Dagaare Wikimedia Community


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Dagaare is the language of the Dagaaba people of Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast. It has been described as a dialect continuum that also includes Waale and Birifor. Dagaare language varies in dialect stemming from other family languages including: Dagbani, Waali, Mabia, Gurene, Mampruli, Kusaal, Buli, Niger-Congo, and many other sub-languages, resulting in around 3 million Dagaare speakers. Throughout the regions of native Dagaare speakers, the dialect comes from Northern, central, western, and southern areas, referring to the language differently. Burkina Faso refers to Dagaare as Dagara and Birifor to natives in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. The native tongue is still universally known as Dagaare. The standard for Dagaare is derived from the Central region’s dialect among the different dialects. Southern Dagaare (or Waale) also stems from the Dagaare language and is known to be commonly spoken in Wa and Kaleo.

Ethnologue divides Dagaare into three languages:

  • Southern/Central Dagaare language, which is spoken mainly in Ghana
  • Northern Dagara language, which is spoken mainly in Burkina Faso
  • Dagaari Dioula, which is spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, and has significant influence from the genetically unrelated Dioula language
Dagaare Wikimedia Community

Burkina Faso, Ghana
LocationGlobal Online Community-based
Country code
  • BFA
  • GH
Staff10
Volunteers30
Official language(s)
Other language(s)
Mr.Alhassan Mohammed Awal
Key people
AffiliationsDagbani Wikimedians User Group
Phone number[+233 (0)249182899
Mailing listdagbani@list.wikimedia.org
Mailing addressP.O. Box CT 4570 Cantonment Accra, Ghana
MottoPromoting Wikimedia projects in Dagaare and sister Mole-Dagbani/Gur languages


Objectives edit

  1. To promote awareness of Wikimedia projects related to Dagaare languages in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Cameroon.
  2. To establish the development of Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary for Dagaare language via the Wikimedia incubator, and nurture them to become full projects.
  3. To promote editing of Wikimedia projects by organizing events and activities, and recruiting new editors.
  4. To promote the development of structured data for Dagaare language, utilizing Wikidata, so that the language can become more digitally usable and visible on the internet.
  5. To equip editors of projects in Dagaare language with the skill and ability for the continues development of Wikimedia projects.

Activities edit

This Community plans to hold and support the following activities:

  • Meetings the community will be organizing meet-ups for its members to exchange ideas and find ways to support them to continue editing the projects in areas where they would need help.
  • Edit-a-thons to help new Wikipedians learn editing techniques, to create, translate and improve the content in all Wikimedia projects or work on and develop a certain topic which will in return promote the project.
  • Editing contests the group will be organizing editing contests to encourage existing regular editors to keep editing Wikimedia projects and also encourage non-members/users to join.
  • Photographic Contest and trips the group will also organize trips and contests to encourage users to upload and document files to commons which will be used in all Wikimedia projects.
  • Research is part of the activities the community intends to undertake to uncover facts and document findings on the various Wikimedia tools such as Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wiktionary among others.

Not yet!