Sub-Saharan Africa

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Select Sub-Saharan African languages and their Wikipedias

Major Sub-Saharan African languages and their Wikipedias

Wiki code	Language	Primary Country	Number of speakers (Millions)	Potential Users (Thousands)	Number of articles (7-09)	# of articles >1500 bytes (7-09)	Articles, 1 year growth rate (5/08-5/09)	# of 5+editors (5-09)	5+ editors, 1 year growth rate (5/08-5/09)	5+ editors,2 year growth rate (5/07-5/09)	Article to editor ratio
ha	Hausa	Nigeria	*40	1,600	131	35	12%	10	100%	400%	13
sw	Swahili	Tanzania	31	1,240	12,555	1,256	58%	38	46%	138%	330
zu	Zulu	South Africa	*25	1,012	186	4	6%	7	-13%	0%	27
am	Amharic	Ethiopia	*22	860	3,342	100	7%	23	28%	130%	145
yo	Yoruba	Nigeria	*21	856	6,264	2,067	5%	21	31%	200%	298
ig	Igbo	Nigeria	18	720	570	23	4%	15	114%	275%	38
mg	Malagasy	Madagascar	15	588	1,518	106	147%	21	75%	320%	72
so	Somali	Somalia	14	556	585	76	31%	17	42%	89%	34
sn	Shona	Zimbabwe	*13	504	40	6	3%	0	-100%	N/A	N/A
ff	Fulah	Senegal	12	492	47	2	357%	7	17%	600%	7
kg	Kongo	Democratic Republic of the Congo	11	440	569	11	31%	13	63%	117%	44
ln	Lingala	Congo	9	360	1,147	57	10%	19	58%	111%	60
Smaller Sub-Saharan African Languages with Wikipedias of more than 500 Articles
af	Afrikaans	South Africa	6.1	196	12,866	4,374	24%	63	47%	31%	204
wo	Wolof	Senegal	4	160	967	116	45%	18	50%	800%	54

*Includes second language speakers

Sub-Saharan African languages

• There are over 230 million speakers of the 12 major Sub-Saharan African languages listed, comprising 28% of the population.
• All of the 15 languages listed are official languages of one or more Sub-Saharan African country or state. There are newspapers printed in all of the languages except for Shona
• Most of these languages have existed as written languages for a very short period of time and are not the primary languages of communication amongst the well educated. Therefore, these languages have a very limited literature.
• There are many other languages spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa, these 12 were chosen due to their large number of speakers, status as official languages and existence of Wikipedias in these languages

Sub-Saharan African languages and education

• All of the languages listed are used as mediums of instruction at the elementary school levels in different states and countries in sub-Saharan Africa
• Some of these languages are also taught at the secondary level in some localities.
• The former colonial languages are the primary languages for higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Internet penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Despite the large number of speakers of several of these languages, most people lack access to computers and the Internet, with Internet use rates of 4% of the population for the region as a whole. Additionally, most people in Sub-Saharan Africa with Internet access use colonial languages as their primary language for written communication.
• Mobile phone penetration is significantly more widespread than Internet penetration. Additionally, some countries have built up 3G networks enabling people to access the Internet via their phone

Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias

• Growth of sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias has generally been very slow. To date only three Wikipedias, Swahili, Yoruba, and Afrikaans, have more than 5000 articles.
• Many Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias have shown almost no growth. There are 13 Wikipedias of sub-Saharan African languages with more than 3 million speakers that have less than 500 articles
• Most African language Wikipedias lack tools and support structures such as templates, info boxes and village pumps that support editing

Amongst Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias, only Swahili and Afrikaans have shown steady growth

Most Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias have shown minimal growth

Few Sub-Saharan language Wikipedias have many articles greater then 1.5Kb

Barriers to the growth of Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias

• Lack of source materials in African languages
• Lack of Internet access amongst people who use African native languages as their primary written language
• Lack of Wikipedia tools to facilitate editing in African languages and a lack of editors who have the technical skills to address problems and fix bugs
• Lack of time to devote to Wikipedia projects amongst people in Africa who have Internet access
• Prestige of former colonial languages (mostly English, French, Portuguese, including for religious purposes in Christian communities), or Arabic (for religious purposes in countries where Islam dominates or takes a significant share), and illiteracy in the vernacular
• Until September 2009, poor connections between Africa and the Internet.