Africa No Filter Wikimedian in Residence to lead the Africa Knowledge Initiative

Application Deadline: May 15, 2022

As part of its mission “to connect and build the field of narrative change-makers in Africa,” ANF will host a Wikimedian in Residence (WiR) to coordinate a yearlong series of content creation and capacity building activities that will connect Wikimedia communities in the region to ANF’s large network of researchers, journalists, and creators.

Supporting AU’s Agenda 2063 framework, The Africa Knowledge Initiative (AKI) will be built around three African Union holidays in the 2022-23 cycle — Youth Day, Environment/Wangari Maathai Day, and African Day. As celebrations of pan-African values, the holidays will serve as unifying calls to action to Wikimedia communities to address African knowledge gaps on Wikipedia and raise awareness of the Agenda 2063 goals. The collaboration also serves as an opportunity to create the conditions under which narratives about Africa reflect a dynamic, diverse, and evolving Continent.

  Africa No Filter is hiring a Wikmedian in Residence to help us achieve the following objectives of the project:

• Generate knowledge about Africa through collaboration with aligned partners to amplify each of the three selected African Union Holidays as opportunities to grow content about the continent.
• Encourage content creation and create visibility for African content on Wikipedia and the wider web
• Advise on the creation of an online course targeted at training up-and-coming African journalists and content creators to expand public knowledge about the continent on Wikimedia projects.
• Support aligned partners to ensure that more young Africans are better trained, skilled and equipped to contribute to knowledge creation about Africa on Wikipedia and the wider web

Skills

• Deep hands-on experience with Wikipedia editing and Wikimedia communities, especially in the African context
• To have worked previously on a Wikimedia/Wikipedia project
• Effective English writing and communication skills
• Experience developing and managing partnerships
• Experience designing and providing effective training on Wikipedia, digital research, or similar digital skills, especially for adult learners
• Experience with community organizing or facilitating professional-public collaboration

It would be even better if you had

• Multilingual experience with French, Portuguese, Swahili, or other major African languages
• Experience with facilitating online training and learning platforms such as Moodle, EdX, or Blackboard
• Experience with learning and evaluation

Requirements

1. Source/find and Partner with African Wikimedia communities to run content creation events themed according to the three targeted AU holidays: Youth Day, Environment/Wangari Maathai Day, and African Day.
2. Leverage publications, data, and other information resources from the AU, the ANF, and other aligned partners’ campaign participants.
3. Work with a course development expert and ANF to create a short course and training materials for African content creators.
4. Considering that live online classes could be problematic due to Internet challenges in the continent, the WiR would need to adapt such lessons and record them so that the participants could access them within a stipulated time frame.
5. The WiR will also integrate the pre-training evaluation results into adapting the course to ensure that the instructional design fits in with the digital capacities of African community leaders (i.e. adding components focused on skills like. finding reliable sources in the African context.).
6. Coordinating a needs-based assessment to include previous learning from the African Wikimedia community into the course.
7. Create a project page on meta.wikimedia.org and work with the AKI working group to create a project web page
8. Develop publicity materials about the value and importance of Wikipedia in information dissemination and research as well as those that will make content creators curious and ready to be part of the upcoming training programming.
9. Create connections or partnerships with existing Wikimedia affiliates to provide an immersive experience (mentorship and support opportunities) after completion of the course.
10. Mentor and coach new communities to apply for funding through Wikimedia’s new grants system
11. Connect course participants to Wikimedia communities in their different countries.
12. Submit a report on the project midway and at the end of the program.
13. Report to the working group composed of the African Union, Africa No Filter, and Wikimedia Foundation
14. Work with the evaluators where necessary in reaching the course participants.

Rewards

Experience

Fellows get the opportunity to access customised content taught by a world-class Faculty, and intern with/shadow seasoned and credible Nigerian Politicians

Exposure

The Faculty, Technical Advisory Council and Mentors share updates about the Fellows with their networks throughout the course of the program.

Important timelines:

• Call for applications: 21 April to 15 May
• Proposed start date: June 2022
• Duration of contract: 13 months

Please submit your applications to: grants@africanofilter.org

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the  Africa No Filter Wikimedian in Residence