Fante, the second largest Akan language, is no doubt one of the best Ghanaian Languages making waves on the internet.
To ensure the language keeps making waves on the internet, one contributing digital community pushing this agenda is the Fante Wikipedia Community.
The Fante Wikipedia Community is a group of Wikipedia’s who work in the Fante Wikipedia incubator on Wikipedia, a user group belonging to the Wikimedia group by translating articles already in the English Wikipedia to Fante as well as creating Fante articles.
The community has so far held four workshops in the principal Fante towns. These include Takoradi, Cape Coast, and Ajumako. Takoradi has hosted the Fante Wikipedia Community workshop two times at the Duapa Werk Space at Anaji-Takoradi.
In the Central regional capital, the Fante Wikipedia Community held a workshop at the Code Coast, Cape Coast, and finally, at the University of Education, Winneba – Ajumako Campus in Ajumako.
The Fante Wikipedia Community will celebrate community members who are contributing to the goal of digitizing the Fante language and culture on Wikipedia and its sister projects. To ensure that, there is an ongoing contest which will end on Friday 23rd September 2022 with some selected articles in the English Language to be translated into the Fante language by members of the Community.
These individuals taking part in the contest include researchers, language translators, Fante students, community groups, lecturers, software developers, etc.
The community is planning on holding more workshops in an attempt to create more articles in the incubator that will help promote the group from the incubator to the mainstream Wikipedia on the internet. To ensure this, activities include an editing competition, training sessions, technical support, and awarding of certificates among others.
Be glued to the internet to know where and when the community will hold another workshop.
Don’t be left out. Be a contributor. Remember the Fante adage that says, “Wadze ayɛ yie no na woara na ayɛ”. Mfantsefo mfrɛ yie!
The writers are Robert Obri [Co-founder and Team lead of Fante Wikimedia Community], and Ebenezer Kobinah Offen [Team Lead, Fante Wikimedia Community]