood (South Africa), Chair and Co-lead
A Zimbabwean by birth, and a Capetonian by adoption, Oxford-educated Isla Haddow-Flood is a project and communications strategist who is passionate about open access to knowledge and facilitating the growth of previously under-represented or 'invisible' communities to share their stories, experiences, and voices with the world.In a career that spans working to promote Africa's filmmakers and artists, since 2011, Isla has been working to Activate Africa. Working with members of the WikiAfrica movement, she has conceptualised and instigated #OpenAfrica, Kumusha Bus, and WikiEntrepreneur. She was co-lead of projects ground-breaking, Africa-focused projects such as Wiki Loves Africa (annual photographic contest) and Kumusha Takes Wiki. In 2016, Florence and Isla developed and launched Wiki Loves Women, Wikipack Africa, WikiFundi, and WikiChallenge African Schools. She also works part-time as Director of Communications for Open Education Global.
Florence Devouard (France), Co-Lead
A Wikipedian since 2002, a former Chair of Wikimedia Foundation and a founding member of Wikimedia France, Florence Devouard was born in France where she currently lives. She is a free knowledge advocate, a public speaker and a consultant. Above everything, she loves to share her knowledge of new practices and online communities. She cares for language diversity and multicultural dialogue, and is a supporter of the open-source and free knowledge movement. Since 2013, Florence is the co-leader on projects related to Wikipedia and Africa, as part of the WikiAfrica mouvement. In 2016, Florence and Isla decided to create Wiki in Africa and have been co-leading since then.
Rachel Zadok (South Africa), Treasurer
Rachel Zadok is an editor, writer and designer and the author of two novels: Gem Squash Tokoloshe (Pan Macmillan, 2005), shortlisted for The Whitbread First Novel Award and The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the IMPAC Award; and Sister-sister (Kwela Books, 2013), shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize and The Herman Charles Bosman Prize, and longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award. She is the managing editor of Short Story Day Africa, a project to promote and develop African writers using the medium of the short story, and as such has published seven anthologies of African short fiction, with an eighth forthcoming. She also sits on the board of Wiki in Africa, is the communications oversight manager for Wiki in Africa and the production manager for Inspiring Open, a podcast series of Wiki Loves Women, a project of Wiki in Africa. She attended the Caine Prize Workshop in 2012, was a Sylt Foundation Writer in Residence and the Rhine-South Africa Fellow in 2015, and attended the Sylt Foundation's "Transformation and Identity - Trauma and Reconciliation" workshop in Myanmar in 2018. She lives in Cape Town.
Emma Kaye (South Africa), Secretary
Emma Kaye was born in Harare, Zimbabwe[1]. On completing her A'Levels she studied business, marketing, and computer programming at Oxford Brookes University, England, and from there moved to the London School of Economics. During her time in London, Kaye worked in financial PR and wrote short-term money management programs for the money markets. Kaye has a number of seminal (and enduring) business and industry ventures to her name and attained multiple professional accolades and leading-light endorsements in the course of a steadily evolving, outwardly mercurial-seeming career spanning only 15 years. She draws attention to the strong business underpinning of her work, pointing out that her involvement has twice had the result of giving sustainable business direction and African brand equity to a highly charged, emerging sector.
Iolanda Pensa (Italy/Switzerland)
Iolanda Pensa was born in Switzerland and currently lives in Milan, Italy. Beginning in high school, she traveled everywhere from the U.S. to the U.K. and from Russia to Africa. An active Wikipedia contributor since 2006, Iolanda is deeply involved with the WikiAfrica project but is also a researcher and art critic. She is currently based at SUPSI in Switzerland leading the Wikipedia Primary School SSAJRP programme. She was also the lead organiser for Wikimania Esino Lario in 2016.
Gino Fransman (South Africa)
Gino Fransman is the founder of the Education Influencers project at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. He is the current Africa Hub Coordinator for the UNESCO Open Education for a Better World [OE4BW] program, plus both a mentor and previous project author in the program. His highly collaborative Open online course is titled Becoming an Open Education Influencer (BOEI). BOEI is a student empowerment and advocacy tool for innovation in education through Open available on the MandelaUni Open Engage LMS. Gino is a member of the OE4BW Advisory Board and the 2021 winner of the Education Global Emerging Leader Award. He is also an independent member of Open Education Global. In 2023, he has been named a Key Partner for the Knowledge Equity Network (KEN), “Key Partners represent a range of thought leaders from Higher Education Institutions, and influential organisations and include diverse perspectives from across the globe.
Tobechukwu Precious Friday (Nigeria)
Tobechukwu, also known as Tochi was born in Abia State, Nigeria. On completing her Secondary education, she studied Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. After which she proceeded to Rome Business School for a Master in Project Management and is currently a Doctorate Student in Business Administration, Strategy and Management at the Swiss School of Business Management. Tochi is a teacher, translator, and entrepreneur. She is an alumnus of the Cherie Blair Foundation Women in Business Mentorship Program as well as The Next Economy, Nigeria Entrepreneurship program which she became the Nigerian Ambassador in 2018 and subsequently a mentor where she mentors young African entrepreneurs to use the Lean Model. Tochi has also served as a mentor in the Zimba Women Mentorship Program Uganda where she mentored young African girls and women to become productive and make better career decisions. From 2020 to 2021, she worked as a Program Manager at Wennovation Hub; a pioneer start-up accelerator and incubator in Nigeria where she managed projects like Idea to Business Program - a women-focused business incubation Program, and the Next Economy Program - a youth-focused business incubation Program. She's the founder and Operations coordinator of Smarter Languages Hub - a language services company, co-founder and Program Coordinator, of Igbo Wikimedians User Group, and a Wikimedian in Residence at Moleskine Foundation. She believes that we grow by lifting others hence her involvement in a lot of mentorship programs.
Dominique Eliane Yao (Côte d'Ivoire)
Dominique Eliane is a specialist in Communication and Public Relations. An active member of Wikimedia since 2014, she served as Vice President of the Community of Côte d'Ivoire from 2018 to 2021. After this experience, Dominique Eliane is elected the first president of the Wikifranca Administrative Committee, the collaboration of the French Wikimedia communities. This experience allowed him to begin a new phase of his involvement in the community, with the main objective of making Wikifranca, a unifying hub for francophone communities. She also campaigned in the Ivorian Community to reduce the gender gap on Wiki projects in her country. It is thus the leader of the «Wikimousso» pole whose goal is to create, and enrich the content on notable women of the Ivory Coast.

Funding, partners, collaboration and support

Non wikimedians African partners
Gender gap/diversity oriented
All Wiki Loves Women partnering gender-centric organisations can be found here.
African Wikimedia and other collaborative organisations