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2025:Program/7 editions of the education offline initiative WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique

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Session title: 7 editions of the education offline initiative WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique

Session type: Poster
Track: Education
Language: en

The WikiChallenge initiative is a training and writing program designed for schools in Africa. It is targeted at the education community towards using wikimedia tools to acquire and share knowledge to develop skills of the youth and of their teachers. Over 6 editions, the initiative has involved about 794 registered schools. Several hundred of kids were trained and increased their digital schools. Over 618 texts were produced and published on Vikidia, over 3361 illustrations published on Commons, 74 schools won for the direct benefit of hundreds of pupils and their teachers.

Description

The WikiChallenge African Schools is a writing competition. It is a competition dedicated to pupils aged 8-13 and which takes place in several French and English speaking African countries such as Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Tunisia, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal etc. as well as in Sierra Leone.

The objective is to learn how knowledge is constituted by contributing through the Vikidia platform, the Wikipedia for children. Pupils from participating schools are invited to write encyclopedic articles on a subject relating to their immediate environment. The competition is open to organizations that are part of the network of Orange Digital Schools and using (WikiFundi), a platform of Wiki editing in offline mode.

Many of those schools are not connected to the Internet. It therefore implies the presence of an on-site digital facilitator (and possibly the help of Wikimedians and Vikidians) for training, facilitating and ultimately collecting the content produced by the students. The articles submitted by the children are all published on the Vikidia encyclopedia.

Better known in educational circles, Vikidia has been developing on principles similar to those of the well-known encyclopedia, but aimed at a younger audience, 8-13 year olds. It is distributed in the same way as Wikipedia, under the same license, and is open to the participation of young and old, according to rules co-constructed by the community of editors.

The competition is open to schools in the Digital Schools network of the Orange Foundation. It is aimed at students from around 9 to 13 years old, and fits into the pedagogical and educational framework. A teacher or school staff as a team can supervise and support it, with the local support of the Orange Foundation. Orange’s support is expressed through the presence and support of a digital facilitator. The theme of writing is free…but it is strongly suggested to create an article concerning the environment close to the school: its city, its village, a geographical point of interest, a museum located nearby or a local curiosity. The writing style should be suitable for an encyclopedic publication.

Links

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

This initiative is a collaboration between

  • Wiki in Africa, an association active in the wikimedia ecosystem primarily
  • Fondation Orange as the main funder but also as an implementing partner
  • Several wikipedians and wikimedia affiliates helping locally (such as in Mali, Cameroon, Tunisie, Morocco, Guinea...)
  • The editors of the Vikidia platform

The poster (and my presence in front of it during the poster session) will be a way to learn from each other and share knowledge like community initiatives (here, the contest) tools usage (such as WikiFundi and Vikidia), organizing events (working in poorly connected areas), governance (partnership with Fondation Orange, Vikidia community, African uaergroups), online campaigns (7 years campaigning), and edit-a-thons, solving Wiki-related problems (how to source within our guidelines when the editor is offline…), and more.

The initiative is directly meant to include the younger generation of Africa in free knowledge production and get them into the habit of sharing. Short term... it is clearly an inclusivity project. It has a certain impact thanks to the text production and publication. We hope very much that some of those kids will join the Wikimedia projects in the future and help sustain our community.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Resources

Speakers

  • Florence Devouard
Username:Anthere (She/her). French. Languages : FR N; EN-4.
* Co-Executive Director of Wiki in Africa
* Wikipedian-in-Residence at World Intellectual Property Rights (WIPO)
* Former chairwoman of Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees
* Co-founder, former Vice-Chair and currently member of Wikimédia France Chapter
* Wikipedian since 2002.
As well as
* Financial auditor an member of Les sans pagEs UserGroup
* Member of m:Wikimedians for offline wikis UserGroup (contact member for the affiliate)
* Member of the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network UserGroup
* Formerly treasurer of WikiFranca (hub-to-be for French speaking wikimedia groups)
* Board member of Open Food Facts
* Vice-Chair of Ynternet.org
Key words : Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Africa, IP rights, Open Movement, Community Building, Open Source, Creative Commons, Life-long learning, accountability, Gender Gap, Equity
  • Dadrik
Konan N'Da n'Dri, project support during the Wikichallenge African Schools 2025. Member of Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire, project Manager, and Wikimedia trainer. I joined Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire as a volunteer in 2023.
I contribute as a patroller and revoker on the French Wikipedia. I also participate in several local initiatives, such as Wiki Loves Africa 2025 in Côte d'Ivoire and the Lingua Libre Workshops in Côte d'Ivoire. I also received the Zenman Award from the Ivorian Wikimedia community for my commitment.
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