Building Wikidata Capacity in East Africa: Insights from Wikimedia Deutschland’s Outreach

In 2025, the Wikidata Development team at Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) partnered with Wikimedia communities across East Africa to strengthen local skills and expand participation in Wikidata. This effort is part of the Wikimedia 2030 strategic direction, which aims to empower underrepresented communities to contribute to and benefit from free knowledge.

Why East Africa?

East Africa is home to vibrant Wikimedia communities in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and beyond. While many contributors are active on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, participation on Wikidata remains limited.

“We have been editing Wikipedia and adding images to Commons for years, but Wikidata was still a mystery to many of us,” said Maram Ali, a lecturer at National Ribat University and co-founder of the Sudanese Wikimedia User Group. She has been actively training new contributors and promoting open knowledge projects across Sudan since 2019.

Conversations with community groups revealed that the challenge was not a lack of interest. Instead, contributors face deeper barriers: limited internet connectivity, scarce access to laptops, and a need for practical, hands-on training. Many of these groups are volunteer-run and operate with minimal resources, making it difficult to expand into new projects like Wikidata without targeted support.

What we did

To address the barriers faced by East African contributors, we organized a series of train-the-trainer workshops with nine community groups across 13 countries. Nearly 100 Wikimedians participated, with sessions adapted to the specific needs and contexts of each community:

• Part 1 – General Introduction to Wikidata & The Community: Participants learned what Wikidata is, how its community operates, and how WikiProjects can help identify content gaps.
• Part 2 – Practical Editing Sessions: Editors practiced making edits on Wikidata and querying data using the Query Service, gaining hands-on experience with tools they could use in their communities.
• Part 3 – Beyond Wikidata & Discussions: Participants explored lexicographical data, the broader Wikibase ecosystem, and engaged in discussions on data quality, reuse, and the challenges of referencing non-Western sources.

Sessions were tailored for local contexts:

• Using lexeme modeling examples in widely spoken languages such as Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and Luganda.
• Translating workshop slides into French for the DRC community.
• Supporting communities like Wikimedia Uganda in repurposing our training materials for their own independent workshops.

“The training didn’t just teach us how to edit but gave us the confidence to teach others,” said Macholi, a Ugandan Wikimedian and petroleum engineer from Mbarara University of Science and Technology who has actively mentored new contributors in his community.

What we learned

The workshops also revealed recurring challenges:

• Mobile limitations: Many contributors rely on low-spec phones with slow connections, making it hard to load Wikidata’s heavier pages.
• Language barriers: Some communities felt excluded due to lack of interface support in their languages. Few knew about TranslateWiki.net or how to translate properties.
• Identifying content gaps: Editors struggled to find out what was missing about their countries or languages. Tools like the Query Builder were little known.
• Connectivity and hardware: Expensive data, unreliable electricity, and lack of laptops remain obstacles.
• Time and skills: Most participants are volunteers, balancing Wikimedia work with jobs, family, and studies. Advanced skills in SPARQL, bulk editing, or lexicographical data are still scarce.

Robert Rugamba from Rwanda explained: “We are eager to document knowledge in Kinyarwanda, but we need more practical tools and training to get started.”

What came out of it

Despite these challenges, the project created real momentum:

• About 100 Wikimedians were trained.
• Several workshops were recorded and are now reusable on YouTube.
• Communities are running follow-up workshops using our training material.
• Three communities received advanced follow-up sessions on mass editing tools and lexicographical data.
• A new network of “Wikidata champions” emerged, with informal representatives in 13 countries.

Many participants also came away with a clearer understanding of WMDE’s role in Wikidata’s development — a fact that often came as a surprise.

What’s next

Communities are now asking for more in-person training. WMDE plans to pilot “Wikidata Days” as side events at regional conferences beginning with the upcoming WikiIndaba 2025 conference in Tanzania. We’re also expanding our Wikidata MOOC to cover intermediate and advanced topics, while connecting participants with the WikiMentor Africa network for ongoing peer support.

Our goal is to sustain this momentum, deepen skills, and document lessons that can be applied in other underrepresented regions.

As one community leader reflected, “These trainings we have received showed us that Wikidata is not out of reach. With the right support, we can make the knowledge we care about visible to the world,” said Dagmawi Mengistu, co-founder of the Wikimedia User Group Ethiopia and software engineer working on Ethiopia’s National ID project.