Wikimedia UserGroup Kenya Projects/Afrocine/Months of Africa Cinema 2025

Project Overview

A key strategy for the 2025 Afrocine Campaign 2025 was to build on the lessons and challenges documented in the last 4 years of running the campaign to scale impact, which informed the curation of a High-level industry Stakeholder Roundtable Forumaimed at bringing together leaders from the creative sector, government, and development partners to reflect on achievements, discuss challenges, and co-create pathways for sustained collaboration and generate actionable insights, and commitments from stakeholders.

Campaign Organiser: User: Ms Kabintie

Background

Kenya’s creative industry, encompassing film, music, visual arts, and digital media, continues to grow as a critical driver of cultural identity, innovation, and economic opportunity. Yet, despite its dynamism, the sector remains under-documented and underrepresented in the digital knowledge ecosystem.

Wikimedia Kenya User Group has been working to bridge this gap by supporting open access to information and documenting Kenya’s creative and cultural heritage on platforms such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and WikiQuotes.

Through the Months of African Cinema and Afro Creatives campaigns, Wikimedia Kenya has in the last 5 years, created over 300 Wikipedia articles on Kenya’s creative, TV & film industry, improved over 2,000 pages and added over 400 images on Wikimedia Commons. Capacity building - We have also trained over 60 filmmakers, students

Challenges

Despite this success, our work continues to be impeded by a lack of enough citations from reliable media publications such as mainstream newspapers and low awareness from our Wikipedia editors on the industry.

Goals/Opportunity

Africa’s Digital Knowledge Gaps continue to be exacerbated by Artificial Intelligence (AI); It is therefore prudent to collaborate to help shrink existing gaps on Kenya’s creative arts, film and Tv online and especially on the world’s largest free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which continues to be a key Digital Public Good infrastructure.

2025 Activities Overview

This year, as with 2024, we combined the Months of African Cinema and Afro Creatives Campaign Activities owing to similarities in the campaign's objectives and also to help consolidate available resources to support the two campaigns. Funds allocated for Afrocine supported both campaign activities. User:FaithB led the Afro-creatives campaign and User:Ms Kabintie the Afrocine/, months of Kenyan cinema.

Capacity building workshops: We conducted 2 capacity building workshops, one focused on wiki editing skills and the other a;
High-Level Industry Stakeholder Engagement Forum aimed at raising awareness about our work in documenting the arts and film industry, and creating an avenue for collaboration.
Edit-a-thon: We also ran an in-person edit-a-thon and 2-week-long virtual edit-a-thons in August, during the AfroCreatives campaign period.

General Campaign Objectives

Enhance Wikipedia editing skills for new commers and editors
Upskill existing community members
Improve content on Kenya’s film, TV and industry players on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons
raise awareness about our campaign, challenges, and identify areas of engagement

Afro Creatives Campaign Outcomes

17 new Wikipedia articles created
134 articles improved
400 new citations
42 commons uploads

High-level Creatives Roundtable

Theme: “Amplifying Kenya’s Creative Industries Through Open Knowledge and Collaboration”

Date: 26th November 2025

Venue: Baraza Media Lab

Target Audience

Government Agencies: Ministry of Youth Affairs, Arts and Sports; Kenya Film Commission; Kenya Film Classification Board.
Creative Sector: Filmmakers, producers, directors, actors, scriptwriters, artists, and guilds.
Development and Cultural Partners: Embassies, cultural attachés, and international cooperation agencies.
Media: Journalists, editors, and media development organizations.
Knowledge and Education Sector: Universities, libraries (Glam Institutions).
Wikimedia Kenya Representatives: Local and regional representatives from Wikimedia Kenya and allied affiliates.

Objectives of the Roundtable

Impact Showcase: Present Wikimedia Kenya’s contributions in documenting Kenya’s creative industries and open-knowledge ecosystem.
Foster Collaboration: Create space for dialogue between the Wikimedia community, government agencies, creative professionals, the Media and international partners.
Identify Opportunities: Explore joint initiatives to strengthen local content creation, training, and digital preservation.
Build Awareness: Position open-knowledge platforms as enablers of visibility, credibility, and sustainability in the creative sector.

Outcomes/Sucess Stories

Convened 15 key representatives from government, media, flm agencies, regulators and creators including CEO of the Kenya Film Commission.
Enhanced visibility and understanding of Wikimedia Kenya’s work among the creative sector stakeholders.
Proposed the development of a shared roadmap for documenting and promoting Kenya’s creative and film industries online.
Increased awareness of open knowledge and digital literacy as tools for cultural preservation and creative industry growth.
Forged collaborations to support our projects and local content digitization to expand and localize content on Kenya’s film and creative industries in the inaugural “Months of Kenyan Cinema Campaign” in 2026.
Networking

Financial Report

The Afrocine campaign 2025 was allocated a total of KSh 352,000 from the UG’s General Support Fund. These funds also supported the AfroCreatives events and activities.

Remaining Funds We had ksh 10,000 remaining funds from the miscellaneous kitty, which we channeled towards procuring additional branded notebooks for participants of the high-level creatives roundtable as the swag budget did not have enough funds to cover the expenses of the required quantities.