Wiki Loves Mother Tongue in the Igbo Community: Empowering Youth Voices on Multilingual Education

Snapshot of Wiki Loves Mother Tongue in the Igbo Community Event Page

Every 21st February is globally set aside to mark and celebrate the International Mother Tongue Day. The event celebrates and raises awareness of the linguistic and cultural diversity of indigenous languages while encouraging multilingualism. For the first time, the Igbo community recently joined the global celebration of linguistic diversity through the Wikitongues’ Wiki Loves Mother Tongue campaign tagged ”Wiki Loves Mother Tongue 2026 in the Igbo Community”. The campaign brought together passionate volunteers, language advocates, students, and Wikimedia contributors who share a common vision of preserving and promoting digital knowledge equity.

Our Aim

The primary aim of the campaign was to:

• Inspire young people to see their language as modern, relevant, and powerful.
• Encourage native speakers to actively contribute in their mother tongue.
• Promote pride in using Igbo for knowledge production.
• Strengthen the presence of Igbo across Wikimedia projects.

Activities During the Campaign

Some of the key highlights of the campaign includes:

• Online Launch and training sessions for participants.
• Community discussions on language preservation and open knowledge.
• Hand-on Demo for the benefit of new participants.
• Editing and translating language focused articles from English Wikipedia into Igbo Wikipedia.
• Creating new articles related to Igbo language, culture, and heritage.
• Wikidata item description translation.

Outcomes

The campaign recorded several meaningful achievements, including:

• Increased participation from both new and experienced editors.
• Creation and improvement of numerous Igbo-language articles.
• Greater awareness about the need for digital preservation of indigenous languages.
• Strengthened collaboration within the Igbo Wikimedia community.
• Empowerment of participants with skills in translation, editing, and open knowledge contribution.

The event also demonstrated the growing enthusiasm among young people for contributing to free knowledge in their mother tongue as capture in the Event dashboard, which recorded a total of 1.39k articles creation on the Igbo Wikipedia and 57,718 Igbo descriptions were added on Wikidata items

Action point

The campaign may be over, but the work continues. We plan to:

• Continue improving Igbo content across Wikimedia projects.
• Promote awareness about indigenous language preservation through outreach programs and social media campaigns.
• Recruit and mentor more young contributors in the Igbo language community.
• Organize regular editing and translation training sessions to sustain the enthusiasm generated during the campaign.

Conclusion

The Wiki Loves Mother Tongue campaign 2026 in the Igbo community was more than just an editing event; it was a celebration of identity, culture, and the power of language. Through collective efforts, the community continues to ensure that the Igbo language remains visible, relevant, and accessible in the digital age. This first time organising of the Wiki Loves Mother Tongue in the Igbo Community was coordinated by Akwugo, Sylvaline39 and Celetex through the support and sponsorship of the Igbo Wikimedians User Group.