The Afripedia Project is a project to expand offline

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

access in

French-speaking Africa African French (french: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 141 million people in Africa in 2018, spread across 34 countries and territories.29 full members of the Organisa ...

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

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 ...

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

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, 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 ...

and

Wikisource Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually rep ...

, for instance, are available in that format.

History

The Afripedia Project launched in 2012. The founding partners were Wikimédia France, 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; en, Association of Francophone Universities) is a global network of French-speaking higher-education and research institutions. Founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1961, as the ''Ass ...

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

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 in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, spread across 24

francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...

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

Organisation internationale de la Francophonie The (OIF; sometimes shortened to the Francophonie, french: La Francophonie , but also called International Organisation of in English-language context) is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a ...

Nathan Nathan or Natan may refer to: People *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), biblical figure, son of King David an ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, 2007 Project preparation, partnership formation, Kiwix algorithm development took place in 2011. In July 2012 the project and prototype was presented at the Forum mondial de la langue française 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 drives 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 cel ...

was not new at the time, but the data they care quickly befome 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 can be developed throughout Africa.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Afripedia * Afripedia project page on the

French Wikipedia The French Wikipedia (french: Wikipédia en français) 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 article ...

Wikimedia community projects Francophonie

History

See also

References

External links