Grants:Project/Rapid/Wikiresidence Africa Villa Karo/Report

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Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

I was a Villa Karo residence stipendiat in Benin between December 5. 2017 and January 20. 2018.

I realised that the accessibility to net remains a prevailing problem in Benin. There is good coverage of mobile network, but the data is expensive for those who can afford using it. Average price of one gigabyte (1GB) of mobile data (2019) in Benin is 20,99 US$ (this is a two week salary for many). It ranks with the most expensive data among African countries with Chad, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The average price of one gigabyte in Finland is 1,16 $.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
300	150	I did these mostly myself
150	150
70	50
2000	20	I did not get used to use Wikidata

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
What did not work so well?
What would you do differently next time?

I learnt that in Benin public library or museum network do not cover especially the smaller communities. I visited many museums, but learnt that there is no real, central national museum in Benin. More than 50 percent of the population is illiterate, which means that only a portion of 12 million inhabitants (perhaps 3 mill) have equipments and money to use Internet in order to edit Wikipedia. However Wikipedia is a media that can help to fight illiteracy. Benin is a multi lingual country, where it is usual that people understand one or two African languages and in addition to French, the Lingua Franca, or another European language. This means that verbal communication is strong.

All in all I got acquainted with the general media and information ecosystem situation in the country, and was able to continue there as a stipendiat two years later and to make a three month Benin/Dahomey history researcher field study in 2020-21. I was satisfied with the human relations network in the Grand-Popo town and helped by the Villa Karo staff. I was lucky to have good companion stipendiates at the time, of them one was a Wikipedian.

After the stay I was invited to a Villa Karo members meeting where I gave a lecture. "Possibilities of Wikipedia in Africa"

I created in Wikipedia "Africa page" where I listed all my articles (Wikipedia and other), lectures and videos.

Finances

I was Granted 1 800 €

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

I used all grant money according to the budget plan.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

no

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

My first stipendiat time in Benin had many consequences. First, I was happy that I got acquainted with the situation there. I learnt a lot from my false assumption that preconditions in creating Wikipedia is similar in Europe and Africa. This lead me later into getting to know Wikimediens du Benin colleaques and studying the history and the country further. I made a "Wiki100" mainly about articles about Africa. I learnt more about Wikipedia and Wikimedia in Africa when vistiting and giving a presentation about Villa Karo in Wiki Indaba meeting in Agadir Marocco in the fall of 2013.