Some USAID money was reserved in order to facilitate the concours. See also this. Still, the idea as it is portrayed here seems interesting and might be carried out some other time :) Guaka 19:31, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bambara Wikipedia Launch Competition

Computers are just arriving in Mali and it is important that online resources exist for the 2.7 million people that speak Bambara. Currently there is hardly any information in Bambara available online. Wikipedia and sister projects Wikibooks and Wiktionary can fill this gap.

Internet access is very expensive for most Bambara speakers. Therefore, the Bambara Wikipedia will not likely grow without incentives. This is why we geeks at Geekcorps Mali came up with the idea to launch a competition to kickstart the Bambara Wikipedia: provide attractive prizes to people who write in Bambara on Wikimedia projects.

However, since this is just a volunteer side project, there is no available funding. So we ask you to go through your collection of gadgets and possibly laptops collecting dust and send them to Geekcorps Mali. Remember that high-tech stuff that was state of the art 5 years ago in the developed world is very very usable, and wanted, here. Think of:

MP3 players
digital photo cameras
laptops, anything starting from Pentium 2
any other cool gadgets like GSM phones with camera

Sending hardware

Before sending anything, please contact bambara@mali.geekcorps.org. This helps us planning the competition.

Post address in the USA:

WikiChallenge c/o Wayan Vota

IESC/Geekcorps

901 15th Street NW, Suite 1010

Washington, DC 20005

USA

The Geekcorps Mali project will at least be running until November.

Drawing attention in Mali

Geekcorps Mali’s goal is to bring technology solutions to community radio stations in Mali, to increase the quality of information they have at their disposal, and to encourage sharing of information and programs between the radio stations. We intend on drawing attention through our contacts at the radio stations all over Mali. Besides this we also are in contact with students of Bamako's university, where we want to promote this project.

More information

Concours de lancement (in French, soon in Bambara)
English Wikipedia
Geekcorps Mali
Tech Review about Geekcorps