Tuesday, January 24, 2012

#Wikipedia for free in #Africa with #Orange

Orange is the first to sign up to Wikipedia zero. Our ambition is a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. It is really awesome that the 70.4 million customers of Orange will be able to access Wikipedia in 20 countries for free on their mobile phone. They are in Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Jordan, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda, Niger, Senegal, Congo and Vanuatu.

Obviously, many languages are spoken in all these languages. It will be particularly interesting to learn what the effect will be on the editor community. So far, most if not all editing is done on computers. With this new potential for growing our readers, the availability of content is what will limit our growth.


These are the languages spoken in Africa, the numbers however reflect global traffic. As you can see, the existing traffic for the languages native to Africa is still really small.

For the Wikimedians interested and involved in Africa, this is the time to write content for Africa. When this content is what people read, it now has much more of a potential to really make a difference in sharing the sum of all knowledge with every human being.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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