I hope you’ll have observed Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder and Sue Gardner Wikimedia Executive Director looking awesomely good at the top of every Wikipedia page with a plea. I do not know about Diasporas but have Ethiopians here in Addis Ababa or some other big towns clicked it I bet you have not. Here is way…
Among the first reasons I think online economics will top the list. In Ethiopia Commercial activities such as banking and credit card usage is uncommon, although the online booking of airlines and hotels by some people in Addis appeared to be on the rise. Beside this Ethiopian web users are as not as goal-driven as they are suppose to be and you only have to observe your own online behavior to understand exactly what I mean
Let’s say somebody wants to surf on the web just to spend time or to search for a scholarship program. The moment he goes online he opens up a web browser and immediately get a friendship requests when he sees facebook page or sports web page like goal.com (these are most people’s home page by the way).There might be a new video of a an Ethiopian singer, he has to watch it at least 3 times, subscribe to the user’s channel, and email it to his friends. As he has been doing these the time has elapsed and he remembers to Google about a film called the social network because he heard people talking about this movie and wants to update himself .Now, at this point, do you think this guy can be tempted to click some other links? Perhaps no because he has spent much time than he expected on the web and will pay for that as most Ethiopian use internet in cyber cafes. The service is expensive. The majority of web activity is like this. The web surfing in Ethiopia is at its infant stage and characterized by aimlessness. If web surfer aim was to find out why everyone is suddenly talking a film called The Social Network .This is of course relevant to Wikipedia. If his search for ‘The Social Network’ has led him to Wikipedia, he might vaguely register t Jimmy Wales or Sue Gardner at the top of the page, but only for a fraction of a second before he start reading the stuff that he really wants for.
In case he has read their plea, he would be faced with a dilemma- should I donate to Wikipedia and went home on foot and probably should wait until my next salary even to check my mail to fulfill the biblical adage which says “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” or I should I kept on to survive ? What do you think ?
Endalk Chala 