The need to contribute to Wikipedia. The improbability of an African Wikipedian

Wikipedia is an open collaborative resource anyone can edit, which is aimed at providing free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Despite its general quality, Wikipedia presents an imbalanced coverage of subjects and many articles do not represent a worldwide view; in particular Africa is most underrepresented. The demographic imbalance of the people who edit Wikipedia is considered the main reason of the encyclopedia’ systemic bias. This text argues that aiming to increase the number of Wikipedians in Africa – or waiting for them to increase in Africa – is not the most effective strategy to ensure that the 500 million Wikipedia readers have access as quickly as possible to correct and complete content. Indirect contribution – tested in Africa within the projects WikiAfrica, Share Your Knowledge and Wikipedia Primary School – is a much more efficient approach based on the use of open licences compatible with Wikipedia, on the production of texts and reviews outside Wikipedia and on the identification of a list of entries to be improved