State of African Language Wikimedia Projects

Greenman reviews African language wikimedia contributions and how far they’ve come since May…

Afrikaans remains the largest African language Wikipedia (and 79th largest overall), remaining comfortably ahead of Swahili. At 2007’s growth rate, Swahili looked likely to pass Afrikaans this year, but 2008 has seen new momentum for Afrikaans. Yoruba though has seen rapid growth, and since Jan 2007, there have been more new articles in Yoruba than in any other African language. Amharic and Lingala are the only other African languages with more than 1000 articles.

It may seem like we’re a long way from achieving the dream of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. But, perhaps, if we consider that of all the many years of human history, just 3 short years ago, an instant between the ticking of the galactic clock, most of these projects didn’t even exist, we’ll realize we’re doing quite well.