Sub-Saharan Africa
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.[2]
- 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 [3]
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[4]
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. [5]
Notes
- ↑ Information on languages from Ethnologue 2009 http://www.ethnologue.com Potential users is calculated by multiplying the number of language speakers by the national or regional Internet use rate. Internet use rates from from the International Telecom Union 2008
- ↑ Information on Internet use from International Telecommunications Union 2008 /
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06uganda.html?_r=2&hpw
- ↑ see comment on sub-Saharan Africa regional analysis talk page Talk:Reach/Regional_Analysis/Sub-Saharan_Africa
- ↑ BBC retrieved 2nd Oct 2009