At its heart, Wiki Loves Africa drives Africans to document Africa. Both amateur and professional photographers and filmmakers are called to share the world they view daily, life recorded and observed from within their own communities. Their contributions form a collection of royalty-free images about Africa, a continent often subject to a condemning external gaze and many subsequent stereotypes.
Launched in 2014 by Isla Haddow-Flood and Florence Devouard, the contest is launched annually with photographers, filmmakers and audiophiles submitting entries from across Africa to be hosted on Wikipedia’s media library, Wikimedia Commons.
The project is open to entries from the whole continent. However, some specific actions (training, communication, etc.) are held in some countries with national organisers.
Wiki Loves Africa has achieved much over 10 years between 2014 and 2024:
- Over 116,189 images have been entered by 9,182 competitors from up to 55 countries under a free licence (CC-BY-SA).
- Wiki Loves Africa images have illustrated 32,515 pages across 437 Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, Wikivoyage and Wikiquote.
- 33 Wikimedia communities from 26 African countries have hosted participation events, information sessions, and training workshops.
- Participating communities held just under 400 participation and training events between 2014 and 2024.
- The competition attracts high levels of new contributors to the Wikimedia projects – an average of 75% of participants are newbies;
- The images entered to Wiki Loves Africa are viewed over 31 million times each month (Mar 2024)
- Wiki Loves Africa’s images over the 10 years have been viewed over 1,85 billion times altogether (Jan 2025)
- A Wiki Loves Africa prize-winning image was included in the Journeys Through Our Fragile Heritage exhibition at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
- Wiki Loves Africa’s ISA Tool has won the Cool Tool: Eggbeater Category at Wikimania 2024 and WikiData Award for Best Multimedia Tool in November 2019.
- Mohamed Hozyen, a prize winner for Wiki Loves Africa 2019, was selected for the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Prins Claus Fonds and Magnum Foundation Arab Documentary Photography Programme.
- A Wiki Loves Africa image Firefighter, Ashton Bay, March 2017 submitted by South African photographer user:StevenTerblanche for the Wiki Loves Africa 2017 contest under the theme of People at Work. The stunning image was selected for 3rd position for the Picture of the Year 2021 award and depicts a courageous firefighter battling against a veld-fire at Ashton Bay, Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa.
Wiki Loves Africa is a Wiki In Africa initiative that is activated by the Wikimedia community that created Wikipedia in support of the WikiAfrica movement. The competition was conceptualised and is managed by Florence Devouard and Isla Haddow-Flood of Wiki In Africa as a fun and engaging way to bridge the digital divide by rebalancing the lack of visual representations and relevant content that exists about Africa on Wikipedia. The competition is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and supported in kind by UNESCO and a host of local partners in individual countries. The images donated are available for use on the internet and beyond, under the Creative Commons license CC BY SA 4.0.
TO ENTER THIS YEAR’s COMPETITION, CLICK HERE.
Read about the winners and the impact of each year’s contest:
