Sandister Tei

**Sandister Tei** ( ) is a media professional from Ghana. In October 2020, she was named Wikimedian of the Year by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales during the Wikimania 2020 event. She helped start the Wikimedia Ghana User Group and continues to volunteer actively with the group.

## Early life and education

Tei was born in Accra, Ghana. She studied at Achimota School and then went to the University of Ghana, where she studied Geography. In 2013, she received a scholarship from the Tullow Group to study for a master’s degree in international journalism at Cardiff University.

## Career

After finishing her master’s degree at Cardiff University, Tei joined Al Jazeera’s digital channel AJ+ in 2014. She then worked for a short time at Joy FM as a social media executive, before moving to Citi FM to work as a multimedia journalist.

Tei later joined the Traffic Avenue drive-time show as a co-host with Jessica Opare-Saforo. She also presented tech and social media trends on the popular and award-winning Citi Breakfast Show.

Before leaving Citi, Tei was the Deputy Programs Manager for both Citi FM and Citi TV.

In addition to her work in broadcast media, she also worked as a digital media trainer. She led training sessions for groups like the Young African Leaders Initiative, Voice of America, and the Office of the Mayor of Accra.

Tei has been working for the Wikimedia Foundation since 2021.

## Wikimedia activity

Tei co-founded the Wikimedia Ghana User Group, a group of Wikipedia volunteers in Ghana that started in 2012. As a volunteer, she helped bring in new Wikipedia editors and took part in other outreach work. In 2018, she also helped start a campaign to support Freedom of Panorama in Ghana at the re:publica event in Accra.

She represented the Wikimedia Ghana User Group in Washington, DC, where she met with the organizers of Wikimania 2012 to talk about how to add more African content to Wikipedia. The next year, she went to Wikimania in Hong Kong for a special meeting of African editors, becoming the first woman from Ghana to attend. In 2019, she took part in the Wikimedia Summit 2019 in Berlin, where she worked to promote more content about Africa on Wikimedia projects. One of her main goals was to "realign" and learn from different points of view.

On October 15, 2020, Tei was named Wikimedian of the Year by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales during a live broadcast on YouTube and Facebook. She was praised for her work on Wikipedia projects about the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, helping to keep a lasting record of how the pandemic affected the country. Due to travel restrictions, Wales couldn’t give her the award in person as usual, so he surprised her with a Zoom call instead.

## Other works

While she was in Wales, Tei was diagnosed with depression. Getting treatment helped her feel better and also improved her school performance. Years later, after dealing with depression herself, she started a mental health support group called Purple People (now inactive) to help others with mood disorders.

## Infobox (person)

- **name**: Sandister Tei
- **image**: Wikimedia Summit 2019 - Portrait Sandister Tei (1).jpg
- **alt**: Sandister Tei in front of a white background. She is a young black woman with curly hair wearing a yellow shirt.
- **caption**: Tei in 2019
- **birth place**: Accra, Ghana
- **awards**: Wikimedian of the Year (2020)