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Report on the Afrosports Symposium Webinar

On Saturday, 18th of February 2023, Free Knowledge Africa organized an Afrosports Symposium Webinar. It was themed ‘The role of Open-Source platforms (Wikipedia) as it relates to the promotion of Sports in the African sector’

The webinar was organised in relation to the upcoming Afrosports Writing Contest. This contest is focused on creating contents relating to African Sports and games on wikipedia.

Some of the topics discussed during the Afrosports Webinar includes

  1. The underrepresentation of African Sports on Open-Source platforms and how this can be corrected
  2. How to get Journalists to cover more African Sport related contents
  3. Creating African sport content on Wikipedia from an African Wikimedian’s point of view
  4. The possibility of creating an  African Sports library and museum 
  5. The roles individuals and organizations can play in promoting contents on African sports

The Afrosports webinar contributors

The above listed topics were extensively discussed by our guest speakers: Mr Phemmy Adetula, an African Sport Journalist and Mr Andrew Olsson, the founder and Head of Scouting at Pan Africa Football. 

Contributions were also made by Mr Yemi Sodeeq, one of our resource persons. Mr Alaafiabami Oladipupo, the director of Education and research at Free Knowledge Africa also added his piece.

The webinar was educative, informative, eye opening and most importantly, some solutions were suggested on how more contents can be put online as regards to African Sports on Open source platforms.

Some of the key conclusions at the Afrosports webinar were

  1. One of the reasons for the underrepresentation of African Sports online is the issue of secrecy. Cases where African sports persons choose to hide personal information about themselves due to a forgery in age or other personal details.
  2. The lack of adequate financial budgets for the sport sectors in most African countries
  3. Lack of media houses and independent media bodies to cover sport events 

Some of the solutions proffered during the Afrosports webinar includes

  1. The use of social media platforms in covering sports events across the country
  2. Picking interest in a sport and going information hunting on said sport by sport Journalists
  3. Having more video documentaries on African sports and games that are peculiar to the continent
  4. Following up on young and upcoming athletes right from a young age. Also, creating a database or data bank where information about upcoming professiona athletes are stored.
  5. The establishment of a digital African Sport library and museum.
  6. Partnership with other concerned organizations to promote contents online on African sports and games

The Webinar ended on a positive note with everyone leaving with a burden to in their own little or big ways, contribute and add contents on African Sports online.

Conclusion

Free Knowledge Africa promised to reach out to the speakers on how a partnership can be formed in the interest of the establishment of an Afrosports library and museum.

The participants were also encouraged to join in the Afrosports Writing Contest as a way of adding to the contents online in regards to African Sports.

The webinar ended around 11:35 am with a total attendance of about 20 participants.

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