Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organizsation behind Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, has announced the launch of its “Wikipedia Needs More Women ” campaign in Africa, to improve gender equity on Wikimedia projects, and invites others to get involved.
The initiative kicked off on International Women’s Day, 8 March, with an in-person symposium featuring engaging panel discussions. Following this, on 12 and 13 March, a capacity-building workshop took place, where the Wikimedia Nigeria team guided the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) members in utilizing and enhancing their understanding of Wikipedia.
The campaign will conclude with the Online Challenge, running from 14 to 31 March.
Wikipedia, with 62 million articles in over 300 languages and 15 billion views per month, plays a crucial role in shaping the understanding of the world with contents written on notable subjects by over 265,000 volunteer contributors globally.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s chief communications officer, Anusha Alikhan said, “We’re calling on everyone — journalists, academics, thought leaders, and individuals and organisations across the information landscape — to increase their coverage of women.
“This will help build out the ecosystem of secondary literature that Wikipedia volunteers rely on to create and improve content about women,” she said.
In many places around the world, women have been left out of historical narratives and traditional sources of knowledge including on Wikipedia, she added.
This month, Wikimedia User Group Nigeria (Wikimedia Nigeria) is leading a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Nigerian women on Wikipedia by partnering with the Embassy of Sweden in Nigeria and NAWOJ.
Wikimedia Nigeria is organising the WikiGap Nigeria Online Challenge, which is open to the public, to create new articles for notable women and improve existing articles about women on Wikipedia, with a focus on English, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Tyap Wikipedias.
Wikimedia Nigeria User Group president, Olushola Olaniyan, said, “The WikiGap Nigeria Online Challenge seeks to foster inclusivity, diversity, and gender representation on Wikipedia and the internet at large. Join us and play your part in ensuring that we begin to see more women in the world’s largest encyclopedia.”
NAWOJ chairperson, Dr Adeola Ekine, said the group was proud to join forces with Wikimedia Nigeria in its dedicated pursuit of gender equity.
“By empowering women to contribute to and shape the content on Wikipedia, we are paving the way for a more inclusive and diverse platform for knowledge sharing,” she said.
