Women across Africa remain underrepresented in digital knowledge spaces, including Wikimedia projects. Beyond the lack of content, communities also face gaps in structured data that make it difficult to discover, connect, and improve information about African women.
This lightning talk explores how Wikidata can serve as a practical, community-driven tool for addressing these visibility and discoverability gaps. Drawing from my experience as a Wikimedia volunteer working on initiatives focused on African women's representation, I will share how tools such as Wikidata Query Service and PetScan can help communities identify subjects, examine existing data, and uncover opportunities for further documentation.
Rather than presenting Wikidata solely as a technical platform, the session will highlight how volunteers can use linked data to transform scattered information into more connected and discoverable knowledge.
The talk will conclude with practical approaches that other communities can adopt to improve the representation of underrepresented people and regions in open knowledge.
