As part of activities to mark the African day campaign 2023, Abuja teachers and some students held an editathon at the Federal secretariat in Abuja. .
The event started with some training on how to navigate the English Wikipedia and Wikidata, dovetailed into the editing session where participants were guided to pick notable Africans and Nigerians in the field of business
The event has as it’s theme, “Africa Continental Free Trade, Bridging the Africa Content Gap, One Article at a Time! The campaign spans from May 20 to June 20 2023 is spearheaded by Open Foundation West Africa , Ghana which seeks to bridge the content gap on the web by organizing a content drive campaign (a writing contest) specifically to achieve this goal.
The Africa Wiki Challenge has over the past two years collated over four thousand (4000) articles about Africa, contributed by participants all over the world including countries like Ghana, Nigeria, U.K, Canada, Russia, Rwanda, USA among others. It is organized in conjunction with Wiki media foundation.
According to the coordinator Mrs Obiageli Ezeilo, the aim is to stop the misrepresentation and under-representation of Africa globally by telling the African story as it is and bringing to the fore ,strides and accomplishments of Africans in the areas of commerce and industry as well as showcase the opportunities presented by the African free trade continental agreement.
In addition, she said the campaign will also highlight the challenges faced and encourage stakeholders to work to address them.
“we can shed light on these challenges which then increases the visibility of this knowledge and encourages stakeholders to work together toward addressing them. We can also highlight the benefits of free trade, such as increased access to markets, enhanced competitiveness, and the creation of new opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses”.
Ezeilo further said ” by promoting the achievements of African entrepreneurs and innovators on the web, we can inspire the next generation of business leaders and innovators to seize the opportunities presented by the AFTCA. By creating more inclusive and representative digital knowledge networks, we can ensure that young Africans have access to accurate and diverse information about the benefits of free trade and how they can participate in it”.
A participant , Hogan Bassey who spoke to journalists expressed joy at the knowledge gained and committed to contributing to the body of knowledge as well as partaking in other Wiki based activities.
The participants also took out time to socialize with music interlude and a photo session to end the day’s activities.
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