TANZANIANS now have the opportunity of setting the record straight by accessing information, thanks to the announcement that Wikipedia will now be freely accessed on mobile phones.

The Dar Teknohama Business Incubator Chief Executive Officer, Mr George Mulamula told the 'Daily News on Saturday' in an exclusive interview that there was a lot of literature on the web that wasn't correct and Wikipedia would help change that.

This will help those who have no access to internet and computers to access information via mobile phones available on Wikipedia, he said. "This is an excellent opportunity to write about ourselves correctly.

Wikipedia also provides an avenue to market ourselves because of the wider network coverage that mobile phones provide," he said. Mr Mulamula cited that at the moment mobile phones have a 65 per cent penetration as compared to only 18 per cent penetration rate of computers.

Wikipedia is the world's largest online encyclopedia, maintained by a global community of volunteers. It contains explanations of many scientific terms and issues and some have suggested it could be used to share scientific knowledge.

According to the Science Development Network website, a deal struck between Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia, will allow Orange customers to read and download information from Wikipedia without the usual data usage charges.

The scheme targets the region's 70 million customers of the mobile network provider Orange, who will be given free access to Wikipedia on their internet -enabled 'smart' phones.