In June 2019, Wiki Loves Women celebrated all of Africa’s sportswomen through the Women in Sport drive. The drive asked participants to add information across several language Wikipedias (English and French), WikiData and Wikimedia Commons. Participants could upload images, translate existing articles, add WikiData items, or create new articles about their favourite female sportswoman.

The drive was designed to improve the quality of articles about Africa’s Sports Women. On the contest page, a list of Africa’s Sportswomen was drawn from WikiData. The list represented over 2178 names and participants were asked to do one or a few of the following actions:

  1. Add the name of any sportswoman missing from the list to WikiData by creating a new item.
  2. Improve or translate existing articles or check if there was a corresponding article in another language and to create a new article in this language.
  3. Add more information to each of the WikiData entries listed.
  4. Upload images of sportswomen who did not yet have one.
  5. Link the images of sportswomen to their Wikidata item number.

Because of the multi-platform nature of this drive (Wikipedia, WikiData, and Commons), it was impossible to quantify the results or define where the changes had come from. It was a good experiment in focusing on one popular category across many spaces. The report on the project can be found here.

Even though the drive is officially over, the list still remains and can be used to check the Wikimedia status of your country’s sportswomen. Head to Women in Sport to see what you can add!!

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