The Struggle of an African-language Wikipedia

A reader writes to mention an International Herald Tribune article discussing the troubles an African-language Wikipedia faces in getting underway. While there is a lot of interest, the primary obstacle is that of exposure: the majority of people on the continent of Africa do not have internet access. From the article: "What use is an encyclopedia when literacy rates among a language's speakers approach zero? (This is not a problem for Swahili.) And who should control the content in a local language if not enough native speakers are inclined, or able, to contribute? If it had been native speakers only who contributed to the Swahili version, that Wikipedia might not exist at all."

Comments

Re:Well, translation.

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Well, they should have no problems with Nigerian...

Re:So, why only native speakers?

[SpectreHiro]

I was going to pick on you, but the sad fact is that your written english skills are superior to those of an average american.