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Kenyans get Wikipedia by SMS

It’s surely a coincidence, but on the day that the World Bank issues a report which says Africans need better access to technology and information to take part in the global knowledge economy, Wikipedia is announcing that it is going to extend its Wikipedia Zero project to the continent. That puts the combined facts and wisdom from the Wikipedia archives in everyone’s pockets, all for free.

The project is kicking off in Kenya thanks to a collaboration between the Wikimedia Foundation and Airtel.

Wikipedia Zero launched in Malaysia in May 2012, and has since spread out to Asian countries and South America. The way it works is simple: all you have to do is text a shortcode – in this case *515# – which returns a message asking the phone owner to enter their search code and press send. Once that’s done, the relevant entries are sent to your handset. It works with any phone that supports SMS, and is completely free to use.

In some countries it is a paid for service, depending on the relationship with operators. Let’s hope it lasts longer than Google’s Freezone project, a similar undertaking which closed after a six month trial in South Africa earlier this year.

(Via Fast Company, Image adapted from Wikipedia logo)

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