Our organization runs on the passion of our dedicated community of volunteers. People who are devoted to learning and contributing their quota to bridging the skills, technology, and information gap in Africa. It is this dedication that culminates in our drive to contribute to the Open Movement.
As a non-profit, we desire to impact lives in diverse ways. We’re looking for opportunities to contribute to the African Development story. A story that resonates with the quality, impact, and importance of our programs.
GLAM & Content Creation
Advocacy
Open Education
Consultancy
Our plethora of mutually beneficial partnerships are vital to the running of our activities. At the heart of our organization is the desire to impact and influence without seeking to make profit. Become a part of our impactful journey and leave your own unique mark on the African continent and its West African sub region.
Open Foundation West Africa (OFWA) continues its mission of fostering informed and engaged citizenship through the Ghana Polls 2024 initiative. Two key events—a workshop on combating misinformation and an edit-a-thon to enrich election-related content on Wikipedia—were successfully organized to equip stakeholders with tools to counter disinformation and document reliable information during the just-ended Ghana General elections.
As part of the Ghana Polls 2024 initiative, Open Foundation West Africa (OFWA) hosted an insightful workshop on Tuesday, 19th November 2024, at our office premises. The event brought together media professionals, Wikipedia editors, and volunteers to discuss the critical issue of combating misinformation and disinformation during the upcoming general elections in Ghana.
The Wiki Indaba Conference 2024 in Johannesburg was a vibrant gathering, pulsating with the energy of African Wikimedians coming together to exchange knowledge and advance Wikimedia projects across the continent. Open Foundation West Africa (OFWA) was proud to be part of this dynamic space, with key team members contributing to discussions, panels, and presentations that focused on empowering African communities through Wikimedia. Here’s a recap of our activities during this exhilarating event.
We are a soft skills tech-based organization and a network of communities, committed to digitally representing and preserving the culture of Africa, and developing skills on the continent using an open-centered approach to deliver Skills Training and Capacity building opportunities for people whose stories and passions resonate deeply with ours in a way that is consistent with the quality, impact, and importance of our projects.
In 2016 we officially began a journey that sought to do the following:
At Open Foundation West Africa, we have created a social structure made of individuals or organisations that are tied by more than one specific type of interdependency. The purpose of our network of communities is to bring together people bound by the same values, visions, ideas and commitments among other things. Communities of volunteers made up of developers, writers and other astute professionals within campus clubs or community hubs.
We encourage each and everyone to be a part of our network of communities without fear of discrimination on any basis. There are community policies and systems in place to take appropriate action to respond to incidents of harassment, racial, ethnic, and gender-based discrimination.
We encourage members of our communities to take up roles that help them exhibit leadership qualities while providing an environment for the free and open expression of ideas. We also embrace various cultural perspectives and contributors, and respect individuals and value their differences.
At In spite of the great strides Africa has made in terms of e-connectivity, the highest recorded growth globally in internet access stood at 24.4% in 2018; a major jump from 2.1% in 2005.
With only 27% of the continent’s population with internet access, Africa still lags behind the rest of the world. The problem is made even worse by accessibility figures of around 90% in North America and Europe. The African narrative, which should be controlled by Africans, for Africans, is virtually non-existent. The main commonality among Africans is the oral nature of the culture, thus, the importance of preserving African cultural heritage in the information age can never be overstated. From festivals, to food, to monuments; preserving Africa’s cultural heritage with the help of Information Communication Technology (ICT) contributes significantly to establishing the African identity.
With this in mind, Foundation West Africa, is committed to contributing it’s quota to bridging the gap that exists in and around gender, content, and accessibility but ultimately, the gap that exists in and around Africa’s representation on the internet.
At Open Foundation West Africa, we understand the fact that ‘soft skills’ are not as much "skills" as they are desirable "qualities" that can make a lot of difference in our performance and growth as an organisation.
Essentially, we thrive on giving room for both team and community members to exhibit traits that help advance our cause- from Leadership, to proper time Management, Teamwork, effective Communication and Critical Thinking, OFWA is open to the idea that soft skills are attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.
Added to that, we embrace a digital culture, workplace, and mindset, focusing on the advantages of new technology instead of clinging to traditional methods and processes.
At the core of our organisation is the practical use of technology in training, business and industry. As an organisation, we are innovative and strive to make use of new advances in technology to better deliver on our commitments, and evolve with the marketplace.
At Open Foundation West Africa, there’s no aversion to technological advancement, and thus, we always seek to create an environment which gives mobility, freedom, and creativity to innovate.
Ultimately, as a tech-based organisation, we are ever ready to adopt change instead of running from it.
GLAM is an acronym in the open world of knowledge which is translated as Galleries Libraries Archives and Museums. Within our capacity, we intend to capture and digitize resources into reusable format.
As an organisation established to contribute to bridging the content gap about Africa, one way we achieve our goal is through content campaign drives. We have impacted the lives of thousands of youth across West Africa and pushed the Africa agenda by promoting campaigns that help bridge the existing African content gap and changing the narratives, giving Africa the visibility that it deserves on the web.
Under GLAM and Content Creation, we have embarked on several campaigns that include but are not limited to: and to provide the next generation of youth with the digital literacy skills needed to compete in this dynamic digitally transforming world.
As a non-profit organization, our commitment is to Advocacy and Awareness creation for policy, policy change, e.t.c. This dedication partly culminates in our drive to contribute to the Open Movement as a recognised affiliate of Wikimedia and Creative Commons.
Our Online Thematic Campaigns seek to reach a wider audience and educate the masses on key topics including but not limited to:
We promote campaigns that support the broader vision of Education, Equal Rights, Justice, Transparency and Security through open Resources and Technology.
In pursuance of promoting education, we dedicate our resources and efforts towards projects that are aimed at equipping patrons with the necessary skills. Projects like the Summer Open School and Kiwix4Schools are some of our Flagship Open Education Initiatives.
The OFWA Curriculum in particular is aimed at providing community members with the requisite skills to contribute content campaign drives among other things.
In spite of our focus on adding value to the skill sets of both community members and organisations, we are also generally passionate about identifying skill gaps and providing relevant content/expertise to bridge those gaps.
We are equipped to provide and effect training for individuals and organisations in Entrepreneurship, UN SDGs among others.
We are also qualified with the requisite skills and expertise to advise on Copyright, Alternative Licencing Forms like Creative Commons and a variety of other areas. We also provide expert consultancy services in Research, along with Kiwix Deployment.