Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/A visit at Mbazzi Wikipedia Center in Uganda
In july this year we wanted to see what progress the Wikipedia center in Mbazzi, in Uganda, had done and visited it and met many of the dedicated farmers.
We first stopped at the farm of the chairman of the Mbazzi Farmers Association. She and her family has build a fish pond at their backyard. Peter Kitaka, the intstructor at the center, tells us that one of the farmers had read an article in the english Wikipedia about ”fishfarming”. The article telled about how to raise fishes in a big scale. The farmers gathered and shared their knowledge about fish farming and came up with an idea how to do it in a small scale. One of the farmers tested it practical and another farmer wrote an article about it in Ganda Wikipedia. Now there is a fishpond on three farms in the village and one at a schoolgarden in Entebbe. It takes 6 month to raise the catfishes that live in the ponds. A full grown catfish can be sold for 10 000 Uganda shilling witch is about 3 USD. To build a pond and buy the fish food is rather costly but when you calculate the profit it will be about a million Ugandan shilling every 6:th month. That is about 300 USD and is very much in Uganda. A ordinary fisherman or a farmer earns about 2000 - 5000 Ugandan shilling a day as a comparison.
The instructor, Peter, also tells us that through Wikipedia they have been inspired to cultivate new crops like onions and and rotbeets. The work with Wikipedia have created a culture of sharing knowledge wich not have been there before. Now it is easier to find and test new ways to earn money and the self-confidence has been raised and also their ability to innovate.
When we had been at the chairman of Mbazzi Farmers Association we went down to the Wikipedia Center witch is more in the center of the village. At the center many of the active farmers in the project had gathered. We sat down in the shadow of a tree and talked about what the people in the village had learned through the center. Paul Kiguba, the one that started the center, begun to tell how the Wikipedia center had been evolved and Dan taled about how he had presented the project for UNESCO and UNEP and that it is an interest of what the farmers do in the UN.
Paul continued to tell that the first half year the people in the village mainly learned how to use computers. Before the center they have had no access to computers and internet. Now after the beginning to write Wikipedia articles they had got a new self confidence to test new things and they had got more new friends, both local and international, through the talk pages. They could now fell that they had access to knowledge from the whole world and they had begun to explore all the different parts of their village development project.
One of the farmers stressed that it is not only to write an article. You need to do research first and that had helped him very much. They had developed a system with common sittings to go trough what is important to write in different articles in Ganda Wikipedia. They talked through the subject, shared knowledge and agreed on the contents. It was their way to to be sure that the right facts came in to the article. This is not the usual way to put in references in articles but an interesting way to discuss further on the question on how to deal with the many oral references in the African countries.
One farmer said that they had find new markets for their products. That was not directly connected to Wikipedia but more a spin of effect of that they had learned to deal with computers and search at internet.
Mbazzi have during a couple of years completed different development projects in the village. One of the last ones is a water project where about forty farmers have got help to build ponds for rainwater. Because of this project they don´t need to put a lot of time in to go and collect water at a well. A woman told us that her children now could go to the Wikipedia center instead and learn how to use computers and get knowledge from internet. Children and youth that has been to the center had much easier to learn in the computer education lessons at school, said a mother.
The Wikipedia center had also increased the will to learn how to read and write english among the older people in the village. They saw the opportunity to develop the Wikipedia center into a center for adult education. The farmers that from the beginning was able to talk and write english had become much better in that thanks for the center.
A group of five people from a neighbor village had been walking over the mountains to attend this meeting. They had a production of organic fertilizers and they said that they also wanted a Wikipedia center.
There was also some problems the villagers mentioned. Through the agreement with Orange they only got 100 Mb per month to the internet access. It was too little to publish all the articles they wanted. Sometimes when they should publish the articles the internet amount was to little and they had to wait to the next month to publish.
One woman mentioned the distances in the village as a problem. Those people that live far away from the center have a long way to walk to it. Paul Kiguba then told us about a project in Jinja eastern Uganda, he has heard about. A computer instructor take 10 charged computers on a ”boda boda” (Ugandan motorbike taxi) and drive to schools and organisations where he has computer lessons. Maybe a similar project can be developed in Mbazzi if we get funding for it. Paul also mentioned another way to do it. 10 families that lives near each other could share a solar charged tablet they can borrow from the center. We have seen that ”Barefoot College” in India had developed a cheap and good tablet. This kind of devices can be tested in a future development of the Wikipedia project in Mbazzi.
Dan Frendin and Daniel Åkerblom
Teachers in natural science and sustainable development
Kalmar
Sweden
Members of Wikimedia Sweden
This bloggpost have been published in Wikimedia Swedens blogg in swedish:
https://wikimediasverige.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/besok-pa-mbazzi-wikipediacenter-i-uganda/
All photos: Dan Frendin CC SA-BY