Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Results and best practices

This page gives a description of how Wiki Loves Africa 2023 was organised, the outcomes, and some of the important lessons we drew.

See also

• Results and best practices 2014
• Results and best practices 2015
• Results and best practices 2016
• Results and best practices 2017
• Results and best practices 2019
• Results and best practices 2020
• Results and best practices 2021
• Results and best practices 2022
• Results and best practices 2023

Summary

Wiki Loves Africa - the 9th edition - was held from 1st March until 30th April 2023 with the theme Climate and Weather. This year's date was moved from 15th February to 1st March and the South-Africa based associationWiki in Africa hired Wilson to facilitate the project for the year 2023.

In 2023, 29 communities from 23 countries officially took part in preparing XX events and creating local awareness around the contest. As usual, the media competition - France, Madeira and Réunion, as long as the images represented African-related material or content.

The top 20 shortlist for Wiki Loves Africa competition under the 2023 theme, Climate & Weather.

7 international prizes were delivered for a total sum of USD 8750..

Main links

• Commons portal : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa
• Meta portal (for organizers) : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Africa_2023
• Website : http://www.wikilovesafrica.net
• Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/wikilovesafrica/
• Instagram handle : https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesafrica
• Twitter handle : https://twitter.com/wikilovesafrica
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvyE0yEt-BKgEUM5QlcQOwsMtpbWCbsnA
• Telegram : https://t.me/joinchat/FI9fz0pnPNiWbyyLr-YsFQ
• Mailing list : https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/african-wikimedians.lists.wikimedia.org/

Organizers, credits, and collaboration

Wiki Loves Africa is organized by Wiki in Africa, in collaboration with about 30 African based UserGroups and wikimedia communities and individuals. Most groups are funded by Wikimedia Foundation either through their own Annual Plan Grant (for example : m:Wikimedia Community User Group Botswana) or through small (rapid) grants which are usually applied months prior to the contest (see category here - 12 requests in 2023).

In 2023, activities were essentially coordinated through a global mailing list, direct emails, a telegram channel (very active), a couple of other channels for small focus activities, and a multilingual portal on meta.

More about organizers and roles

Roles of WIA and UserGroups Wiki Loves Africa is organized in collaboration with several African based UserGroups and wiki communities in this losely stitched together process: Wiki in Africa provides the global leadership, refine the theme, search funding for the global project and support local teams in their funding requests, manage the global infrastructure (website, social media, upload funnel), design and create communication material and templates, facilitate images review and improvement during and after the contest, provide a global communication coverage, organize webinars, office hours and training sessions, lead the jury process, celebrate winners and distribute international prizes, provide training and support to local organizers and participants, craft and enforce the rules, run satellite activities to increase the impact of the initiative as a whole, run surveys and interviews, collate final stats, write jury report, final report and best practices document. Local organizers organize local or national activities. They may : request their own funding to WMF, set up and run a program of activities (training sessions, photo walks, upload sessions, run image description activities, promote the contest through social media or press conferences, create communication and outreach material, organize a national jury process and winning ceremonies with prizes, participate to satellite sessions, maintain a country page etc. Category:Wiki Loves Africa 2023 by country Category:Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Events In 2023, a lot of effort was put into supporting new teams and creating opportunities for collaborations. We also focused on providing trainings and learning sessions on diverse topics including Wikimedia Commons Categories and mobile phone photography which were facilitated by partners outside Africa. m:Wiki Loves Africa 2023/News m:Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Training For 2023, the full list of local groups organizing activities may be found on this page : Participating communities Most groups are recurrent participants, though the level of involvement varies depending on the size of each group as well as the experience and availability of its members. Groups are invited to only participate at the level of their own capabilities, to avoid putting undue pressure on the organizers that would exhaust them. Most groups receive funding from WMF, though there were issues of some countries unable receive funding due to the status of the country relationship with the United States. This year also, attention was paid to creating communication materials as well as meeting/training sessions in multiple languages to aid non-native english speakers in participating fully in the precontact, contest and post contest stages. We however, met difficulties to get translation in Portuguese though, resulting in poor engagement from the Lusophone Africa communities. 2023 Partners and Community Organisers Partners Community Organising Partners Community Organising Partners without logos Planning Wikimedia Community User Group Burundi • Campus Photo Festival (Nigeria) • Congo Brazaville • Wikimedia Community User Group Kenya • Wiki For Senior Citizens Network (Nigeria)

Credits

Credits Wiki Loves Africa at a project level is run by a small team. Being our 9th year, the competition team is well versed in the process of putting the competition together, but we must acknowledge that it is not possible to do this without the help of key people from within the community and we are endlessly grateful for their help in doing so. As with last year, some hands-on help came from within the African community, due to in part to easier communications via the telegram channel, targetted organisational support webinars and the Wiki In Africa intern. We would like to thank the Wikimedia community across Africa (and beyond). This is as much their competition as it is ours and is intended as a platform for them to help build and sustain the growth of their communities through a celebration of local culture and experiences. There are key people that provide continual assistance in the set-up of the competition on, and communication across the Wikimedia projects, this is no small task - thanks to Romaine, for setting up the site-notice banner and all uploading categories structure since inception Adoscam, for his work on adding categories to images, renaming images, and identifying/proposing images for quality/feature status Geoffrey Kateregga, for always being available at short requests to help out with trainings and related tasks. There was assistance with translation and communications from many people. Over 30 people also volunteered to help do the first jury round to provide the first selection from over 13000 images (see first review team). And last, but by no means least, the indefatigable work of the International Jury. From the Wiki in Africa team, the main actors of the WLA project are Anthere, co-lead Isla Haddow-Flood, co-lead Wilson, facilitator Nonny, admin Rachel, for social media work Ceslause, for advisory

Performance

Performance Table In 2023, a deep work has been done over the last 2-3 years to evaluate the health of each participating community. A super super simplified version is accessible below. The idea of the research was to be able to recognize the struggling communities and provide adapted support when suitable identify governance issues, power-grabbing issues, conflicts of interest, etc. note which non-participating communities could be contacted and get involved Particiating Community Local Organizer Funding Total Uploads Comments For organizers: please edit the table with details of your Montage tool request Algeria Bachounda APG 26 Benin Fawaz.tairou Rapid grant (canceled) 395 Botswana Candy APG 542 Active local community organization. Local prizes. Burundi Gilbert Rapid grant 1793 Active local community organization. Local prizes Cameroon Serieminou APG 436 Active local community organization. Local prizes Cote d'ivoire Bouba Kam WIA WLA grant 740 Inconspicuous local affiliate organization + New WLA community of videographers led by Bouba Kam and Mansita Republic of the Congo‎ Osvaldo rey chrys no funding 1 Democratic Republic of Congo Nixon Mukoko Rapid grant 55 Ghana‎ Amuzujoe Rapid grant 1173 Active local community organization. Local prizes Guinea‎ Aboubacarkhoraa GSF 129 Apparent local community organization but slightly disconnected from International contest (probably due to linguistic reasons) Haiti Kitanago GSF 16 Kenya Faith Mwanyolo no funding 328 Morocco Mounir Neddi APG 180 Active local community organization despite initial hesitation to make uploads also assisted with translations Namibia Shikoha Tautiko Rapid grant 268 Active local community organization and supported by Kwera Faith of Uganda team. Local prizes Niger Barke11 no funding 79 First time participant - No funding. Nigeria Ayokanmi (WUGN) APG 3274 Combination of 7 active local communities. Impressive participation numbers. Local prizes Rwanda Boris Bahire GSF or Rapid Grant ? 469 Active local community organization and participation Senegal AdjoEsse Rapid grant 677 Active local community organization and participation. Local prizes South Africa Mchuchushupai APG 174 Active local community organization but not-so-evident participation Sudan Maram & Ola Mahadi Rapid grant 326 Active local community organization Tanzania Jadnapac & Justine no funding 32 Togo Hermannkass ??? 15 Tunisia Moumou82 APG 24 Uganda Geoffrey Kateregga APG 1070 Visible local community organization and participation. Local prizes ... ... ... ... ... The full detailed table is private and meant to be a living document.

Implementation

New and improved elements

WLA is in its 9th iteration, it is expected that the international organizing team have, by now, improved greatly on the process of putting together all the elements of the competition. However, every year presents a new opportunity to challenge the previous processes and operations. Here is a list of new and improved elements for the year 2023!

Organization of global participation

• Updated and enhanced Organizers portal on Meta
• Most local organizing communities did a « similar » branded country page. See for example Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2023 in Sénégal
• Participating communities including links to their grants and information such as lead person, and competition pages.
• A very detailed energy table has been developed showing participating communities performance against resources allocated and comments on community activity as it concerns WLA. This document is not public, but we are happy to consider requests for access

Improvements to the Wiki Loves Africa 2023 competition page on Commons

Changed components includes:

• Splitting of mainpage elements into several Templates
• (NEW) 2023 header
• (NEW) Partners box

Promotional materials and web elements

• New videos and social media promotional materials were created in English by Rachel Zadok, and web elements created by Isla all available in the Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Communications.

Translations were done by Ceslause into French.

• Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Climate and Weather in English
• 
  Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Climate and Weather in French
• 
  Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Climate and Weather

Trainings

There were 6 office hour sessions which all held 2 weeks before and 2 weeks into the contest proper. We successfully planned and excuted 4 training sessions:

• Introduction to Wikimedia Commons (French and English) facilitated by Adoscam and Geoffrey respectively.
• Mobile phone photography for Wikimedia Commons (in English language) facilitated by Wasiul Bahar of the Bangla commmunity.
• Basics of Wikimedia Commons categories (in English) facilitated by Christel Kritzolina.
• Wiki Loves Africa photo essays basics (in English) facilitated by Wilson

Image categorizing and tagging

• User Adoscam proposed a training on image categorizing and tagging as part of the post contest cleanup process but due to unclear circumstances, the training was unable to hold although the clean up process went on as planned despite the setback. Find more details here
• talk about ISA : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool/Wiki_Loves_Africa_MetaData_Weeks
• Anthere, Wilson, and a couple other volunteers worked on fixing uploaded images into the right general categories and also tagging the correct country codes. Some communities continued uploading after the official close of the contest and this led to many of the images getting lost and not considered for the international prizes. We are working to fix this discrepancy by meeting with the concerned communities. Check here for more information.

Images value

It is very important to the contest organizers to make sure that Wiki Loves Africa pictures are of

• the best quality possible
• recognized for their quality
• reused in the other wikimedia projects

Some efforts were made in the 2023 iteration in that direction:

1. Online training webinars were proposed, in particular on the image clean-up process, in English and French (both of which didn't get a lot of attendance)
2. More professional photographers were encouraged to join the contest through direct invites via emails and social media messages.
3. Efforts were made to thoroughly work on ALL the images collected to make sure they were properly described, categorized etc. The coordination of that effort was done on Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Images checking, using multiples queries to identify problematic cases.
4. Unfortunately, the ISA drive could not hold due to some technical challenges with the tool. The team contemplated going ahead with the contest but resolved to propose some community led intervention through a hackathon in collaboration with Wiki Mentor Africa (start of 2024) to improve the addition of structured data to the images
5. last, The initiative to get Wiki Loves Africa images be labelled Featured Images, or Quality Images, or Valued Images : WLA images under evaluation. While the efforts of user:Adoscam are recognized and appreciated, I admit that this may not have got the required attention and should be improved upon in 2024.

Data from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Africa/WLA_images_under_evaluation

Jury Process

The Jury process was coordinated by Isla Haddow-Flood with Wilson, Nonny and Ciell from the Montage team. 13,366 images, 28 Audios and 210 videos were reviewed through the Wiki Loves Africa Jury process. This year, we introduced a video jury (first of its kind in the movement) to review the submission of videos during the contest. The first round of images review was done by 36 Commonists and Wikimedians. The subsequent rounds were reviewed by a jury of 11 members from Nigeria, South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, United Kingdom, France, Egypt, and Brazil. The jury comprised a mix of professional photographers and experience Commonists, from Africa and internationally.

National jury process was managed independently by national teams willing to engage in a national selection process. Guidelines are proposed in a National Judging Charter to ensure uniform clarity, understanding and collective agreement as to the best and most ethical practices.

More about the jury process

National Jury process National teams could decide to host their own jury process, or not. Their process would not impact on, and were completely independent of, the decisions taken by the International Jury. National teams wishing to host a jury process were given guidelines in 2021, which they relied on for this year. This page of guidelines was then developed in the National Judging Charter to ensure uniform clarity, understanding and collective agreement as to the best and most ethical practices. International Jury process The International Jury process started in May. There were 11 members of the jury from across Africa, the Americas and Europe. The mix featured professional photographers and experience Commonists. The selection process is explained here and was conducted on Montage. This was the expected procedure to follow: First Review Round - yes / no round: a group of Commonists and Wikimedians who will do the initial weeding out (the First Review). They were a group of 36 volunteers, and were a different group from the International Jury. First Jury Round - first yes / no round for jury. Second Jury Round - rated round - 5 stars Third Jury Round - yes/no to select top 30 images Jury deliberation (Zoom) - Final discussion and selection among the jury members who could make it. Final ranked round to select top 10 images, with motivations for top images. First reviewers Images reviewed: 13,366 The initial round - first review round- was made up from volunteers who responded to a call that went out through various groups (Telegram, Facebook and then on the Commons village pump). 36 people over two rounds were part of the reviewing team. This meant that each image was reviewed by at least 5 times. The criteria for their yes/no choice was based on the following: Images must be relevant to the theme Images should be at a useable size ('no' for images lower than 3mb) The obvious quality of the image - is it obviously blurred, pixelated, etc. The should be no watermarks or logos or timestamps Basically, all selfies, small images or blurred and unclear works should be marked as “no”. First Jury round This is a yes / no round. And the criteria for voting consisted: Encyclopedic value – does the photo present the subject with clarity? Subject Matter – is the subject appropriate to the theme Climate and Weather? Story Telling – how well does the photo evoke the viewer’s imagination or attention? Impact – what do you feel when you first view the photo. Does it evoke an emotion? Creativity – has the photo captured the photographer's idea, message or thought in an original and imaginative way? Without distracting from the knowledge provided by the image. Please also consider technique, composition, presentation, color balance, lighting and focal point/s Of course, the photos should be in focus (unless intended not to be) and should be more than 2 mb Jurors were to vote "yes" for any image that you like (the framing, emotion, visual composition, etc.) and feel should be rewarded and vote “no" if a) they think the image was bad, blurred, not clear, poorly constructed photo, or b) if they felt the photo is not relevant to the theme. Second Jury Round This was a rating round intended to bring down the photographic pool to a manageable shortlist. For this round, the jury were asked to rate each image according to 5 stars, with 5 stars meaning exceptional and 1 star meaning the image should no longer be considered. The Jury were asked to consider the criteria listed for Jury Round 1. Third Jury Round At this stage, Jury were asked to assess the images on this criteria: Technical quality: please keep the 'Featured Pictures' criteria of Wikimedia Commons [1]. This is especially relevant for resolution (a minimum resolution of 3 Megapixel is generally used), and digital manipulations (must not deceive the viewer). Community jury members, please could you check these factors and communicate any concerns on Telegram or during the discussion phase. Originality: it is probably clear what is meant: going beyond the usual and obvious, giving the photo some artistic quality. Usefulness: refers to usefulness in Wikipedia articles: the image must be clear, helpful in showing the monument or its details etc. It is not enough to be a 'pretty image' but it must also have descriptive value. Fourth Jury Round The Jury were asked to consider: Rank top 10 images. Consider the top winners to award 3 photographers. This is the last round - these images will reflect Climate and Weather in Africa - the best of African photography on an open platform. Beyond the encyclopaedic value, please consider your three or four top images in this light. Final Jury Round Jurors were asked to rank their final 17 images with a motivation for their top 5. The International Jury report can be found here Lessons and comments The idea of including past Wiki Loves Africa on the international Jury works really well and propels quality selection at each phase of the jury process. Getting all the international jurors to keep to the respective selection schedules was very challenging due to the other personal engagements of the jurors. It is advisable to reach out to the international jurors as soon as the contest starts instead of waiting till after the contest. This could help replace in advance any juror with tendency of being absent or slow during the selection process. It is a good idea to have more past Wiki Loves Africa winners on the international jury in the future.

Winners

The top 20 shortlist for Wiki Loves Africa competition under the 2023 theme, Climate & Weather.

National selection with prizes may be seen here: National Winners. The following participating communities offered prizes to winners of the local contests:

1. Ghana
2. Benin
3. Burundi
4. Cameroon
5. RDC
6. Kenya
7. Nigeria
8. Igbo Community
9. Senior Citizens
10. South-Africa
11. Uganda

The International Prize Categories consisted

Photography:

• 1st Prize : USD 2,000 - Won by Sani Maikatanga (Nigeria) with Auyo village flood
• 2nd Prize : USD 1,500 - Won by Mohamed Nasr (Somalia) with Stormy day in somalia
• 3rd Prize : USD 1,000 - Won by Mohammed Osman (Sudan) with Kids and the river

Media (Video, Audio, Graphics, Photo Essays):

• Best audio prize : USD 750 - Won by Abdullahi Tanimu Abubakar (Nigeria) with Change Immersion
• Best Video prize : USD 1,000 - Won by Green Wilfred Somoni (Nigeria) with GOOD YESTERDAYS WIKI LOVES AFRICA 2023
• Africa Environment Video Prize: Best video representation of the impact of climate change : USD 2,000 - Won by Wiki Loves Africa Côte d'Ivoire community led by Bouba Kam's
• Africa Environment Special Collection Prize: Best collections of images showing the impact of climate change : USD 500 won by Alamin Mohammed (Nigeria) with The Last Stand

• 
  1st prize: Auyo village flood by Sani Maikatanga (Nigeria)
• 
  2nd prize: Stormy day in somalia by Mohamed Nasr (Somalia)
• 
  3rd Prize: Kids and the river by Mohammed Osman (Sudan)
• Best Audio: Change Immersion by Abdullahi Tanimu Abubakar (Nigeria)
• Best Video Prize: GOOD YESTERDAYS WIKI LOVES AFRICA 2023 by Green Wilfred Somoni (Nigeria)
• Best video representation of the impact of climate change by Alamin Mohammed
• Best collections of images showing the impact of climate change was awarded to a collection of 13 videos from Cote d'Ivoire organized and submitted by the brand new Wiki Loves Africa Côte d'Ivoire community led by Bouba Kam's.

Key specials

• Wiki in Africa provided Bouba Kam and Mansita with the sum of $250 to enable them plan and organize the Wiki Loves Africa 2023 event in Cote d'Ivoire with an aim of founding a new community of Ivorian videographers and film makers. Bouba Kam is a well-known past WLA winner and has proven history of consistently participating in the annual photo contest in previous years.

• Namibia participated for the first time in the WLA event but struggled with organization.

• Senegal had new and invigorating leadership with Essenam and Fatima who we hope to go on to found the Wikimedia Senegal community.

• This year we introduced the video jury (first of its kind in the movement) to help make a decision on the two video prize categories - Best Video and African Environment video prize. The jury comprised 5 individuals and we relied on google tools to facilitate the entire process.

Communications

Wiki Loves Africa is an opportunity to do outreach, in hope of recruitment of new participants to Wikimedia Projects. As a consequence, a lot of effort gets put into designing communication material, translating messages and wiki pages (into French and Portuguese) and running communication campaigns every year. Social media such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram are the primary means of communication and proved successful to provide visibility. Although this year, there was the question of trying to understand to what extent the materials we create through translations are accesible and useful to their intended audiences.

More about Communication

Communications materials Communications materials for printing and for online usage were developed by Creative Flood, and branded social media posts were created by Rachel in several batches according to the campaign needed at the time. You can access the printable materials here c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2023/Media#Documents. And also contest theme colors here The interesting parts of the communication is each material issued and shared in English had a French counterpart and in some cases, Arabic There was no Portuguese materials. The following communications channels were created and updated with theme-specific branding and information: Meta organisers and project portal Commons upload and competition portal Website: www.wikilovesafrica.net The following communications elements are available here and were created: Wiki Loves Africa 2023 international poster Wiki Loves Africa 2023 local information poster template (requiring information to be added) Climate vs. Weather poster Wiki Loves Africa 2023 (Instagram Post (Square)) French Wiki Loves Africa 2023 (Instagram Post (Square)) French Wiki Loves Africa 2023 (Twitter Social Media Card) FRENCH Wiki Loves Africa 2023 (Twitter Social Media Card) FRENCH Wiki Loves Africa 2023 (Twitter Social Media Card) FRENCH Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Facebook Post FRENCH Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Facebook Post FRENCH Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Facebook Post FRENCH Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Jury Report Cover Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Participating community Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Presentation Video WLA 2023 (Instagram Post (Square)) French WLA 2023 camel landscape WLA 2023 clouds landscape WLA 2023 clouds landscape WLA 2023 fire landscape WLA 2023 fire landscape WLA 2023 Interviews Report WLA 2023 windmill landscape WLA 23 Participating Communities Territories WLA23 centralnotice banner mockup WLA 2023 Jury report Incomplete list of mentions of Wiki Loves Africa in the local media English winners press release Social media campaigns Social media campaigns focussed on both awareness of the competition and engagement with both past participants as well as new media creators on the continent. The strategy was developed by Rachel, and content was created by Creative Flood and Rachel using both Adobe software, the Canva platform and Wondershare Filmora for video content. Materials for Social media were developed by Rachel using the Canva platform. The Climate & Weather campaign fell within both the scope and dates of the African Environment WikiFocus, in which Wiki in Africa was a co-project lead, leading to cross-pollination of social media. Campaign series’: list campaigns implemented Call for Entries: February - April 2023 Photo Tips: March 2023 Past Winners Reels: April 2023 Entries round-up video: July 2023 Meet the Jury: July 2023 Jury Shortlist Announcement video: early September 2023 International Winners series (mid September 2023) Past winners awareness building (November 2023) Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/wikilovesafrica/ Posts 139 posts Page Likes increase: 196 New fans and followers Page Likes decrease: 103 Lost fans Followers 32,723 (December 2023). This is a 0.8% decrease from 2022. Followers 32,992 (December 2022) Despite a small decrease in followers, our reach is up by 22% Analysis of results Audience is predominantly male (76%) Predominant age range 25-34 Predominantly from Madagascar, Algeria and Egypt. The overwhelming majority are using mobile - this should influence ensuring that the Commons and website pages are clear on mobile With the ongoing Advertising restrictions, we have had to find ways to engage with our audience organically. This has resulted in us creating more video posts and reels. Twitter Link: https://twitter.com/wikilovesafrica Followers: 2,100 Followers (December 2023). This is a 6% increase from 2022. Followers: 1,984 Followers (December 2022) Wiki Loves Africa twitter page has increased its followers by 188 since December 2022 through 1,753 tweets Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/wikilovesafrica 109 posts and 77 stories (59 posts during Wiki Loves Africa 2022) 1,825 followers (increased by 511 (21,7%) by December 2023). 1,518 followers (December 2022) 474 following Instagram reach has also increased by 22%. Analysis of results Audience is predominantly male (51,3%). Predominant age range 25-34 Predominantly from Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The overwhelming majority are using mobile - this should influence ensuring that the Commons and website pages are clear on mobile With the ongoing Advertising restrictions, we have had to find ways to engage with our audience organically. This has resulted in us creating more video posts and reels. Marketing Materials developed for Wiki Loves Africa 2023 These are .jpeg files below, but the .pdf versions can be found in Wiki Loves Africa 2023 Communications category, on Commons. Talk about the 2023 Contest Consult this page for more information about Messaging and Talking to the Press about Wiki Loves Africa.

Impact

Sources of data for impact

2023 Survey and Interviews results

At the end of the contest, one general survey and three local organizers' interview were run by the organizers. The general survey was available to all participants. The interview was for lead local organizers, one prospective winner and one member of the jury. The WLA 2023 survey was run from Jun - Jul 2023 using a WMF Qualtrix account, while the local organizers interview sessions was virtual. 2023 survey information is published here : m:Wiki_Loves_Africa_2023/Survey

Whilst it seems important to us to run survey and interview to measure

1. the impact on the local teams
2. collect their feedback and
3. poll them about the next year theme,

We must admit that participants rate improved greatly this year by almost 50% perhaps due to repeated and consistent reminders or just due to repeated reminders and off-wiki engagements. we are not sure yet but hope to see same in the 2024 iteration.

The general survey answers are anonymous and results public.

The organizer interview is kept private, but an anonymous report is accessible on the survey meta page. In 2023, we got 3 local organizers, 1 jury and 1 participant (5 combined) interviewed, and 82 respondents from the general survey. Generally, the participants are supportive of WLA, happy with the global organisation team work, and wish that it continues, support same timeframe and choice of trainings. Feedback on what worked well and what needs to be improved is collected and incorporated in that Results and Best Practices document. For example, feedback showed that online trainings (introduction to mobile photography, categories etc.) were appreciated, and that teams wanted more of them. Accordingly, we will set up more of such in 2024. Workshop and information sessions also got support, so we will continue in the direction of building up skills of participants and organizers alike. We also will improve interpretation of the theme and expected photos. Unfortunately, some participants reported that there was an unfair assessment of local prizes, some verbal abuse at a local event, and some form of hostility and authoritarian behavior amongst local organizers. This is a sad development and will be looked into in build-up to 2024.

• Survey report : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_2023_general_survey_report.pdf
• Interview report : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_2023_Interviews_Report.pdf

Tools

We used different tools as listed on m:Wiki Loves Africa 2022/Tools, such the https://wikiloves.toolforge.org/africa

Immediate impact of the Wiki Loves Africa 2023

The contest resulted in 13,386 photos, 228 videos and 28 audios., per Category:Images from Wiki Loves Africa 2023 submitted by 785 competitors in 54 countries.

Other stats include:

• Participating Communities: 29
• In-person events: 20 (on record) several others were not communicated and documented by local organizers.
• Online meetings and webinars were organized
• Winners interview on September 2023 WAH episode.
• Diff article detailing the 2023 contest and winners information.
• Wiki Indaba 2023 presentation - 9 years of WLA - Does Wiki Really love Africa?
• WLA presentation for WikiConvention Francophone - Wiki Loves Africa - Après 9 ans.
• WLA Wikimania 2023 posters
• The 2023 WLA Jury report

Full statistics for the life-span of the Wiki Loves Africa contest can be found in the table below: Wiki Loves Africa images have collectively - since metrics began in 2016 - been viewed 1 billion times.

Statistics of the Wiki Loves Africa Contest

Year of competition	Images entered	People contributed	Monthly page views 06/21	Countries participating	Total page views: 06/21	Months tracked	Percentage useage (06/21)	Uploaders registered after competition start	% Uploaders registered after competition start
2014	5,868	873	3,807,278	47	216,721,827	65	20	735	83
2015	7,352	722	3,209,078	48	216,569,252	65	13	585	80
2016	7,768	836	3,258,412	49	144,350,754	65	15	682	80
2017	17,874	2,435	5,879,895	55	255,586,509	45	11	2,307	88
2019	8,212	1,350	2,602,510	53	74,239,940	38	13	1,157	85
2020	16,982	1,904	4,638,105	53	115,951,946	25	21	1,448	76
2021	8,319	1,149	1,471,494	47	20,411,927	15	11	884	76
2022	16,265	1,111	205,556	53	658,517	1	5.64	850	72
2023	13,386	785	-	54	-	-	-	-	-
Totals	102,026	11,165	25,072,328	50.63	1,044,490,672	-	14.4	8,648	80

More historical stats available here : c:Category:Wiki Loves Africa Stats

Benefits for local teams

• A group received trainings and new skills on videography and went on to pursue careers in media and related fields post contest.
• New collaboration possibilities were formed between participating communities like in Morocco and Cote d'Ivoire

Benefits for winners

• Improved publicity of their work and a platform to showcase previous works on September 22023 WAH episode

Continued impact of the Wiki Loves Africa project

Since 2014, the Wiki Loves Africa project has achieved the following things:

• Over 102,026 images have been entered by 11,165 competitors from up to 55 countries under a free licence (CC-BY-SA) ;
• The images entered to Wiki Loves Africa are viewed nearly 25,072,328 million times each month (June 2022)
• Wiki Loves Africa’s images from the first 8 years have been viewed over 1,044,490,672 (1 billion) times altogether (June 2022)
• 32 Wikimedia communities from 26 African countries have hosted participation events, information sessions and training workshops; this year, Madagascar and Niger were unofficially involved.
• at least 357 participation and training events have been held by participating communities between 2014 and 2023.
• The competition attracts high levels of new contributors to the Wikimedia projects – an average of 80% of participants being newbies;
• A Wiki Loves Africa prize-winning image was included in the Journeys Through Our Fragile Heritage exhibition at the UNESCO headquarters, Paris, and
• Wiki Loves Africa’s ISA tool was the winner of the WikiData Award for Best Multimedia Tool in November 2019.
• Mohamed Hozyen, a prize winner for Wiki Loves Africa 2019 was been selected for the AFAC - The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Prins Claus Fonds and Magnum Foundation Arab Documentary Photography Programme
• A Wiki Loves Africa image Firefighter, Ashton Bay, March 2017 submitted by South African photographer user:StevenTerblanche for the Wiki Loves Africa 2017 contest under the theme of People at Work.The stunning image was selected for 3rd position for the Picture of the Year 2021 award. The image, depicting a courageous firefighter battling against a veld-fire at Ashton Bay, Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa, was one of 17,874 images submitted by 2,435 photographers, the image has finally received the recognition it deserves.
• A second Wiki Loves Africa image, submitted in the 2020 competition, was also in the Top 5 selection for the Picture of the Year 2021 award. . This beautiful monochrome image shot by Egyptian photographer User:Eman arab is of A boy wearing a protective mask during the COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt. It was submitted to Wiki Loves Africa’s 2021 competition which focused on Health + Wellness.

Telling the story

• A Wiki Loves Africa image Firefighter, Ashton Bay, March 2017 submitted by South African photographer user:StevenTerblanche for the Wiki Loves Africa 2017 contest under the theme of People at Work.The stunning image was selected for 3rd position for the Picture of the Year 2021 award. The image, depicting a courageous firefighter battling against a veld-fire at Ashton Bay, Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa, was one of 17,874 images submitted by 2,435 photographers, the image has finally received the recognition it deserves.

• A second Wiki Loves Africa image, submitted in the 2020 competition, was also in the Top 5 selection for the Picture of the Year 2021 award. . This beautiful monochrome image shot by Egyptian photographer User:Eman arab is of A boy wearing a protective mask during the COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt. It was submitted to Wiki Loves Africa’s 2021 competition which focused on Health + Wellness.

• Through Wiki Loves Africa 2022 ISA campaign, we were able to come up with depiction guidelines for adding meta data to images https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Depiction_guidelines. This has tackled any form of cheating on ISA campaigns, and could help the community at large to stick to best practices on image depiction.

In the Media

• Prime Time News, Nigeria (11 September 2023) Sani Maikatanga’s photo takes top prize on Climate/Weather contest in Africa https://primetimenews.ng/sani-maikatangas-photo-takes-top-prize-on-climate-weather-contest-in-africa/?amp=1
• News Point, Nigeria (11 September 2023) Maikatanga’s Photo Takes Top Prize In Climate, Weather Contest In Africa https://newspointnigeria.com/maikatangas-photo-takes-top-prize-in-climate-weather-contest-in-africa/
• Time Express, Nigeria (11 September 2023) Sani Maikatanga’s Photo Takes Top Prize in Climate and Weather Contest in Africa. https://www.timeexpressnigeria.com/2023/09/sani-maikatangas-photo-takes-top-prize-in-climate-and-weather-contest-in-africa/

2024 Theme Matters

We compiled the below table using responses received from a survey form sent out widely to participants and Wikimedia communities aimed at sampling their opinion on what they thought the next Wiki Loves Africa theme should be.

Ideas for the WLA 2024 theme

Theme	Votes	Concerns
Art, Culture & Heritage	8	Artist rights
Biodiversity	8	Species identification
Education / Student life	4	Child rights/personality rights
Environment	4	Partially covered in 2023
Celebrate Africa	3
Marketplace / People at work	3	People at work 2017. Resources. Wealth? Could be 'Africa at Work'
Cultural identity	3	Cultural adornment covered in 2015
Creative Africa	2	Artist rights
Cuisine	2	Covered in 2014
Future Africa	2	A bit vague.......innovation, tech etc???
Home & Habitat	1	recently done in 2022
Love	1	Wiki Loves Folklore / Love
On the move	1	Covered in 2020

The suggestions were condensed into 4 options published and put to the vote afterwhich the theme for 2024 emerged as Africa Create

Lessons and comments

Also read : General survey report and Interviews report

Issues we faced last year and how we decided to deal with them

• We observed content of very low quality from one team last year. We decided to talk with them several times, and provide more training
• We shall widen the scope of communication on the theme for Wiki Loves Africa 2023 for better interpretation
• We shall improve communications about the contest in languages other than English, like French/Arabic.
• We shall schedule the organizers' interviews during a more quiet period within the movement to avoid elements that could distract participation.

This year, what worked well

• The theme was well understood
• We got lots of quality videos and the winning audio was superb and befitting.
• Supporting Bouba with a $250 micro grant to organize and establish a new WLA community in Cote d'Ivoire
• Training on Mobile phone photography for Wikimedia Commons facilitated by Wasiul Bahar from Wikimedia Bangladesh
• We ran the participant survey very soon after the contest rather than several months later. The turn-over of participants has been very good.
• We included participants and jury in the interview process and explored possibility for collaborations, establishing new communities focused on videos and audio.
• Wilson dedicated effort to providing organizers and community members with round the clock support on and off wiki and even during off hours relying on social media and forging new personal relations.

What did not work so well

• Translations of the contest and meta wiki pages (this is an ongoing situation)
• Our attempt to get graphics and photo essays submitted did not raise anyone interest...
• Finding communication material in multiple languages was still apparently not easy for participants and organizers
• Contest Page Redesign - great idea and outlook but we may have decided on this too late hence we struggled with adapting to the new implementations.
• Parallel local contests without recourse to Intl. contest guidelines
• Gatekeeping in local communities (eg, information retained by organizers rather than being communicated to their members). A consequence of that might be for example participants not being aware of a training session taking place. There is a rather well attended telegram channel, but most local communities have their own WhatsApp group to communicate within themselves. If information on the telegram group is not relayed to the local WhatsApp, then the information is not effectively transmitted.
• We do not know to what extent the resources we create are utilized - social media cards and publicity materials in multiple languages for example
• Whilst local teams generally embraced the template system for country landing page, it has been difficult to get those updated (in particular with local events). Some organizers just dont see the importance.
• Whilst we had many candidates, the jury first round was complicated as a) some volunteers did not start the selection process b) some started but did not finish c) some provided an invalid email address. Note : this is an ongoing situation, nothing new...
• Some participants started participating after the contest was over (they got their local funding approved by Wikimedia Nigeria after the contest), resulting in lots of misplaced images
• Just as every year, lots of images were misplaced, miscategorized. This occurs in particular in two types of situations. A) when the uploaders are Nigerians and followed various paths (and sometimes a different upload funnel) or b) amongst regular participants who do not start the upload process from the landing page (using a dedicated upload funnel) but who upload using the regular system and adding some categories. b is a recurring issue and no solution has been found so far (except for reminding everyone to start the upload process from the WLA page...). a) is a rather new situation, due to the huge growth of the Nigerian communities and some contradictory messages they receive
• The training on category session was too theoretical and in depth. We need a more 101
• In the survey, some participants reported that there was an unfair assessment for prices locally, one reported verbal abuse in a local event, one reported that local organizers were hostile and authoritarian
• Local jury formation and transparency remains unclear, but we are unable to interfere in the process.
• Rapid grants adjustments to application cycles affects local organizers who have to make funding requests 5 months ahead of the contests. Also, some were unable to meet the deadline.
• Some participants (and even organizers) believe that the contest is fully run by the Wikimedia Foundation

What we'll do differently henceforth

Francophonie

• Wilson not being French speaking makes it difficult to support fully the French speaking community, which was (or maybe appeared) a bit dis-enguaged. To help, a French ambassador will be identify to specifically help
• Survey : we did not ask participants their primary language. Next year we shall... so that we can differentiate the output per language

Navigation, finding information

• meta page : rethink the navigation system to make things more findable (example)
• Country pages : we shall rework the standard country pages to include pre-prepared templates with key information, that will have to BE on those country pages. Eg, information about the international prizes
• Make sure all landing country pages and national winners prize are actually fully updated at the end of the contact (who won the prizes, who are the jury members)

Training

• A very very practical training session about categories and mass upload (maybe two training sessions) should be organized
• Finalize a public performance table per team with suggestion of where to put prioritization next year (eg, training)

Communication

• The 2023 contest started out without an official launch and we have considered changing this in the future and encouraging local communities to host/participate in some form of launching event where there would be conversation about the theme and contest rules.
• Approach social media strategy with a view to reach out to specific regions and not the entire African continent at once.
• Make the winners the centrepoint of social media campaigns and promote in various african regions specifically. For young photographers use Instagram, but for the mass populace, focus on Facebook.

Jury

• To avoid re-inviting members of the first review and Intl. jury who demonstrated to be problematic and unresponsive especially when we kept sending reminder mails. Also taking note that they could have had unforeseen circumstances that prevented them from participating as agreed - not completely their faults
• Put more attention on national jury processes and charter

UCOC

• Ensure that organizers and participants understand the importance of applying UCOC guidelines in local events to prevent abuse and high handedness and also introduce a reporting channel for victims.

Featured Images, or Quality Images, or Valued Images

• More effort into the initiative to get Wiki Loves Africa images be labelled Featured Images, or Quality Images, or Valued Images

Funding and performance

• Micro-funding process to be started earlier (end of Sept), to reorient small groups to EITHER WMF, or Wikimedia Nigeria, or WikiFranca. Meeting to organize with those groups (in particular Nigeria) end of September
• Coordination meeting with Nigerians to be planned in October to decrease the associated risks and subsequent impacts of multiple groups participations from the country
• Finalize a private performance table shared with the WMF team