Each language is a mother tongue of a number of citizens.

Each child and each learner is entitled to (learning) content in its mother tongue.

To close the online content gap, each language needs a community of local online content producers and an online encyclopedia and terminology database.

The list of Wikipedia's can be used as a proxy for such a gap1.

Other languages that don't meet the Wikipedia-Manx Benchmark (3734 articles)2,3 are classified as emerging, and their level is indicated (0, 1, or 2).

Especially for languages with 100,000 or more speakers, an online encyclopedia initiative that targets about 3700 basic articles4 for the language is most desirable, among others for educational reasons to increase literacy skills.


An online encyclopedia for any language comes close to ''educational content'' that is "Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive" (MECE). An online encyclopedia is therefore a recommended channel for providing educational content.

By creating an online encyclopedia for a developing country language, the partnership addresses the constraint "lack of educational resources in the native language", in a manner that is rather insensitive to the very severe "financing gaps" constraint that each and every developing country faces.

Considering articles 175 and 46 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, such initiatives are in line with prevailing international agreements.


No Wikipedia Yet

The alphabetic tabs in below table lists languages for which there was no Wikipedia yet (in 2011). The language link refers to the Wikipedia page on the language, which includes the names of the countries where the language is spoken. For many of the languages that face an online content gap, the estimated number of speakers is indicated. The online initiative link is to an educational initiative page at the Actor Atlas.