The Sunday News
Clementine Phulu, Sunday News Reporter
THE Wikipedians in Zimbabwe are hosting an awareness campaign to encourage and involve the country’s nationals to gather, create and submit educational and pertinent content under a free licence.
The campaign which aims to create Zimbabwe’s very own Wikimedia User Group and close the knowledge gap about the country began in January and will end on March 25 and is running under the theme: “How to contribute to Wikimedia from Zimbabwe.”
In an interview with one of the Wikipedians who is a school librarian at Matopo High School, Mrs Sichelesile Ndlovu said the emphasis was on promoting and teaching individuals and groups the creation, preservation and sharing of open knowledge.
“This campaign’s primary goal is to teach people in Zimbabwe how to contribute to Wikimedia. It includes a number of projects where we teach people while they also contribute to Wikimedia. Our goal is to introduce Ndebele articles on Wikimedia pages, at the same time campaigning for Zimbabwean articles to be authored by Zimbabweans.
In the course of last year’s Wiki Quote campaign, which mostly focused on profiling quotes, we discovered that few people actually know what Wikimedia is. As a result, we had to go back to the beginning and educate people on what the Wikimedia Foundation is, which led to this year’s campaign.”
She said their goal was making it simple for readers to access knowledge and viewpoints that were relevant to Africa and Zimbabwe. Mrs Ndlovu added that what they were doing was volunteer labour, not just for libraries, but for everyone interested in disseminating information and even for those who have a deep interest in the diverse cultures found in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe Library Association President Mr Jerry Mathema said: “This Wikimedia initiative is a very beneficial project since it can make people receive accurate information that is close to them and that they can connect with. Many people have never heard of Wikipedia, and the majority of people do not trust the information they find there.”
