Welcome to AfrophoneWikis, a discussion group on developing Wikipedias in African languages. Africa has approximately 2000 languages, of which only a few have Wikipedias. Most of the existing African language Wikipedias are minimal.

How can we do more, and do it better?

AfrophoneWikis discusses strategies to encourage and support the growth of Wikipedia and related open knowledge projects *in* African languages. We focus on specific Wikipedias with consideration of wider issues.

Goals of the group include:
1. Promoting the concept of developing Wikipedias in African languages via individual contacts, talks, blogs, and other dissemination.
2. Supporting the development and refinement of existing Wikipedias in African languages.
3. Supporting the formation of groups to initiate new African language Wikipedias.
4. Discussing frameworks to organize Wikipedias in closely related African languages, to minimize duplication of effort, leverage skills and content to widest benefit, and harmonize presentations for the benefit of users.
5. Developing strategies in communication collaboration with organizations like ACALAN, national applied linguistics agencies, diverse organizations promoting education and/or development in Africa, ICT4D projects, and African language teachers associations in Africa and abroad.
6. Discussing Africa-specific approaches that may be new to Wikipedia. These may include consideration of, for instance,
(a) Socioeconomic issues: How, in societies with low average income and other pressing concerns, to facilitate individuals contributing to Wikipedia in African languages.
(b) Educational dimension: Fostering the involvement of advanced language classes in content development.
(c) Technical factors: Ways of converting among dialects/orthographies/scripts where needed and possible.
7. Bringing in experience from other online efforts, such as the Kamusi Project.