ABOUT

Wiki Loves Africa is an annual public photographic contestΒ in which people across Africa can contribute media (photographs, video, and audio) about their environment toΒ Wikimedia CommonsΒ for use onΒ WikipediaΒ and otherΒ Wikimedia Foundation project websites. The competition is organised by Wiki In Africa.

At its heart, it is an annual competition that crowdsources photographs, videos, and recordings from across Africa to create an open-licensed visual archive that tells the story of Africa on Wikipedia through the eyes of its people. It is so much more … Since 2014, the project has achieved the following:

    • Over 146,698 images have been entered by 11,343 unique competitorsΒ from up toΒ 55 countriesΒ under a free licence (CC-BY-SA).
    • 64 Wikimedia communitiesΒ fromΒ 44 African countries (and Hiati & Brazil) have hosted participation events, information sessions, and training workshops.
    • At leastΒ 417 participation and training events have been held by participating communities between 2014 and 2025.
    • The competition attracts high levels of new contributors to the Wikimedia projects – an average of 75% of participants are newbies. (This figure is down from a high of 89%, showing that our photographers are returning year after year!)
    • 17% of the images submitted to Wiki Loves Africa are used across 306 Wikimedia projects (e.g. specific language Wikipedias and Wikiquote)
    • Wiki Loves Africa entered images are viewed an average of 36.9 million times per month (Aug 25).
    • Wiki Loves Africa’s images from the first 11 years have been viewed over 2,4 billion times.
    • Wiki Loves Africa’sΒ ISA ToolΒ won the 2019 WikiData Best Multimedia Tool Award and the Wikimedia Coolest Tool Award in 2024.
    • A Wiki Loves Africa image, “Firefighter, Ashton Bay, March 2017″,Β submitted by South African photographer Steven Terblanche toΒ Wiki Loves Africa 2017,Β was placed 3rd in theΒ Picture of the Year 2021 award.
    • A Wiki Loves Africa prize-winning image was included in theΒ Journeys Through Our Fragile Heritage exhibition at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

View the international winning photographic images from all years on this page.

Wiki Loves Africa encourages participants to contribute media that illustrate each year’s theme. The contest has focused on these themes:

Wiki Loves Africa is a Wiki In Africa project activated by the Wikimedia community that created Wikipedia to support the WikiAfrica movement. The competition was created and is managed by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood of Wiki In Africa as a fun and engaging way to rebalance the lack of visual representations and relevant content about Africa on Wikipedia.Β The Wikimedia Foundation funds theΒ competition. Wiki Loves Africa has been supported by UNESCO, the African Union, and numerous local partners in individual countries. The images donated are available online and beyond under the Creative Commons license CC BY SA 4.0.

Partners

Wiki In Africa would like to thank the Wikimedia Foundation for its continued financial support since its inception andΒ ynternet.org for hosting the competition in 2016, 2017, and 2019. We would also like to thank UNESCO’s Unite4Heritage project, with the help of Wikipedian in Residence John Cummings, for their social media support from 2016 to 2019. In 2023, the African Union supported Wiki Loves Africa through the AKI African Environment project, which ran concurrently. Thank you for your support.

Collaborating groups in countries

The project could not function without the intrepid volunteers and groups that host key events in their countries. 

Since 2014, 64 Wikimedia groups from 44 countries have committed to hosting Wiki Loves Africa contest campaign events and activations withtheir local communities. These Wikimedia Communities have collectively supported the Wiki Loves Africa contests 257 times over the years through annual events and activities.

Below is a growing list of the user and volunteer groups that have supported Wiki Loves Africa in their countries.