UNICEF Speak Africa

Background: Speak Africa

Speak Africa is a Pan-African media-focused communication strategy and platform designed to work in partnership with young people to improve opportunities for their expression, exchange and meaningful participation in advocacy, decision-making and development. This campaign uses multi-media tools and channels (ie. TV, Radio and Print) as well as visual and performing arts and culture. The Speak Africa platform is recognized by the African Union as a mechanism to assist in institutionalizing the participation of young Africans and channelling of their potential towards development of themselves and the continent. Speak Africa receives financial and technical support from UNICEF and the Speak Africa Secretariat is currently housed at UNICEF Ethiopia.

Background: The Mobile Angle

In early 2009, UNICEF headquarters in New York approached Praekelt Foundation to assist them in adding a mobile component to their existing Speak Africa initiative. It was felt that the existing channels of TV, radio and print media had limited reach in Africa, and the obvious choice to expand the campaign's reach, would be to add a mobile component to it. This project was UNICEF's first (and biggest!) multi-country pilot, deploying mobile technology in 7 African countries, in a coordinated campaign around Food Security, Agriculture and Climate Change.

Objectives

The campaign had both technology as well as programmatic objectives.

Technology Objectives included:

• setting up SMS shortcode or longcodes in 7 African countries (these included Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Madagascar, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda)
• setting up voice lines in 2 countries (these included South Africa and Egypt)
• setting up broadcast messaging services in English, French or Arabic in each country, from which the weekly campaign questions could be sent to the target audience
• ensuring weekly radio-broadcasts on over 50 radio stations in the 7 countries
• setting up and maintaining a campaign moderation interface
• feeding all incoming SMSs and voice feeds from the 7 countries, to 2 UNICEF-websites

Programmatic Objectives included:

• giving young people in Africa an affordable, accessible channel through which they could raise their voices around critical issues that affect their lives: in this case, the selected campaign themes were Food Security, Agriculture and Climate Change.
• sharing these inputs (via SMS or voice) from young people, with Africa's leaders, at the 2009 African Union Summit, which took place in Libya.

Results

The campaign ran for 10 weeks, from June - August 2009. In these 10 weeks:

• over 4.9 million young people where reached through broadcast messaging in 3 languages.
• more than 50 local radio stations participated by broadcasting the weekly campaign questions, on a pro-bono basis
• more than 13,700 SMS entries were received

Whilst acknowledging some of the challenges we faced in setting up and managing this campaign, UNICEF has deemed the campaign a success, and based on these results, are now working with Praekelt Foundation to expand the use of mobile technology in other program areas and countries.

Read More

You can read some of the SMS results that came through during this campaign, by visiting UNICEF's Speak Africa or Unite for Climate Websites.