The Afripedia Project is a project to expand offline

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

access in

French-speaking Africa African French () is the umbrella grouping of varieties of the French language spoken throughout Francophone Africa. Used mainly as a secondary language or ''lingua franca'', it is spoken by an estimated 320 million people across 34 coun ...

, and encourage Africans to contribute to Wikipedia. The project installs local

Kiwix Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007. It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundati ...

-serve wireless and

intranet An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in ...

servers and provides training and maintenance.Afripedia project increasing off-line access to Wikipedia in Africa, Wikimedia article
/ref> The project offers content besides Wikipedia, such as

Wiktionary Wiktionary (, ; , ; rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number o ...

. Any content that is first packaged in a ZIM file can be relayed over the Afripedia network;

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

and

Wikisource Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content source text, textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one f ...

, for instance, are available in that format.

History

The Afripedia Project launched in 2012. The founding partners were

Wikimédia France Wikimedia chapters are national or sub-national not-for-profit organizations created to promote the interests of Wikimedia projects locally, by members of Wikimedia movement, the movement. Chapters are legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundat ...

, the

Institut Français The Institut Français (; French capitalization, Institut français; "French institute") is a French public industrial and commercial organization (EPIC). Started in 1907 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for promoting French, francophone as ...

, and the

Agence universitaire de la Francophonie The ''Agence universitaire de la Francophonie'' (AUF; ) is a global network of French-speaking higher-education and research institutions. Founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1961, as the ''Association des Universités Partiellement ou En ...

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

is spoken by an estimated 120 million (2010) people in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, spread across 24

francophone The Francophonie or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus in 1880 and became important a ...

countries.''La Francophonie dans le monde 2006–2007''
published by the

Organisation internationale de la Francophonie The (OIF; sometimes shortened to ''La Francophonie'', , sometimes also called International Organisation of in English) is an international organization representing where there is a notable affiliation with French language and culture. ...

Nathan Nathan or Natan may refer to: People and biblical figures *Nathan (given name), including a list of people and characters with this name * Nathan (surname) *Nathan (prophet), a person in the Hebrew Bible *Nathan (son of David), a biblical figu ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, 2007 Project preparation, partnership formation, Kiwix algorithm development took place in 2011. In July 2012 the project and prototype was presented at the in Québec. In November 15 leaders from 12 East and Central African countries were trained and 15 offline access points were deployed. Additional training session were held in 2013 and 2014. Access to Wikipedia from USB

flash drive A flash drive is a portable computer drive that uses flash memory. Flash drives are the larger memory modules consisting of a number of flash chips. A flash chip is used to read the contents of a single cell, but it can write entire block of ce ...

s was not new at the time, but the data they carry quickly became outdated. Afripedia by contrast is regularly updated. Many of the partnering universities have low-bandwidth internet and a few lack any internet access. The project encourages the formation of Afripedia clubs for local users. Afripedia project website The project was described as a worthy stopgap measure, until such time as

internet access Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide ...

can be developed throughout Africa.

References

External links

{{Commons category * Afripedia project page on the

French Wikipedia The French Wikipedia () is the French-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. This edition was started on 23 March 2001, two months after the official creation of Wikipedia. It has :fr:Special:Statistics, encyclopedia artic ...

Wikimedia community projects Francophonie

History

See also

References

External links