It’s time to look at the state of the African language Wikipedias again, as always based on the imperfect metric of number of articles.
African Language Wikipedias
| Language | 11/2/2011 | 9/5/2013 | 26/6/2015 | 24/11/2016 | 5/9/2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malagasy | 3,806 | 45,361 | 79,329 | 82,799 | 84,634 |
| Afrikaans | 17,002 | 26,752 | 35,856 | 42,732 | 46,824 |
| Swahili | 21,244 | 25,265 | 29,127 | 34,613 | 37,443 |
| Yoruba | 12,174 | 30,585 | 31,068 | 31,483 | 31,577 | Egyptian Arabic | 10,379 | 14,192 | 15,959 | 17,138 |
| Amharic | 6,738 | 12,360 | 12,950 | 13,279 | 13,789 |
| Northern Sotho | 557 | 685 | 1,000 | 7,605 | 7,823 |
| Somali | 1,639 | 2,757 | 3,446 | 4,322 | 4,727 |
| Lingala | 1,394 | 2,025 | 2,062 | 2,777 | 2,915 |
| Kabyle | 1,503 | 2,296 | 2,847 | 2,887 | |
| Shona | 1,421 | 2,321 | 2,638 | 2,851 | |
| Kinyarwanda | 1,817 | 1,780 | 1,799 | 1,810 | |
| Hausa | – | – | 1,345 | 1,400 | 1,525 |
| Igbo | – | – | 1,019 | 1,284 | 1,384 |
| Kikuyu | – | – | – | – | 1,349 |
| Kongo | – | – | – | 1,173 | 1,176 |
| Wolof | 1,116 | 1,161 | 1,023 | 1,058 | 1,157 |
| Luganda | – | – | – | 1,082 | 1,153 |
This is the 2nd update in a row that gets to welcome a new language to the thousand article mark – congratulations Kikuyu which has now joined the list, and is already hot on the tail of Igbo.
I know some of the Afrikaans Wikipedia editors have been a bit disappointed by the slowing pace of growth as they move towards 50,000 articles. But, to put it in perspective, the 2013 Global Brittanica had about 40,000 articles, so there are less and less obvious gaps in content. Afrikaans is also one of the highest quality Wikipedias for its size – there’s a focus by many editors on the quality of articles rather than just the numbers. And they shouldn’t be too disappointed by the pace – Afrikaans is still the fastest growing African-language Wikipedia, catching up to Malagasy, which has the most articles.
It’s interesting that Afrikaans is getting more media attention, but still has to deal with concerns such as but anyone can edit it, how can we trust it?, the kind of thing the English Wikipedia has long moved on from. A definite focus area for us as the Wikimedia South Africa chapter.
Swahili continues to grow steadily, and Egyptian Arabic as well, and the other languages continue to grow slowly.
South African Language Wikipedias
| Language | 19/11/2011 | 9/5/2013 | 26/6/2015 | 24/11/2016 | 5/9/2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | 20,042 | 26,754 | 35,856 | 42,732 | 46,824 |
| Northern Sotho | 557 | 685 | 1,000 | 7,605 | 7,823 |
| Zulu | 256 | 579 | 683 | 777 | 942 |
| Xhosa | 125 | 148 | 356 | 576 | 708 |
| Tswana | 240 | 495 | 503 | 615 | 639 |
| Tsonga | 192 | 240 | 266 | 390 | 526 |
| Sotho | 132 | 188 | 223 | 341 | 523 |
| Swati | 359 | 364 | 410 | 419 | 432 |
| Venda | 193 | 204 | 151 | 238 | 256 |
| Ndebele (incubator) | – | – | – | 12 | 12 |
Looking at the South African languages in particular, besides Afrikaans, Northern Sotho has returned to a more natural growth compared to the spurt of the previous period. User:Aliwal2012 continues to be the standout contributor there, having now created 3,228 pages.
Growth in the Zulu Wikipedia has picked up slightly, with a few relatively new editors contributing the majority of recent additions.
Two other languages have also seen an uptick. Tsonga has leapfrogged Swati, mainly thanks to User:Thuvack, who’s on track to make 2017 his record year for Tsonga contributions.
Sotho has also passed Swati, with User:Aliwal2012 active there as well.
So what are you waiting for? If you haven’t edited before, don’t be afraid that you’ll find the syntax difficult – be bold, and there’ll always be someone to ask for help. All it takes is clicking that “Edit” link and getting started. With just a few edits a week and you could be making a noticeable difference to one of the African language Wikipedias!
Picture from Wikimedia Commons.
Related articles
- November 2016 African language Wikipedia update
- March 2016 African language Wikipedia update
- June 2015 African language Wikipedia update
- October 2014 African language Wikipedia and Wiktionary update
- June 2014 African Wikipedia and Wiktionary update
- May 2013 African language Wikipedia update
- November African language Wikipedia update: Afrikaans passes Swahili
- April 2012 African language Wikipedia update
- Northern Sotho Wikipedia now an official project, Afrikaans reaches 20 000 articles
- African language Wiktionary update
- African language Wikipedia update
- Wolof Wikipedia reaches 1000 articles
- Swahili Wikipedia now the largest African-language Wikipedia
- The state of Wikimedia projects in South African and Africa – Dec 2008
- The South African Wikimedia communities
- Venda Wikipedia Progress
- First Wikipedia Academy in Africa
- Wikipedia Week
- Afrikaans Wikipedia hits 5000 articles
Hi Ian,
the article statistics do not give a realistic picture of strength and weaknesses of African Language Wikipedias.
like Malagasy has the high number of articles because of bot activity. As a consequence its readership is small (that is just an indicator, the relevant comparison would be to compare to other Malagasy language websites and their reader numbers).
I tried to introduce criteria for quality and ‘market share” – have a look
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/African_language_Wikipedias_2017_Ingo_Koll_slides_wikiindaba_Accra.pdf
I agree, article count is an imperfect metric, but it’s easy to measure and indicates trends over time. Thanks for the link to your presentation – very happy to see more detailed analyses out there.