Day 2 of Wikimania in Nairobi, Kenya

Today was filled with less presentations and talks for me. I watched “Wikidata: a whirlwind tour through the land of Wikidata-powered apps” by Lydia, though. I highly recommend the slides to get inspired with what you can build with the knowledge base of structured data.

I also listened to a panel on AI (again!). One piece of statistics that blew my mind was that 42.1% of Kenyan internet users aged 16+ use ChatGPT — the highest national usage rate worldwide. Global average of usage stands at just around 22.3%. Kenya accounts for approximately 5.9% of global ChatGPT traffic, placing it behind only the U.S. and India in overall usage volume. This is of course a big challenge for Wikimedia projects, to say the least.

A lot of the conversations I had were about linguistic diversity. That was to be expected on a continent where about 2000 languages are spoken. Not having a European or North American country as the venue really gave a lot of people an opportunity to come. One thing I heard several times was that Wikidata in countries like Nigeria or Columbia isn’t an obscure sister project of Wikipedia, but rather the first thing contributors start with. Several times I was told that a mobile app would benefit users in countries where laptops are not the norm, but mobile phones.

Since this was the 20th annual Wikimania, I was volunteered to record a video message for a time capsule to be opened in 2045 where I talked about my hopes for Wikimedia in 20 years. You’ll have to wait a bit to watch it. See you in the future.

The weather hasn’t changed much, but I should at least mention the food at the conference. Indian food has a special place in Kenyan cuisine for historical reasons, and the curries and naan served were all very nice. I also enjoyed the masala chai served throughout the day which in proper Kenyan English goes by the name of “mixed tea”.