Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Nigrizia

The institution
The Fondazione Nigrizia is an NGO founded in 2010 by the Collegio Missioni Africane (Comboni Missionaries) with the objective of "giving voice to the Afro world and [.. .] work according to one of the fundamental principles of the founding father of the Institute, Daniel Comboni, which was Save Africa with Africa". Their cultural activities are: the magazine Nigrizia (1883) and the website nigrizia.it, the children's magazine Il Piccolo Missionario, the Ma - African Museum, library and newspaper library, Bandapm.it, Afriradio.it, Missionari comboniani – Azione missionaria and the audio and video recording studio Nigrizia Multimedia.

History of collaboration
In 2008 Afriradio, Nigrizia's radio, participates in Festivaletteratura of Mantua recording and documenting meetings organized by Fondazione Onlus lettera27 about African authors. In 2009 a collaboration is launched between lettera27 and the Festival del cinema africano di Verona, sponsored by Comitato Festival del Cinema Africano di Verona. Further details of this specific partnership are available in its case study. In February 2010, thanks to the precious collaborations previously started, contents by Nigrizia are released under a free license. The texts on the site nigrizia.it, as processed by its editorial staff, are released under CC-BY-SA and some of the contents are then initially transferred on the Italian Wikipedia. A user account is also created for the uploading of content, which is soon requested to formalize the donation through the OTRS system, so the inputs are in fact slowed down. In addition to the creation of new pages, the focus is also on the improvement of existing ones, and above all to comparisons to the encyclopedias in English and French, to understand what is most needed. Also, disambiguation and redirect pages are created. It becomes increasingly clear in time that the various types of articles require in some cases a fundamental structure and data not always present in Nigrizia's articles, and in other cases a plurality of sources and the neutral point of view are needed but they are hard to find on the pages of a committed magazine. One solution is found and put into action: some pages are published on Wikisource, and others on Wikiversity where these essays may be used as additional teaching material (especially in geography lessons). Nigrizia receives in the same year an honorable mention at the "Premio Wikimedia Italia 2010" for making African content available on Wikipedia, thus helping the WikiAfrica project. In 2011 Nigrizia also participates in the Share Your Knowledge subproject. The contents from Nigrizia help to create or expand entries on Wikipedia, including those coming from an African edit-a-thon in June. In July Kreol's adventure begins, a Wikipedian in residence, that is, one of the first Italian users who, thanks to a certain set of skills developed on the site, may assist institutions willing to contribute their materials to the free encyclopedia.

Content analysis
Nigrizia was the first Italian magazine to join in a partnership with the free encyclopedia. Its archives, even paper ones, in June 2012 are still expecting other volunteers to create or improve new articles about the African continent and the "black" world, and different users so far have shown what and how this can be done. User:Panapp, involved by Africa, spontaneuosly created and improved the pages it:Hors-la-loi and it:Jerusalema. The articles on Wikisource and Wikiversity instead were mostly imported by User:Mizardellorsa. On the first site, known as home to texts published in print, are now available among others the leading article for February 2012, which is about neoliberalism, and a dossier named Cassa continua from May 2011, which deals with the thorny issue of military spending in Africa; on the second one, one can find and use as a supplementary reading to learning materials (especially in high school) two reports on the 2011 Arab Spring, the Tunisian one, published in February and the Egyptian one which appeared in March. The user Nigrizia has greatly improved the article about the Nigerian city of Ife (good news, since Wikipedia coverage on African geography is not that good). Other interesting articles are those about it:Solomon Plaatje, the South African intellectual among the founders of the African National Congress (and his major work, the novel it:Mhudi), and that about it:Rokia Traoré, a well-known singer-songwriter and guitarist from Mali. lso, meet a group of drummers from Ghana, the it:Ayekoo Drummers, and learn more about the movie it:Skoonheid , which won the Queer Palm at Cannes in 2011 for its LGBT theme. It is therefore possible, after appropriate assessments and additions, to use the contents of such an important magazine within the Wikimedia projects. Nigrizia should i.e. conquer Wikiquote: with people like Alex Zanotelli, Gad Lerner, Frei Betto, Igiaba Scego and many others among its columnists, many meaningful quotes can be found as written by some of the most passionate intellectuals of the Black Continent.

Main activity

 * it:Progetto:WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge/Maratona 2011 - 2011 African edit-a-thon.

Articles on it.wiki

 * it:categoria:WikiAfrica/Nigrizia, 25 articles

Pages on other projects

 * Additional teaching resources on Wikiversity
 * Essays on Wikisource

In the press

 * Nigrizia on the international GLAM - Outreach newsletter

Related pages

 * it:Nigrizia
 * it:Festival del cinema africano di Verona
 * WikiAfrica/Festival di cinema africano di Verona
 * WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge

Italian version

 * it:Progetto:WikiAfrica/Istituzioni/Nigrizia

Links

 * Nigrizia and Wikipedia on Nigrizia website
 * Fondazione Nigrizia Onlus
 * Case studies: Nigrizia on Creative Commons wiki
 * “Nigrizia” historical archive on Wikipedia
 * Share Your Knowledge on Fondazione lettera27 website