Wiki Loves Africa 2025/How to join

How to join

The call for pictures and the contest will run in ALL African countries and beyond. The contest is open for all Africans, diaspora, and actually anyone interested and willing to help! Regardless of whether you are African or not, you are welcome to join! The contest is being discussed and organized primarily on Telegram. Please join the contest Telegram Here are some examples of the things you may do for a start:

Let other people know about the contest. Your local community can include local Wiki(p/m)edians and aligned Open Movement members (enthusiasts from Creative Commons, Open Street Map, Open Data, OER, etc.). Relevant links to provide include:
- WLA on Meta,
- WLA on Commons,
- WLA on Twitter, and
- WLA on Facebook.
- Also join the Wiki Loves Africa mailing list for discussion and announcement
Fix pages on meta or Commons (improve the text, fix typos, translate...)
Help us to translate the Site Notice into those languages (as well as other relevant texts)
Help select the jury: suggest judges who might be interested in taking part in the international contest (perhaps a locally celebrated photographer, fashion designer, filmmaker or journalist) or better still, volunteer yourself.
Participate in writing press releases: Help with crafting a press release template, adapt it, and send it out to your media contacts. Write blogs.
Help categorize and clean up uploaded photos on Commons during the contest
Help use images and videos in relevant Wikipedia articles. For example during Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2023
Help get images and videos labelled for their quality: Commons:Wiki Loves Africa/WLA images under evaluation
Coordinate or join an already existing group: Wiki Loves Africa 2024/Participating communities
Add a userbox on your user-page : Userbox: {{User WLA organizer}}
To receive news on your meta talk page : Please feel free to add your name in the Recipients list

Webinars and tutorials

Many webinars and tutorials have been recorded over the past years.

Which tasks for organizers?

Pre Contest (Nov-Feb)

The organisational tasks for the International Organising Team for Wiki Loves Africa is outlined below.

Organisational elements

Setting up, and updating all Commons pages (main page, local events, FAQ, partners, team etc.)
Call local teams to make their funding request (rapid grant)
Support to local teams when needed for rapid grants
Set up of Meta portal pages to support organisers
Creation of theme page
Call for WLA Ambassadors
Call for translation of Wiki pages in French, Portuguese, Arabic, African local languages
Set up of the banner system/site notice
- Anthere and Romaine or Ciell
Upload wizard tunnel with category architecture
- Romaine
Clean up and improvement of documentation pages
Translate all pages!

Communications

website text and updating
Design briefing, facilitation and management
Creation of call leaflet and poster text
Creation of event templates
Video creation
Launch press release creation, translation and dissemination via the mailing list and other platforms
Press release template created and shared with WM teams
Dissemination of all materials across all digital platforms
Share all elements with all local volunteer teams
Launch press release dissemination and liaison with WM community blogs
Elements that need to be developed (and translated)
Branded merchandise (t-shirt, caps, etc.)
Pre-contest: social media campaign strategy (coordination across all channels)

During the contest (March-April)

Organisational elements

Image monitoring: fixing category/description/Reuse
Image monitoring: copyvios, watermarks, etc.
Image monitoring: feeding a best images category to help communicators
Jury selection: Selecting, approaching and onboarding jurors
Jury selection: Introducing Jurors to organising team
Tracking data : Mass messages to former participants during the contest
Tracking data : Mailing list management
Telegram account management
Answering questions of ‘’confused’’ people : usually mostly on Facebook account and on the wiki
Tracking local events organized in the countries

Communications

Social media message creation, translation and scheduling
Social media posting (translating and answering)
Social media re-posting from teams onto main WLA channels
Monitor and announcements on WLA telegram channel
Monitor media mentions

Post contest (May-November)

Organisational elements

Images thorough clean-up
Interviews of local organizers, report.
Communicating selection criteria and process
Jury process: Setting up and facilitating use of Montage or other jury selection platform
Incorporating local teams for the selection of final round of images into larger non-selected batches
Liaising local teams for selection of final round of images
Keeping jurors to timeline - 3-4 rounds
Winners contact details collected and checked
Shortlist uploaded to Best Images page
Winners:Communication with prize winners
Winners:Certificates design and printing
Winners:Prizes selection, creation/ordering and postage
Tracking data :images views, number of participants, new participants, image reuse, evolution over time etc.
Creation of the final poster
Creation of surveys, dissemination, data collect and publishing survey report

Communication

Interviews with prize winners for the press release and blog posts
Winners social media announcements (translated)
Winners press release and dissemination
Winners posts on WM blogs and Wiki Spaces
Plan for and run an ISA MetaData weeks contest for WLA 2023 and 2024 entries

Timeline

2024

November
- Theme voting
- Announce theme
- Rapid Grant Requests
December
- Theme press release launched
- Social media strategy created
- Pre-contest on-wiki elements created and updated

2025

January
- Social media campaign starts
- Pre-contest on-wiki elements created and updated and finalised
- Comms elements prepared and shared with WM teams
February
- Launch press release and call-to-action posts
- Contest comms and social media active
March
- 1st March - contest begins
- Image and category monitoring
- Social media message
- Mid-point press release (if needed)
- Jurors approached
April
- Jury process set up
- upload deadline : 30th April
- Local jury process begins
May-June
- Post-contest Survey
- Post-contest organizers interviews
- International Jury process starts
- Statistics tracked, assessed and shared
July-August
- International Winners selected and announced
- International Winners Press release and blogs are written, translated and disseminated
September-November
- Post mortem and report
- ISA campaign