Kamusi project
collaborative online dictionary for many languages
The Kamusi Project is a cooperative online dictionary which aims to produce dictionaries and other language resources for every language, and to make those resources available free to everyone. Users can register and add content. "Kamusi" is the Swahili word for dictionary. It belongs to Kamusi Project International based in Geneva.
The project was started in 1994 at the Council on African Studies at Yale University (United States) as an online dictionary of the Swahili language under the name of the "Internet Living Swahili Dictionary" by its founder and present director Martin Benjamin. Since restructuring in 2014 the Swahili vocabulary is no more accessible.
In 2007 the project spun off from Yale. Since 2009 it has been run jointly by Kamusi Project International, a non profit association registered in Geneva, Switzerland, and Kamusi Project USA, a 501(c)(3) organization. From 2013 through 2017, it also had an academic base at the Distributed Information Systems Laboratory at EPFL in Lausanne.
Since 2010 programming and the Swahili-English database have been expanded to incorporate other languages.
The public source identifies “Kamusi project” as collaborative online dictionary for many languages. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kamusi, project and collaborative.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Kamusi project”, the useful work is to connect “collaborative online dictionary for many languages” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6359873. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2014, 2007 and 2009.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Kamusi project”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Kamusi project primary sources, Kamusi project archive and Kamusi research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Kamusi project” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.