The Community Lead for African Wikimedia Technical Community, Joris Darlington Quarshie says to improve Africa’s contribution to the Wikimedia’s technical ecosystem, there is a need for an extensive training “from programming to other technical areas and how participants can contribute”.
Speaking at a satellite event held at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Accra, Mr Quarshie highlighted that many of the “community members do not come from technical backgrounds such as Software Engineering, Quality Assurance Engineers, UI and UX Designers and etc”.
Hence, the training becomes essential to bridge the gap and empower individuals to actively participate in the technical aspects of Wikimedia.
The event held in Accra focused on improving visual and media technical documentation of Wikimedia tools and fostering the creation of new tools.
Participants from various regions of Ghana, including Tamale, Kumasi, Tarkwa, Takoradi, Accra, and Tema, were in attendance.
Regarding the future of the African Wikimedia Technical Community, Quarshie expressed the community’s aspirations to organize multiple technical training sessions and events across several African countries, including Liberia, Gambia, Guinea, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda.
He also mentioned that over the past few years, they have conducted a series of training programs in Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast.
Also, to spike interests, “the opportunities and benefits of becoming an active member of the African Wikimedia Technical Community”, he added.
A participant at the satellite event, Abigail Afi Gbadago said “it’s quite hard to find documentations on the tools, and these tools are not really sometimes user friendly. Finding out how to go about adding more information so that people could see the tools and understand the documentation for the tools as opposed to not having information at all is very good.”
About Wikimedia Hackathon
Wikimedia Hackathon Local Meetup Accra 2023 hosted technical writers, code creators and maintainers from Ghana to contribute technically to the Wikimedia movement.
