Wikipedia Content Contribution in the Global South

Wikipedia Content Contribution in the Global South

Digital content contribution from contributors originating from countries located in the so-called Global South is noticeably low, with a recent study by Graham et al. reporting that Sub-Saharan Africa stands out with the lowest levels of participation on GitHub—1% of GitHub users hail from the region—and shocking low levels of Wikipedia contributions, with contributions originating from the whole of Africa being lower than those from Hong Kong (Graham et al. 2015).

Interestingly enough, of the Wikipedia articles on and about Africa, only 5% of the contributions were reported to have been generated locally (Graham et al., 2015). Recent statistics on Wikipedia contributions suggest that Wikipedia content contribution participation from the so-called Global South is still low. While there are a considerable number of Global South Internet users that consume content from Wikipedia, there is a corresponding disproportionate number of users that contribute content to the same platform. For instance, there were a total of 2,347,000 Wikipedia page views against a mere 20 editors from Zambia in the month of October 20 2022.

This project is about the experimentation of effective techniques and factors for the increased content contribution of Wikipedia content about Zambia and on Zambia.

Project Members

Lighton Phiri

Academic Staff

Christabel Chalwe

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Chanda Chisanga

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Lweendo Muzyamba

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Joe Mwape

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Project Publications