Open Knowledge in Tanzania: Wikimedia Projects and Open Educational Practice in Secondary and Higher Education

This desk review examines open knowledge in Tanzanian secondary schools and universities, with particular attention to Wikimedia projects, chiefly Wikipedia. It draws on peer-reviewed studies, government and regulatory documents, Wikimedia grant reports and community pages, and usage data retrieved on 29 October 2026. Higher-education regulation now requires universities to hold an OER policy and encourages CC BY, but a survey of five public institutions found a dedicated OER policy only at the Open University of Tanzania. On the retrieval date, Swahili Wikipedia contained 132,318 articles and 225 accounts that had edited in the previous 30 days. Tanzania supplied the largest share of that edition’s readership in the three months sampled, while a 2021 snapshot still showed English Wikipedia as the edition most read inside the country. Tanzanian groups have run school clubs, university editing programmes and offline Kiwix pilots. Outcome figures in those reports are organiser accounts, and one pilot page contradicts itself, so they are not used as measures of learning or awareness. The constraints reported most often are limited awareness, weak connectivity and power, data costs, and thin information-literacy skills. No independent peer-reviewed study of how Tanzanian students or teachers use Wikipedia was located. The review recommends practical support for existing OER requirements, independent evaluation before offline or Wikipedia-based work is expanded, and studies that include teachers, rural schools, and sceptical as well as supportive views.