Grants:Project/MSIG/Oral Culture: African History Representation on Wikipedia/Report

Movement Strategy Implementation Grant Report
Under review

Outcomes

Please respond to the following questions below:

Where have you published your draft plan? Share the link to it here:

• Our project culminated in the creation of a toolkit/guideline document to support other Wikimedians who wish to create their own oral history podcasts and contributions to African history, or the oral traditions of any other culture. A link to this final document can be found here.
• The project team’s ideas of measurement and impact tracking can be found in the following logic model here.

What Movement Strategy initiative is this draft plan supporting?

• Our project is set towards contributing to the Movement Strategy area 9 titled “Innovate in Free Knowledge”. More specifically, our contribution sits under initiative 42; ‘Experimentation for knowledge equity’.
• Through innovating to keep alive rich oral traditions and find a way for them to live on Wikimedia projects, we can widen the knowledge pool shared in the movement and increase collaboration and cultural sensitivity across the movement in the process.
• Reaching this outcome will need lots of structured discourse, resilience, and the existence of a common goal. After all, we are attempting to overcome a longstanding issue.

What activities have you completed to produce this draft plan?

• The toolkit document was arrived at as a final step of a longer project process:
  • We first had a background research phase, in which we reviewed relevant literature, spoke to experts in the field (historians and experienced Wikipedians) and we also surveyed community members to assess their levels of difficulty with adding Africa-related content onto Wikipedia. In this phase the project team also reviewed past projects that we felt were relevant to our own aims. An end of phase summary document can be found here.
  • We next had a preparatory phase ahead of community consultations, in which we tried to align within our project team on whom to approach in our communities to better understand if they’d like to be involved in an oral history project, and if so what type of needs would have to be satisfied.
  • Our third phase was to run these community consultations in Nigeria and Tanzania (here, wider representation for the East Africa region was sought). Please see participant lists below:
    • Nigeria community summary document for interviews
    • Nigeria community interviewees:
      • Adéṣínà Ayẹni, Nigerian cultural ambassador
      • Sadik Shahadu, Ghanaian digital language activist, Wikipedian, co-founder and open-source technology enthusiast
      • Jane Achukwu Onyinye, Experienced Wikimedian, science teacher and an Associate Member of Nigerian Institute of Translators and Interpreters Association of Nigeria.
      • Dappa Solomon, Wikimedian and award-winning documentary photographer from the Ancient Opobo Kingdom.
      • Salako Olamilekan Lukman
      • Mohammed Kamal-Deen Fuseini, Wikimedian, a teacher and a member of the Cyber Security Professionals Association of Ghana.
      • Aliyu Yusuf, Dedicated translator on Hausa Wikipedia, proficient in both content creation, programming, graphic design, and photography.
      • Esther, Wikimedian, co-founder and community organiser.
      • Omolade Dorcas, Experienced Yoruba Wikipedia editor, and the Programs officer and Wikipedian-in-Residence at the International Centre for Yoruba Arts and Culture.
      • Euphemia Uwandu, Nigerian Wikimedian whose team implemented the Igbo dances project, documenting 16 Igbo dances on Wikimedia projects.
      • Agnes Abah, Nigerian Wikimedian, co-founder and advocate.
    • Tanzania/East Africa summary document for interviews
    • Tanzania/East Africa interviewees:
      • Elsie Ceasarianne (Karimjee Foundation, Tanzania)
      • Michael Maua (Wikimedia User Group Kenya, Kenya)
      • Otto Nyongole (Wikimedia User Group Tanzania, Tanzania)
      • Romeo Ronald (Wikimedia User Group South Sudan, South Sudan)
      • Ferdinand Irankunda (Wikimedia User Group Burundi,

Burundi)

• • Our final phase was to condense our learnings into a toolkit document that would permit existing Wikipedians to start planning effectively and contributing immediately to oral history through Wikimedia projects.

In which community channels have you announced your draft plan?

• Our plan document is being socialised through an office hours session on Friday 6th December. We planned for this session to be many weeks earlier, but had setbacks due to travel and personal sickness.
• We are communicating this out on the African Wikimedians mailing list.
• We are sharing news of our plans with our advisors
• If permitted, the project team would be happy to write a Diff article to disseminate our work further.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

In total, we spent $18,020. The funds were spend as follows:

Budget Line	Budget (USD)	Actual spend (USD)
PM oversight fees for the project: 25usd/hr*15hrs/week. Unit given as months	$5,250.00	$5,250.00
WM Igbo Advisor fees for the project: 18usd/hr*20hrs/week. Unit given as months	$3,600.00	$3,600.00
WM Igbo wikimedian support fees for engagement interviews during the project: 18usd/hr*20hrs/week. Unit given as months	$1,440.00	$1,440.00
WM Tanzania WIR fees for the project: 18usd/hr*20hrs/week. Unit given as months	$5,040.00	$5,040.00
Research assistant and comms strategist expert: 20usd/hr*15hrs/week. Unit given as months	$2,400.00	$2,400.00
bank fees and admin charges (estimate)	$500	$290

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Our financial sponsor reported to us we have $210 of unspent funds.

We are thinking of submitting a follow-up project next year based on this work, and how the results are received by the community.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

I honestly think we underestimated the time needed to complete such a project. Even with contingency time between phases, there were multiple moments of trying to speed up work not to fall behind the timing plan. Additionally, the nature of this type of consultive and iterative work needs time to have multiple points of contact with community groups to work through insights and conclusions. Due to our limited time and budget, we spent the necessary time (or more where possible) to gain needed insights with stakeholder groups, and move on to form opinions/findings as a project team. Whilst this was the plan, we realise the value in being able to circle back with communities and share our work as it progresses. We are finishing up 3 weeks later than planned due to the above, as well as cases of sickness within the team, and unplanned challenges with university exams.

We note that we were unable during the course of the project to contact and engage the Italian Wikimedian groups as planned. We initially wanted to do this in the proactive spirit of putting African Wikimedians in touch with European communities who want to receive and engage with new African content from oral sources. However, we realised that not only was lack of time a main issue, but moreover if we actually did contact the Italian Wikimedians, we would have confused them. Discussing with the Italian Wikimedians how they might collaborate with the African Wikimedian groups would have caused chaos and possibly ruined chances for future collaboration as we were not clear ourselves on what the oral format would be like until very late stages of this project.