Africa and Wikipedia/Wikimedia SWOT Analysis
| Strengths
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Weaknesses
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- Eases individual and organisation’s access to knowledge.
- Enables content access by geographically diverse audiences.
- Adds vital content to the world's most consulted encyclopaedic platform, Wikipedia.
- Utilises free technology.
- Easy to use, teach and train.
- Creates a contemporary, non-geographically bound outlet for cultural heritage institutions.
- Encourages and supports collaborative effort and contribution.
- Supported by a large and active international volunteer community.
- Fulfills a desperate online and mobile need for content about Africa.
- Access a strong and supportive international GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) community.
- Empowers, builds, trains and encourages local communities to contribute to a growing and flexible resource.
- Produces open content which can be used, reused and modified.
- Wikipedia Zero (free access to Wikipedia on mobile phones).
- Wikipedia offline distribution.
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- Wikipedians on the continent work in isolation, are disparate and are not in great numbers (no large Wikipedian community in Africa).
- No culture of contribution to the Internet by the general populace.
- Partners under-resourced.
- Partner authorisation processes are often bureaucratic.
- Partners are often lacking in technical knowledge, and the ICT and human resources to fully collaborate.
- Lack of capacity and resources within WikiAfrica team.
- Technology often perceived as daunting and too technical.
- Weak access to the Internet (weak online connectivity to actually edit Wikipedia).
- National differences and expressions in the use of English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic make it difficult to contribute to Wikipedia in those languages in a manner acceptable to those editing communities.
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| Opportunities
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Threats
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- Depth and breadth of information on Africa not widely covered on Internet, or Wikipedia.
- 500 million people under age of 18 looking for content that gives them a place in the global knowledge economy and truthfully reflects their history and daily reality.
- Increasing numbers of young, technically savvy youth looking for career and community opportunities.
- Increasing access to mobile technology opens up knowledge and content to larger audiences, previously isolated population groups.
- Harnessing technology to create a solution that requires minimal cost for maximum impact.
- Virtual, collaborative and crowd community allows for maximum content to be uploaded with greatest efficiency.
- Diversity of projects related to Wikipedia allow for extension of and accessibility to the content in many different ways – photographically (Wikimedia commons), data (Wikidata), newsworthy content (WikiNews), etc.
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- Copyright and intellectual property issues.
- Restrictive governmental policy around freedom of heritage or speech.
- Lack of funding and resources.
- Local chapter dissolution or disintegration.
- Global technology failure.
- Negative academic perception of Wikipedia.
- Perceived conflicts of interest by Wikipedian community.
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