Exploring offline access to Wikipedia: WikiFundi, an editing tool for remote schools – Wikimedia Blog

"Senior Program Manager Anne Gomez leads the New Readers initiative, where she works on ways to better understand barriers that prevent people around the world from accessing information online. One of her areas of interest is offline access, as she works with the New Readers team to improve the way people who have limited or infrequent access to the Internet can access free and open knowledge.

Over the coming months, Anne will be interviewing people who work to remove access barriers for people across the world. In this installment, she interviews Florence Devouard, who has been a Wikimedian since the early days. Her work in the Wikimedia movement has ranged from content creation, to being a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board, to her more recent focus on supporting the growth of African language projects. In this interview, Anne and Florence discuss WikiFundi, an offline editing tool for remote schools. ———

First, can you tell us about your work in Africa with Wikimedia? What got you started? What have been your proudest accomplishments?

I guess my first interest related to African participation can be traced back to the first Wikimania conference held in Frankfurt in 2005! I gave an overview of the digital divide in African countries and provided an estimate of Wikimedia projects’ visibility in Africa, as well as African editor participation and impact. Back then, I already wanted to increase awareness, foster higher contribution rate and build African-language projects...."