After the success of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, it seems that Nigeria will soon have its own free online dictionary at naijapedia.com

Recently, I wrote a post about 10 web startups worth exploring in Nigeria, and recommended that Nigeria should have its own Wikipedia-style startup. Little did I know that two entrepreneurial Nigerians named Adeyinka Odebade and Yomi Okanlawon were involved with developing an application that will serve as an information hub on anything about Nigeria using the Open Source Initiative by Google.

Before now, Nigeria and Nigerians has been represented on the pages of Wikipedia, and more recently we have seen websites such as Naijalingo, Sturvs, etc create their own pages. Even the colloquial term for Nigeria, “Naija” has a Wikipedia page. (StartupsNigeria will soon create a Wikipedia page).

The naijapedia project is under the new BSD license and open source development tools and database are being used to carry out every bit of implementation. The key things to come out of this project are:

• Highly scalable database (using MySql) that stores information on Nigeria harvested from different sources.
• API that can be used by other developer or application designers.
• Client (web and native) which will serve as a front-end application that will be easily accessible.

In order to achieve this, the project is going through a phase-by-phase development which includes:

- Designing and putting in place a good database.
- Information havesting.
- Codebase design
- Client(web and native) developement

I’ll be watching the development of this project and will keep you informed of any latest developments.