<i>Translation could be the key to bringing more material to non-English speakers. It is the local knowledge that is vital from these Kenyan contributors, the thinking goes, assuming that Swahili-English translation tools improve.</i><p>As alluded to in the paragraph following this quote, the only way "local knowledge" gets successfully added to English Wikipedia is if it was already printed in an English newspaper which also puts its articles online. If it's uncited, or cited to a blog, "anti-vandal" patrollers remove it. And even if it's cited to a Swahili (or worse yet, other local vernacular) newspaper, plenty of Wikipedia editors will claim it's "not notable" because they personally can't read it:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archive_37#Are_English_sources_required_for_notability.3F" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archi...</a><p>But aside from the quirks of Wikipedia, I'd agree incentivizing Swahili-English bilinguals to put content online in English, and then Google or whoever translating it themselves into Swahili, is probably a more effective way of getting Swahili content for the foreseeable future. The main point is that most Swahili-speakers with internet access are bilingual in English too, and so have a choice  of what language to use to generate content that others might search for. (And their choice of language is heavily influenced by the topic domain.)