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Wiki In Africa’s education focus is based on a long-game strategy. Many of the volunteers coming into the movement must first deconstruct and re-assess how copyright and knowledge platforms collate information and work before they can effectively contribute to the Wikimedia projects. The education programmes that we build and run in various communities and iterations are in order to provide an alternative view to how knowledge is created and shared, through absorbing open movement practices, and essential digital, research, and writing skills in practical applications.

Wiki In Africa’s youth engagement and education programmes assist schools and teachers as they teach students how to write curriculum-relevant articles for Wikipedia. Thus students learn how to do research, analyze outcomes, collaborate, write real reports for a global audience, and develop the technical and editorial skills to add content on local subjects to Wikipedia. In some cases, the programmes use WikiFundi, the offline editing environment that mimics the experience of editing Wikipedia, to navigate context-specific challenges. In other cases, this offline solution is not needed.

Wiki In Africa Youth Engagement programmes include:

  • The WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique (WikiChallenge African Schools) is a multi-national writing contest that creates a fun way for students (9-13) to learn how knowledge is built by contributing to Vikidia, the little sister of Wikipedia (aimed at children aged 8-15 years). It has operated during the school year in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024 and works with local Wikimedian groups and Orange Foundation staff as local facilitators. The 2024 contest is launched and for the first time will be also implemented in an English speaking country (Sierra Leone) beyond the 10 French speaking countries. This programme is designed and hosted by Florence Devouard.
  • With WikiAfrica OERs, Wiki In Africa also curates and creates Open Education Resources (OERs) to better facilitate the often complex concepts that are essential to contributing to our programmes. They are developed as needed, and include:
  • WikiFundi Offline Resources (last update 2021, in English, French, Spanish)
  • WikiAfrica Online Resources
  • A french Wikibook Ressources pédagogiques relatives au droit d'auteur that teaches school children about authors' rights, Creative Commons licences, and licensing attribution. The course includes teaching resources, lesson plans and printable guides designed for offline learning.

WikiChallenge African Schools

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Status: active

The WikiChallenge African Schools encourages schools across Africa to compete by writing Vikidia articles about their city, town, village, suburb, a local landmark, or a notable local person using the WikiFundi platform. The competition is a fun introduction to writing Vikidia articles and adding information about their local community, environment or history to the global online encyclopedia. WikiChallenge African Schools operated from September to December 2017 via the Digital Schools programme of the Orange Foundation and was implemented in Guinée, Tunisia, Madagascar, and Mali. The project was funded in 2016 by Foundation Orange and supported by Wikimedia CH. A second iteration was held in 2019.
The project relaunched in 2020 but has been extended to 2021 due to Covid-19.
In 20247, it was implemented in 19 countries : Tunisie, Mali, Cameroun, Madagascar, Sénégal, Guinée, Côte d'Ivoire, RdC, and Sierra Leone. In 2024, the contest is extended for the first time to an English speaking country, Sierra Leone.

Outcomes:

  • in 2018, 4 countries were involved, 33 schools, 40 articles written, 6 winning schools
  • in 2019, 7 countries were involved, 65 schools, 99 articles written, 600+ photos submitted, 11 winning schools
  • in 2020-21, 9 countries were involved, 100 schools, 138 articles written, 800+ photos submitted, 20 winning schools
  • in 2021-22, 9 countries were involved, 69 schools, 80 articles written, 440+ photos submitted, 12 winning schools
  • in 2022-23, 10 countries were involved, 190 schools, 110 articles written, 630+ photos submitted, 13 winning schools
  • in 2023-24, 11 countries were involved, 337 schools, 151 articles written, 710+ photos submitted, 12 winning schools

Globally : 12 countries were involved, 794 schools, 618 articles written, 3361+ photos submitted, 74 winning schools

Countries involved:

  • Tunisie, Mali, Cameroun, Madagascar, Sénégal, Guinée, Côte d'Ivoire, RdC, Burkina Faso), Maroc, Niger, and Sierra Leone.

Partners:

Links:

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Status: active

In 2020, Wiki in Africa published a French Wikibook Ressources pédagogiques relatives au droit d'auteur. We created teaching materials and assignment models to support teachers in the introduction to authors' rights, Creative Commons licences, and licensing attribution. The target audience is aimed at students (10-15-years-old) in French-speaking Africa.

The project was selected as one of the 6 projects supported by the Creative Commons Open Education Platform Activities Fund [1].

  • Attribution poster (in French)
    Attribution poster (in French)
  • Introduction to Creative Works (in French)
  • A story book about Copyright and Creative Commmons
    A story book about Copyright and Creative Commmons

The Wikibook offers a curated set of resources to support teachers in their lessons on and introductions to the concepts of intellectual and artistic works, copyright, Creative Commons licenses, and the best attribution practices to use when reusing works produced by others. The resources and lesson plans are presented in the form of 3 modules, of increasing difficulty. The first module is intended for 9-13-year old children, while the subsequent modules are intended for classes of 11-to-14-year-old children.

The training materials include:

  • information resources on copyright for teachers,
  • materials to use in class with the students, and
  • suggestions and instructions for activities to be carried out with the young people.

All resources can be accessed via the Wikibook at this link: https://w.wiki/rn6 We are encouraging local communities to use the resources and translate them into local languages as needed.

Links

Open Knowledge Curriculum

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Workshop intro and guiding questions at Wikimania 2019
Workshop intro and guiding questions at Wikimania 2019

Status: In development (funding dependent)

The Open Knowledge Curriculum is a project planned to create a new, multi-year senior school program that will be offered to provide scholars with a deep and meaningful deep dive into the knowledge that they consume online by placing global online information in context through analysis, review, practice, and contribution. The project will provide materials that give teachers the ability to immerse learners in a layered and thorough understanding of how global knowledge is captured, created, disseminated, and used. The program will be designed to impart essential skill sets that range from digital literacy, analytical thought, and writing skills (that include research and citations) to choosing the right copyright for the context, capturing community voices, and content creation and dissemination. The curriculum will be specifically tailored to be taught both by well-resourced schools that have access to the internet, and under-resourced schools (with intermittent or no internet access) through the use of WikiFundi.

The project has been workshopped with the community at Wikimania 2019 and Creative Commons Summit 2019.

WikiAfrica Schools

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Status: suspended (funding dependent)

Wiki Africa Schools in English, subtitled in French

A 6-month pilot (May to October 2017) to collaboratively develop an intervention that trains and supports willing schools and institutions to incorporate a WikiAfrica Schools programme into their work within the curriculum. Each school built the model they will use to incorporate contributing to Wikipedia as a tool to develop and strengthen their curriculum-aligned teaching by using the WikiFundi offline editing environment. The pilot project was supported by lettera27 (later Moleskin Foundation) in collaboration with African School of Excellence and the Global Teachers’ Institute in South Africa.

News

  • 2020-21: Research and development on : Open Knowledge Curriculum
  • January 2018: Pilot phase for Moleskine Foundation funded programme in South Africa closes.
  • March 2018: Pilot phase report submitted to funders. Second phase application submitted to Moleskine Foundation for review.
  • April 2018: WikiAfrica Schools Collaboratory closes and report submitted after successful consultation with education stakeholders in South Africa.

Wikipedia Primary School at SUPSI (University)

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Status: Closed

Wikipedia Primary School was a research project. Its focus was to study how to provide on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of primary education in the languages used by the different education systems is a project allowing students, families and teachers to find on Wikipedia the documentation necessary to obtain the primary school qualification in their country, in their language.


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