Research:Conducting a detailed needs assessment of communities in the Africa Great Lakes Region

Project Overview

31. Global approach for local skill development - gathering data, matching peers, mentorship, recognition. Skill development is a priority for our community. Although Rwanda community has grown since we started in 2018 as evidenced on our meta page Wikimedia_User_Group_Rwanda by the projects conducted so far (More than 10 projects) and members contributions which continue to rise, we have not yet managed to comprehensively go beyond and make needs assessment frameworks on great lakes region. There is an assumption that certain barriers like skills gaps are keeping people from contributing in certain areas and specifically in certain languages. As Kinyarwanda,Kirundi and Kiswahili are the most spoken languages in our communities , We intend to organize ourselves and communicate regionally in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of community needs and assets through data gathering. Questions we want to answer include: what are views of our communities , what are their assets and what are gaps, which approaches to capacity building can best serve them , what is the existing people's knowledge on existing platforms. This will be based first and foremost on an online surveys but these will be accompanied by hybrid activities(online and offline) conducted on fields engaging these communities as a strategy to get in contact and interact before moving to further initiatives towards capacity building.

Project Goal

- Detailed Needs Assessments of great lakes communities in terms of skills gaps and organization contributing to: 31.Global approach for local skills development . This will be achieved through collaboration and networking from the regional communities.

Project Timeline

• start date :15 March 2022

• End date :15 August 2022

Target Communities

• Eastern DRC
• Burundi
• Rwanda

Study Background and Objectives

As part of the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy: Regional and Thematic hubs, the Wikimedia Community User Group of Rwanda (WCUGR) received the Movement Strategy Implementation Grant to conduct a detailed needs assessment of communities in the Africa Great Lakes region. The objective of the study was to develop a baseline survey that could measure the skills gaps in the community of contributors, editors and subject matter experts in the Great Lake region: Rwanda, Burundi and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (mainly Goma and Bukavu). Kai Analytics was retained to assist the WCUGR with: 1. The design and implementation of a digital literacy survey to assess community needs in the Great Lakes Region; and 2. The analysis of the survey results.

Methodology

Response rates The Community Capacity and Needs Survey in the African Great Lakes Region was conducted from June 16th to July 20th. Data collection was done by 12 field enumerators based in Goma and Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (5 people); across Rwanda (5 people) and across Burundi (2 people). In total, 433 completed responses were collected.We estimated the population of 15 to 64-year-olds in the Great Lakes Region to be 15.9 million people 1 . This yields a margin of error of ±5% at the 95% confidence interval. A definition of the margin of error is included in the appendix of this report.

Survey Questionnaire

The survey questionnaire was designed to measure the skills gap in the community for two population groups. The first group are past or active Wikimedia contributors and the second group were the people who have never contributed to Wikimedia before. The questions were selected and adapted for this research based on past Wikimedia research that examined issues around community insights (Wikimedia, 2021), women and gender gap in Wikimedia communities (Koteeswaran, 2021), and motivation to contribute to Wikipedia (Kuznetsov, 2006). The full survey questionnaire is included in the Appendix of the report.

Region Representation

Figure 2, shows the distribution of responses by country. As a baseline representation of the Great Lake region, we obtained a 5% margin of error at the 95% confidence interval. However, a higher number of responses was collected from the DRC (49%) compared to Burundi (12%) and Rwanda (39%). Therefore, the results should be interpreted as a whole and not by its individual countries/cities.

Are you collaborating with other communities or affiliates on this project? Please provide details of how partners intend to work together to achieve the project goal. We collaborate with the community in Eastern DRC and Burundi as beneficiaries , we collaborate with communities in Tanzania on Kiswahili language skills and Uganda community as mentors , we intend to engage international community beyond our region, from Wikimedia Germany to gain from their experience in best practice in conducting such a detailed skills assessment collaborating on tools designs.

challenge will your project be aiming to solve? And what opportunities do you plan to take advantage of to solve the problem? We intend to attend to the skills gap challenge through a comprehensive needs assessment of the communities in the great lakes region, as we assume there are community members who have not fully contributed because of the language barriers , we have an opportunity to be basing our conversation in our mother tongues (Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili and Kirundi) which are definitely the most spoken languages in our region and any one can understand irrespective of the level of education , we will also take advantage of English and French languages to make translations of the most needed tools in the process in order to seamlessly communicate with these communities and have access to various information and opportunities presented in Wikimedia community at broad stage . So all our tools , documents and resources starting with this proposal itself will be translated in to the four mentioned languages and this will increase the engagement of our communities and contribute to their endorsement.

Observations and Statistical Analysis

Have you ever contributed to Wikipedia or Would you consider contributing to Wikipedia? The two key outcome questions the survey address were: 1. Have you ever contributed to Wikipedia? 2. Would you consider contributing to Wikipedia? Results

• Out of 433 completed responses, the survey found that 64% of respondents have contributed to

Wikipedia in the past.

• For the 158 respondents who indicated that they have not contributed to Wikipedia, 137 (87%)

indicated that they would consider contributing to Wikipedia.

A Chi-Square Test for Independence

Although the results showed a higher proportion of male, post-secondary educated, living in the city and gainfully employed have contributed or would be willing to contribute to Wikimedia, a chi-square test of independence was conducted to determine whether the difference was statistically significant at 0.05α. The results presented, show a lack of statistical significance from these chi-squared tests and therefore we failed to reject the null hypothesis that different categories of gender, living area, education, or employment have the same probability of ever contributing or considering contributing. In other words, the difference observed in this survey was due to chance and different categories of gender, living area, education, or employment still have similar probabilities of ever contributing or considering contributing to Wikipedia.

Project activities

The project consisted of 4 phases namely : Phase 1: The needs assessment research preparation , one and half months Phase 2 : The needs assessment online and field activities, one month Phase 3 : Needs Prioritizing and draft implementation plan, one and half months Phase 4 : Validation and dissemination of findings , one month

The following activities were mainly the priority for our project; We initiated collaboration and community mapping following these steps:

• Starting with a basic research on contributors in this region, we identified and engaged potential collaborators
• Collaborated with the community leaders on best practices to engage all members on their needs to fully contribute in Wikimedia movement based on their online profile as well as conducting research on local initiatives going on so that no one is left behind, especially people living in rural areas.
• We had visit on field the community in DRC (Burundi,Bukavu,Rwanda and Goma) to engage with some of key informants

We carried out the skills needs assessment with the following steps: Designed a survey of community skills: Community Capacity Map was used for that purpose, where detailed data was gathered in terms of skills needs assessment and potential existing skills. Surveys were translated in French, Kinyarwanda ,Kirundi and Kiswahili to be able to reach the communities without language barriers. Collecting data: The survey was distributed as much as possible among the communities, We received diverse responses in terms of: newcomers,old editors, active editors,students.

Defining needs: A professional research analyst was hired to look through the data, categorize it and extract the needs. The results will be shared in a public report, and each country coordinators will draft their reports which will be gathered all together in phase 4 of the project.

Prioritizing: Once the needs were identified, we will conduct a general meeting online with the community and a small number will be offline and a follow-up discussion agree on the priorities. The priorities will be added to our final report.

Sharing: Our final needs and priorities will be not only shared on a local level, but also within a broader “global mapping” to help represent our region’s specific needs among the rest of the Wikimedia communities.

Key participants

• Project coordinator: Nyinawumuntu Jeannette, RebeccaRwanda , Rwanda
• Research Team coordinator: Ndahiro Derrick, Rwanda
• Country coordinator: Abel Mbura , BamLifa, DRC
• Regional coordinator: Romeo and & Derrick Murhabazi , DRC(Bukavu)
• Regional coordinator: Leader Byemba & Valentin, DRC(Bukavu)
• Country coordinator: Ferdinand Irankunda , Ferdinand IF99 , Burundi
• Monitoring and Evaluation Officer: Boris Bahire, Mrbobax, Rwanda
• Research consultant: Kevin Chang
• Secretary and communication officer: Nyirahabihirwe Clementine, Cnyirahabihirwe123, Rwanda
• Advisor: Antony Mutaganvu , Jadnapac , Tanzania
• Enumerator:Gilbert ,Burundi
• Enumerator:Mutijima Germain,Rwanda
• Enumerator:Uwimpuhwe Valentine, Rwanda
• Enumerator:Gatete Pacifique,Rwanda
• Enumerator:Uwayezu Protais,Rwanda
• Enumerator:Igirimpuhwe Rosine ,Rwanda

References

1. 1. l’Institut National de la Statistique. (2014). Deuxième Enquête Démographique et de Santé (Eds-rdc Ii 2013-2014). [PDF]. Retrieved from: https://ins-nordkivu.org/assets/doc/EDS_00_00_DRC_DHS_2013_2014_FINAL.pdf.

1. African Cities Research Consortium. (2021). Bukavu: Étude Exploratoire Sur La Ville. [PDF] Retrieved from: https://www.african-cities.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ACRC_Bukavu-City-Scoping-Study_FR.pdf
2. National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. (2014). RPHC4: Population Projections. [Data file]. Retrieved from: RPHC4: Population Projections | National Institute of Statistics Rwanda.

1. Institut de Statistiques et d’etudes Economiques du Burundi. (2020). Annuaire Statistique Du Burundi. [PDF].

Retrieved from: https://www.isteebu.bi/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Annuaire-Statistique-du-Burundi_2020.pdf

1. 5.Koteeswaran, B. M. (2021). Bridging the Gender Gap: A Report on Indian Language Wikimedia

Communities. The Centre for Internet and Society, India. Retrieved from: https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bridging-the-gender-gap-in-indian-language-wikimedia-communities.

1. 6.Kuznetsov, Stacey. (2006). Motivations of contributors to Wikipedia. SIGCAS Comput. Soc.. 36. 1. 10.1145/1215942.1215943.

1. 7.2021 Community Insights Report. (2021). Retrieved May 19 th , 2022, from: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2021_Report/Endnotes

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