2025:Program/Enhancing Climate Justice & Environmental Data Mapping through Open Knowledge
Session title: Enhancing Climate Justice & Environmental Data Mapping through Open Knowledge
- Session type: Demonstration
- Track: Open Data
- Language: en
🎥 Session recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjENat8ts4Q&list=PLhV3K_DS5YfIr2HbYikIz4XMBXKTGytWY&t=9068 🎥
African Wikipedian Alliance (AWA), in collaboration with sensorsAFRICA and Code for Africa’s DataLab, will showcase how open environmental data on openAFRICA can bridge knowledge gaps in climate justice, energy infrastructure, and urban heat mapping across Africa on Wikimedia projects. The session will demonstrate visualised datasets, such as rising temperatures and air quality—and provide participants with a practical guide for integrating these datasets into Wikimedia contents. This hands-on experience empowers Wikimedians to leverage open data for impactful climate justice content campaigns, fosters collaboration, and strengthens the environmental knowledge base of the Wikimedia movement.
Description
AWA, in collaboration with sensors.AFRICA and Code for Africa’s DataLab, will demonstrate how open environmental data can bridge knowledge gaps in climate justice, energy infrastructure, and urban heat mapping across Africa. This session features visualised datasets that document climate impacts—such as rising temperatures and urban air quality—and shows how integrating these datasets into Wikimedia projects can enhance Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons with rich, informative visualisations. During the session, participants will learn how environmental data and technology (e.g., sensors, drones, and mapping tools) can be leveraged to document climate justice issues. The workshop will explore opportunities for publishing datasets via sensors.AFRICA and creating visualisations from open datasets available on openAFRICA, which can then be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and used on Wikipedia and Wikidata to enrich climate-related content. The session also aims to promote collaboration among Wikimedians working on climate justice by bridging data gaps in underrepresented regions of Africa. In addition, it encourages partnerships between sensors.AFRICA, openAFRICA, Wikimedians, data-driven organisations, and climate justice advocates. A guided demonstration will walk participants through the process of uploading open datasets from openAFRICA to Wikimedia Commons, and a collaborative discussion will explore how these datasets can be applied in local contexts. Finally, the session issues a call to action to participate in the AWA Inclusion & Climate Justice Fellowship 2025, with the goal of strengthening ecosystem defenses and promoting climate awareness in Southern Africa and neighbouring regions.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
This session aligns with Wikimania@20’s theme in several key ways. First, it promotes inclusivity by democratising access to open environmental data, enabling Wikimedians especially from underrepresented regions to engage in documenting and addressing climate justice issues using open data. Second, the session has a tangible impact by equipping participants with practical skills to integrate visualised datasets into Wikimedia projects, thereby enriching global content and raising awareness of critical environmental challenges that have not been adequately documented in the past such as rising temperature and air quality of places in Africa. Finally, by fostering sustainable partnerships between organisations like sensors.AFRICA, openAFRICA, and the Wikimedia community, this session contributes to long-term efforts in building resilient, data-driven ecosystems that support both environmental advocacy and the Wikimedia movement’s commitment to sustainability.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- bukola
- Bukola James is a certified librarian and a Program Assistant at Code for Africa. She serves as the Community Coordinator for the Africa Wikipedian Alliance and serves as the Vice Chair for the Wikipedia + Education User Group. Additionally, Bukola is the Regional Liaison for Sub-Saharan Africa in the Let's Connect working group, and an active member of the Creative Commons Open Culture Platform.
- Eric Wamugu
- Eric Wamugu leads CfA’s in-house team of data analysts and data journalists who transform raw data into actionable apps and data visualisations for an empowered population across the continent to make informed decisions and drive positive change in their communities. Eric is passionate about promoting responsible development and use of emerging technologies, particularly data-intensive and AI models to support Open Data Initiatives. At Datalab, Eric drives the growth and strategy of openAFRICA which aims to be the largest community-driven data liberating platform in the continent.
- Alicia Olago
- Alicia is an environmental scientist and Code for Africa’s senior product manager at sensors.AFRICA. She holds a M.A. in Environment, Security & Governance, specialisation in Climate Security from the University for Peace (Costa Rica).
- She leads a team of Hardware Engineers and Technologists in a citizen science initiative, developing & utilising IoT sensors & other remote sensing technologies to monitor air, water & sound pollution, and radiation among other environmental hazards. Open data from these technologies is used to provide citizens & civic watchdogs with actionable information on their cities & communities in Africa.
- Alicia has over 10 years of experience working on sustainable development projects in Eastern Africa with local government, INGOs, NGOs, CBOs and Development partners. She has an ardent desire to tackle human vulnerabilities in the global south, by building resilience to climate change through adaptation measures and disaster risk reduction to mitigate security risks