On the 6th of November, 2025, the Africa Wiki Women community virtually launched the VisibleWikiWomenCampaign 2025, an annual global initiative led by Whose Knowledge? to increase the visibility of women and other marginalized groups on Wikimedia projects. This year’s campaign, themed “It Takes a Village!! Finding, Strengthening, and Sustaining Feminist Community,” focused on expanding representation while deepening collaboration among regional communities. The goal is to create and update data for women whose photos under the VisibleWikiWomen Category on Wikimedia Commons require proper descriptions and identification, among other tasks.
Training & Capacity Building
At the official launch of the one-month-long event, the Wikimedia Commons guest trainer, Ogali Hilary, taught participants from the Africa Wiki Women community how to contribute to the project. To further cement inclusivity and impact, a physical training was hosted by one of the co-founders of the Africa Wiki Women community, Pellagia Njau, on the 28th of November, 2025, at the American Corner, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where Joshua Beatus was invited to train participants on how to translate descriptions of media files on Wikimedia Commons. The community encouraged meaningful contributions by applying the campaign’s scoring criteria, which participants were guided to meet. These criteria include:
- Adding multilingual descriptions and captions to images
- Adding structured data to images
- Improving or creating descriptions of photos on the topic list
- Creating or improving Wikidata items with full statements
- Translating photo descriptions in African languages
These sessions provided participants with practical guidance on creating or enhancing associated data items and ensuring that contributions aligned with Wikimedia’s standards. This approach emphasised impact and sustainability over volume, ensuring that each image uploaded was discoverable, contextualised, and useful across Wikimedia platforms.
Community Engagement
The 2025 theme, “It Takes a Village!!”– resonated deeply with our regional work. Africa Wiki Women integrated community-building into this campaign by organizing an office hour designed to create a supportive space for community contributors. Facilitated by Amarachi Okoro, who trained participants on how to add structured data to images on Wikimedia Commons. This commitment to community solidarity enhances the learning experience and aims to promote long-term engagement with Wikimedia projects beyond the campaign period.
Africa Wiki Women continues to develop strategies to address gaps through targeted training, local partnerships, and improved mentorship structures. At the end of the campaign, participants who met the award criteria were reimbursed accordingly.
Call To Action
The Visible Wiki Women Campaign 2025 provided an important opportunity for Africa Wiki Women to advance its mission of closing gender and knowledge gaps on Wikimedia platforms. Through coordinated efforts across multiple countries, the community contributed to building a richer, more inclusive visual archive of African women, while also strengthening the feminist networks necessary to sustain this work. Africa Wiki Women extends gratitude to all volunteers, partners, and communities who made this year’s campaign a success. Are you passionate about bridging the gender gap and promoting inclusion in the Wikimedia Space? Then complete our Community onboarding process and invite your friends. Be a registered member by filling out this form. Join our WhatsApp group – Follow us on social media: TikTok–Facebook – Twitter/X – @africawikiwomen – LinkedIn – Instagram– Spotify.
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