As Wikipedia marks 25 years of existence, attention is turning to how Africa is shaping the future of global knowledge sharing. In a gathering of volunteers and leaders in Lagos, the Wikimedia Foundation underscored the continent’s expanding footprint in the world’s biggest free online encyclopedia. What was once a platform dominated by contributors from a handful of regions is increasingly enriched by African voices, languages, and culture. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, this year’s celebrations not only reflect on the past two and a half decades but also spotlight a new era where Africa’s contributions matter more than ever.
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A Milestone Celebration with Global and Local Impact
Wikipedia’s journey began in 2001 as a bold experiment in open collaboration. Today, it has grown into a central source of reliable information online, with more than 65 million articles in over 300 languages and billions of page views every month. It is one of the top ten most-visited sites in the world and remains the only major website run by a nonprofit.
In Lagos, Wikimedia Foundation Chief Executive Officer Maryana Iskander highlighted this legacy. She described Wikipedia as “a digital wonder” built by ordinary people committed to sharing knowledge freely and equitably. Her comments underscored how the platform’s success story is also a human story, shaped by the dedication of volunteers from every corner of the globe.
Central to the celebration this year is a new video docuseries profiling eight volunteer editors from around the world. Among them is Nigerian librarian and cultural advocate Goodness Ignatius, whose work documenting Nigerian and Igbo history on Wikipedia reflects a broader trend: Africans are not just users of global knowledge platforms; they are active creators and preservers of their own stories.
Growing Contributions from African Communities
While Africa’s representation on Wikipedia has historically lagged behind other regions, the narrative is shifting. Initiatives across the continent are encouraging more people to create, edit, and curate content that reflects African cultures, languages, and histories. Projects like WikiAfrica have made it a priority to bring Africa-centric knowledge to the global stage by partnering with cultural institutions, museums, journalists, and local communities to expand the encyclopedia’s coverage of Africa.
Efforts to record and preserve local knowledge go beyond English content. The Swahili Wikipedia, for example, stands as the largest Wikipedia edition in a Niger-Congo language and plays an important role in spreading knowledge across East Africa and beyond. Other Wikimedia initiatives are supporting African languages that have been historically underrepresented online, giving millions more people access to information in their mother tongues.
Local engagement extends into structured data as well. Wikidata Days 2025 brought together Africans passionate about information and community building to focus on making African knowledge more visible in global data repositories. This kind of work has ripple effects beyond Wikipedia, supporting research, education, and cultural preservation for years to come.
Educational programmes like WikiChallenge African Schools have also helped empower younger generations to become knowledge producers. In this competition, hundreds of schools across English- and French-speaking countries contributed articles, photos, and videos, turning students into active participants in documenting their own societies and environments.
Challenges and the Road Ahead
Despite this encouraging progress, there is still much work to be done. Research and tech coverage from Africa have long been underrepresented on Wikipedia compared to contributions from other regions. This is partly due to fewer resources, limited access to training, and gaps in awareness about how to contribute effectively.
To address these knowledge gaps, Wikimedia and local groups are investing in community training, outreach, and partnerships. These efforts aim to equip more Africans with the skills needed to produce high-quality content and to ensure that local perspectives are included in the global knowledge ecosystem. Beyond Wikipedia itself, organisations like Wikimedia Nigeria are building capacity, advocating for free access to information, and fostering collaborations with educational and cultural partners nationwide.
In addition, initiatives such as the SWiP Project in South Africa are working to elevate content in South Africa’s indigenous languages, helping to correct long-standing imbalances where English has dominated content creation and access online. Projects such as these build digital literacy and empower communities to preserve and share their own knowledge.
A Vision for Inclusive Knowledge
As Wikipedia celebrates its silver anniversary, leaders within the Wikimedia movement are calling for broader participation from Africa’s diverse populations. Bobby Shabangu, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, noted that as the next billion internet users come online, many of them from Africa, the voices of Africans will help shape how knowledge is recorded and shared globally.
For Wikipedia’s founders and supporters, the message is clear: the platform’s ability to remain relevant in the age of artificial intelligence and rapid technological change depends on the strength of its human contributors. Human-created knowledge remains essential, not just for accuracy but for representing the wide range of human experience and understanding.
This yearlong celebration of Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary is more than a commemoration of its past achievements. It is a call to action for communities around the world, and especially in Africa, to join in the shared mission of documenting, preserving, and sharing knowledge. As the continent continues to take a more central role, Wikipedia—and the wider world—stands to benefit from a richer, more balanced, and more inclusive global knowledge base.
In a world where information shapes opportunity, Africa’s growing presence in the global knowledge movement promises to amplify voices that have too often been marginalised. And as contributors from Lagos to Cape Town and beyond share their expertise and stories, Wikipedia grows closer to fulfilling its original promise: knowledge for everyone, by everyone.
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