Originally published by Subhashish Panigrahi in Global Voices on March 15, 2025, under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY 3.0). Republished here under that licence. Global Voices and the author are not contributors to TeaLamp and do not endorse it or its use of their work. Changes: condensed and restructured with TeaLamp Key takeaways, Why it matters, FAQ and related reading; interview answers kept as attributed quotes; section headings rewritten; source portrait photo not reused. Prepared by the TeaLamp Editorial Team with the help of AI.
Key takeaways on Musah Fuseini Dagbani activism
- Ghanaian educator Musah Fuseini teaches Dagbani, edits Dagbani Wikipedia, and builds open educational resources so speakers can read and write their language online.
- Dagbani has over a million speakers in Ghana and northern Togo, yet little web presence beyond Wikipedia — and low literacy in the orthography limits page views.
- Fuseini helped take Dagbani Wikipedia from the Incubator to a live edition and was the first in his user group to reach 1,000 edits.
- Since 2022 he has built OERs through the Open Education for a Better World programme and supported the related Kusaal Wikipedia community.
- His next ambition: a news site written entirely in Dagbani, so the language has more everyday online homes than encyclopaedia pages alone.
What does it take to keep a widely spoken African language visible on the internet? In a Rising Voices interview for Global Voices, Musah Fuseini Dagbani activism is less a hobby than a classroom-to-Wikipedia pipeline: seventeen years of teaching, volunteer editing, and open textbooks aimed at speakers who can hear the language every day but rarely see it in print or on a screen.
Who is Musah Fuseini?
Fuseini describes himself as a Dagbani-language teacher, Wikimedian, open educational resources (OER) enthusiast, and indigenous language activist. He has taught in Ghana’s education system for seventeen years and also serves as assistant headteacher. He uses Dagbani Wikipedia while preparing lessons and sends students there for assignment resources — treating the encyclopaedia as a working classroom tool, not a trophy project.
TeaLamp has not invented this interview. The questions and answers below are adapted from Subhashish Panigrahi’s conversation for Global Voices / Rising Voices; quotes remain attributed to Fuseini. The source portrait photo was not republished.
Why Dagbani still struggles online
Dagbani is spoken by more than a million people, yet Fuseini says its internet footprint is thin. A handful of sites publish in the language; many earlier ones have disappeared. He calls Dagbani Wikipedia the most active dedicated home for Dagbani text. Volunteer editors keep adding articles, but viewership stays low because most speakers lack literacy skills in written Dagbani. That gap pushed him into the Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) programme, where he designs OER to help people learn to read and write the language.
I take pride in having the opportunity to contribute to digital platforms like Wikipedia to promote and preserve my language online for future generations. As a teacher of Dagbani language, I observed that there weren’t enough teaching and learning resources online for other Dagbani educators as well as students.
— Musah Fuseini
From Facebook call to a live Wikipedia
Fuseini joined through Sadik Shahadu, executive director of the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group, who posted a call for volunteer editors. Training followed: Translatewiki messages first, then article work while the project was still in the Wikimedia Incubator. The community moved quickly enough to graduate to a full live Wikipedia. Fuseini is a founding user-group member and the first in the group to hit 1,000 Wikipedia edits — a small milestone that signals sustained volunteer capacity, not a one-weekend sprint.
Image generated by AI
Beyond Wikipedia: OERs, Kusaal, and a Dagbani news site
Editing is only part of his activism. He writes in and about Dagbani on social media and hopes to launch a news website entirely in the language. Since 2022 he has completed three OE4BW cohorts producing Dagbani open educational resources. He has also led technical support for the Kusaal Wikimedia Community as that Wikipedia went live. Kusaal is mutually intelligible with Dagbani and belongs to the Gur/Mabia group, with about 121,000 speakers mainly in northern Ghana — so tools and habits travel across related languages.
Image generated by AI
Why it matters
Musah Fuseini Dagbani work shows a practical path for language revival that is neither nostalgia nor pure tech evangelism: teach the orthography, fill Wikipedia, publish open textbooks, then invent new genres (news) so the language has reasons to be read every day. For readers outside Ghana, it is a reminder that “a million speakers” does not automatically mean “visible online.”
Related reading
For another TeaLamp interview on documenting oral knowledge, see Juang Language Survival: Documenting Oral Knowledge in Odisha.
Frequently asked questions
What language does Musah Fuseini work on?
Dagbani (also called Dagbanli), spoken by over a million people in Ghana and northern Togo. He also supports the related Kusaal Wikipedia community.
Is Dagbani Wikipedia a live project?
Yes. Fuseini and colleagues helped move it from the Wikimedia Incubator to a complete live Wikipedia edition.
Did TeaLamp invent this interview?
No. It was conducted and published by Global Voices / Rising Voices under CC BY. TeaLamp adapted framing and added editorial sections; quotes remain attributed to Musah Fuseini.
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