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 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

Elijah Chileshe

Postgraduate Student

PgDip Computer Science

Andrew Shawa

Postgraduate Student

PgDip Computer Science

Brighton Mwaba

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

John Mwanza

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Ernest Obbie Zulu

Academic Staff

Wilkins Sikazwe

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Patrick Mwila

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Peter Tembo

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Austin Monde

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Chabu Namwila

Undergraduate Student

B.ICT With Education

Malaizyo G Muzumala

Postgraduate Student

MSc Computer Science

Rabson Mbewe

Academic Staff

Peter Chibuta

Academic Staff

Project Publications

**2023**
Mahlaza, Zola, Ernest Obbie Zulu, and Lighton Phiri. 2023. “Radiology Report Terminology To Characterise Reports In Southern Africa”. In 17Th International Conference On Metadata And Semantics Research. Milan, Italy: Springer Nature.	More Info.
Chileshe, Elijah, and Lighton Phiri. 2023. “Large-Scale Analysis Of Medical Image Metadata”. In 2023 Pan African Conference On Science, Computing And Telecommunications (Pact 2023). Lusaka, Zambia: Zambia ICT Journal. https://ictjournal.icict.org.zm/index.php/icict/article/view/277.	More Info.
Shawa, Andrew, and Lighton Phiri. 2023. “Software Tools For Supporting Automatic Interpretation Of Medical Images”. In 2023 Pan African Conference On Science, Computing And Telecommunications (Pact 2023). Lusaka, Zambia: Zambia ICT Journal. https://ictjournal.icict.org.zm/index.php/icict/article/view/278.	More Info.
Monde, Austin, Patrick Mwila, Chabu Namwila, and Peter Tembo. 2023. “Evaluating Free And Open Source Radiology Information System For Automating Workflows At The University Teaching Hospitals - Zambia”. Lusaka, Zambia: University of Zambia.	More Info.

**2022**
Zulu, Ernest Obbie, and Lighton Phiri. 2022. “Enterprise Medical Imaging In The Global South: Challenges And Opportunities”. In 2022 Ist-Africa Conference. IEEE.	More Info.

Wikipedia Content Contribution in the Global South