Last Sunday in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Wikimania 2017 concluded. In the closing ceremony, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, announced Felix Nartey as the 2017 Wikimedian of the Year for his efforts to promote free knowledge sharing culture in Africa.
Nartey joined the Wikimedia movement in 2012, where he has been concerned about content gaps on Wikimedia projects—information about his native Ghana and the African continent is not on the same level as Europe and North America. “Information itself is useless until it’s shared with the … world,” he says. Nartey has researched possible ways to encourage people from his community to participate in a project like Wikipedia and its sister projects, and put them into practice through leading in-person initiatives and activities to help promote Wikipedia and help new participants find resources for their contributions.
The Wikimedian of the Year is an annual tradition to honor the efforts of one of the movement’s exceptional contributors. Wales announces the name of that person every year during his closing speech at Wikimania since 2011.
This year’s winner Felix Nartey wasn’t able to attend Wikimania, so he was notified about the honor in a video call with Wales and Emily Temple-Wood, who shared last year’s title with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.
Video by the Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0. You can also view it on Vimeo.
Samir Elsharbaty, Digital Content Intern
Wikimedia Foundation
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