Wikimania is the annual heartbeat of the Wikimedia movement, a global gathering of volunteers, editors, developers, translators, and dreamers who work to build the world’s largest free knowledge projects. Each year it moves to a different part of the world, and 2025 marks its 20th edition and the first time it’s being hosted in East Africa.
From 6 to 9 August, Nairobi was alive with workshops, talks, hackathons, and celebrations, all set against warm Kenyan hospitality and a mix of languages and cultures.
I may be thousands of kilometers away, but I’m following it all live on YouTube, switching between streams, taking notes, and trying to catch every session that sparks my curiosity. My Outreachy mentor, Zache, was the one who suggested I tune in. What started as a quick look turned into four full days marked on my calendar. With my laptop as my window to Nairobi, I dove into Wikimania 2025 one day at a time.
Day 0: A Promise in a Shoelace
Before the official start, the 3rd Annual WikiWomen Summit was already alive with purpose. The session began not with presentations but with a simple, human icebreaker, a reminder that our community spans countless cultures and languages. Keynote speaker Dame Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight challenged us to move beyond fleeting inspiration, using a powerful metaphor: a 20-year-old photo of shoelaces from a Wikimania 2005 photo contest. She brought 200 colourful shoelaces, inviting attendees to take one as a tangible promise to stay connected long after the conference ended, a symbol of sustainability and the bonds that tie our community together. It was a living example of what happens when encouragement and action unite.
Day 1: A Highway of Ideas
The first official day felt like stepping onto a multi-lane highway of ideas and I had my digital turn signal ready. My journey started in the Mombasa room with a session on Decentralizing Software Development. The core question: How do we ensure Wikimedia’s tech future isn’t locked into just the US and Germany? The discussion highlighted how spreading development builds resilience and allows for the creation of culturally relevant tools, like those being pioneered by Wikimedia Brasil for the Global South.
A virtual hop took me to the Nairobi room’s live stream, where Lydia Pintscher tackled the Paradox of Data Reuse. Wikidata is massive, with over 117 million items, but inconsistencies and technological friction can stop reusers in their tracks. Her call to action was simple: impact isn’t just creating data but making it truly usable. Staying in the Nairobi live stream, I tuned into a panel on Unlocking Government Data, which showcased how integrating public datasets into Wikidata can enrich our projects with a ripple effect of accuracy and empowerment.
I then zipped back to Mombasa stream for the State of Offline, a global tour of projects like Kiwix and Internet in a Box. These initiatives are lifelines for learning in refugee camps and rural schools, proving that knowledge can and must exist beyond the internet. A powerful detail: 90% of devices shipped this year went to targeted, equity-driven communities.
The afternoon brought a tale of caution with Undeclared AI-generated Text in Wikipedia. Mathias Schindler described a troubling “content echo” where AI, trained on Wikipedia, generates text that finds its way back in, risking the platform’s hard-earned reliability. The final AI session of the day, however, shifted from risk to action. Leave the Hype Behind focused on Wikimedia Deutschland’s pragmatic approach about developing policy and building open-source tools to ensure digital equity in the age of AI.
The day closed with the official Opening Ceremony, a vibrant celebration of culture and community, culminating in the announcement of Robert Sim as the Wikimedian of the Year.
Day 2: Exploring the Edges
Day two stretched my understanding of what the Wikimedia universe holds. I started in the Meru room, discovering Wikimedia’s “hidden gems” with Giacomo Alessandroni. His tour of projects like Wikibooks and Wikiversity showcased incredible classroom innovations, like the “Adopt a Chemical Symbol” project where young students wrote articles on chemical elements.
Then, it was over to the Nairobi room for the Wikimania@20 Keynote Panel on AI. Leaders like Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende and Prof. Vukosi Marivate debated everything from machine learning in African languages to the risks of commercial platforms, emphasizing the need for community-driven alternatives to ensure digital inclusion isn’t just an afterthought.
The afternoon was a burst of energy with the Lightning Talk Showcase. In rapid-fire, five-minute slots, sixteen speakers shared their passions: documenting African literature, expanding culinary knowledge, fighting vandalism with an Auto moderator, and celebrating Wiki Loves Sport in Uganda. The day ended on a lighter note with the Wikimedia Quiz 2025, a fun and humbling trivia challenge that was the perfect celebration of our shared curiosity.
Day 3: The AI Conundrum
By day three, the conversations had taken on a future-facing edge. In the Kisumu room, a fascinating discussion unfolded about AI-generated answers in scholarship applications. Reviewers had noticed polished but generic responses, raising a critical dilemma: how do we create fair policies that don’t penalize those who genuinely benefit from AI support, like non-native English speakers?
Next, a technical session tackled a common pain point: the intimidating nature of Wikimedia’s codebases. Dev Jadiya presented a brilliant solution: auto-generated data flow diagrams to make the software infrastructure visually navigable for newcomers, a potential game-changer for open-source projects. The mood in the Mombasa room turned serious with a talk on defending wikis against weaponized generative AI. Asaf Bartov laid out the threats of massive spam and coordinated disinformation, making it clear that we must act now to protect our volunteer base and the trust we’ve built.
The day closed with another inspiring Lightning Talk Showcase, featuring everything from climate resilience work in Uganda to WikiDiplomacy in Indonesia. It was a whirlwind tour of the movement’s most creative and resilient corners.
Day 4: Folklore and the Future
The final day was a blend of celebration, reflection, and a look toward the future. My morning began in the Meru room with Wiki Loves Folklore, a session showcasing how a grassroots campaign grew into a global bridge connecting cultures. It was a powerful reminder that folklore isn’t about the past, it’s about keeping our shared humanity alive for the future.
I then hopped to the Nyeri room for Wiki Loves Broadcast, a hands-on workshop dedicated to liberating high-quality educational videos from restrictive licenses and embedding them into Wikipedia. The AI conversation continued in the Mombasa room, where a panel explored the tightrope of using AI for good while guarding against its biases. The central question remained: “The question isn’t whether AI belongs here, it’s whether we can make it belong on our terms.”
The day crescendoed with the Hackathon Showcase & Coolest Tool Awards, a pure celebration of community innovation. During the showcase, one person after another took the stage for a rapid-fire two minutes to share the projects they had worked on. This was followed by the Coolest Tool Awards, which recognized standout contributions. The winners for the three categories were:
- Greatest Service to the Community: Abusefilter Analyser
- Most Evolved: Database Report Template
- Most Innovative: Paulina
And then… it was time to say goodbye. The closing ceremony in Nairobi was a vibrant mix of gratitude and pride, filled with singing, dancing, fun, and smiles. The spirit of the week was captured in a powerful spoken word performance by Stella, who sang, “We edit together! We are wikimedians together! We are generations together!” The WikiChoir followed, filling the room with a popular East African song in Swahili, adapted with new lyrics: “We sing for Wikimania, Hakuna Matata! Free knowledge is forever, Hakuna Matata!”
The celebration also honored the first-place winners of Wiki Loves Africa. After the Wikimania 2025 core organizing team took a well-deserved bow and we were reminded that this wasn’t really an end. The connections, collaborations, and ideas sparked here would keep shaping Wikimedia long after the event ended.
As I finally closed my laptop, the screen going dark on the Nairobi closing ceremony, I realized I hadn’t just been watching a conference; I’d been on a journey. From my desk, I travelled from tough debates on weaponized AI to vibrant celebrations of ancient folklore, and from the technical details of our codebases to the heartfelt promise of a single shoelace. Wikimania proved that even from thousands of kilometres away, the ideas are borderless. It left me with more than just notes; it left me with a renewed sense of purpose. The challenges are real, but the collective passion of this community is more powerful. I’m closing my tabs, but the inspiration is staying open, ready for the work ahead.
Until next time,
Adiba 😊
All images are screenshots taken from the official Wikimania 2025 livestreams on YouTube, courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation.
