Knowledge is human. Knowledge is her.

Did you know that readers are more likely to trust Wikipedia when they see themselves represented in our community of editors? [Source: Brand Health Tracker] That’s why, this International Women’s Day, and throughout Women’s History Month, the Wikimedia Foundation Communications Department is running a campaign to spotlight some of the Wikimedians working to close the gender gap on Wikimedia projects. The campaign, Knowledge is human. Knowledge is her., is aimed at reaching external audiences in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will feature the “faces” of three volunteers from Kenya, Nigeria, and Benin, to help highlight the important role that human contributors are playing in ensuring that more reliable knowledge about notable women appears on Wikipedia. 

Featured in the campaign’s creatives are portraits of Carol Mwaura of Kenya (User:Cmwaura), Goodness Ignatius of Nigeria (User:Olugold), and Abigaïl Agbenomba of Benin (User:Aimeabibis). These animated collages, created by our in-house multimedia designer, Jordan McRae, feature these volunteers’ own Wikimedia edits to artfully bring to life the concept of human-created knowledge for external audiences.

Together, these three women have contributed nearly 30,000 edits across various Wikimedia projects, many of them in service of closing the knowledge gaps about African women. 

Some of you may see central notice banners for this campaign in English or French, and if you are based in Kenya, you may even see a localized version of the campaign on social media: Knowledge is human. Knowledge ni sisi. We hope that by reaching external audiences across the region with these volunteers and messages, we can help enhance people’s understanding of how Wikipedia content is created. Our aim is to showcase the hard work being done to make these projects equitable, reliable, and more representative of our world. And we hope that by seeing themselves represented among our diverse volunteer community, more African women might increase their trust in the content on Wikipedia. 

Follow this campaign on our social media channels throughout the month of March, and use this social media toolkit to help us spread the message that #KnowledgeIsHuman.