Illiteracy is a huge problem in development, but even where people are literate there’s no guarantee that they are literate in English. The 54 states of Africa are home to more than 2,000 languages split across six major language families. Despite this, development agencies, NGOs and governments frequently lack the resources or skills to be able to translate development material into languages other than English, French and maybe Arabic. At the same time, the internet has given rise to a huge expansion in the amount of information available to citizens, professionals and others. Consider Wikipedia with its millions of articles on everything from Benin to Big Brother and the Preemraff Lysekil oil refinery to Pseudo-Kufic (thanks to Wikipedia’s Random Page function). Indeed, with its global reach and its Zero agreements (which give free access to Wikipedia content to tens of millions across Africa and the Middle East), Wikipedia offers a fantastic platform to get locally-relevant content into the hands of people who need it most. More >>