Using the power of cell phones, potential reporters are trained to create objective news about their own communities. Media professionals are employed to coach trainees online. Trainees are then encouraged to create news and publish the stories on a training website. Alumni of this program create news that fall under these categories; health, society, economy, governance, environment, and youth. A selection of the best reports is published on third party publication platforms.

Although founded in 2006, the foundation has conducted training programs in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa. These feats have won them  a BoB Award (Best Videoblog 2008), Webby Award (Official Honoree News category 2008), and a World Summit Award (e-Inclusion and Participation 2009).

Kids Waves, funded by Nokia, is one example:

Kids Waves is a regional radio project hosted by children in 10 West African countries that helps them to make their voices heard and to learn about issues relevant to them.

In the town of Kongoussi in Burkina Faso, many births are not registered, depriving children of access to the national health and education systems and, more importantly, to protection from illegal trafficking to neighboring agricultural regions. A Kids Waves broadcast inspired a youth group to canvass the town to verify that children in each family were registered and to assist parents in completing registration formalities.

The YMDP program also made progress by hosting the Media and Development Forum in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) in 2008.

Finally, have a look at the intriguing “Virtual Village” website for Nyalakot Uganda.

Thanks to Gina Robbins for contributing to this post.

Kenyan Internews journalist Tole Nyatta interviews people about the violence that followed a disputed Presidential Election result in early 2008.

Founded in 1982, Internews has been empowering local media in the developing world for over two decades.  With its stated goal as that of an International Media Development Organization, Internews’ core mission is to enhance and assist in sustaining local media through its variety of programs; from staff training to the support of journalist associations.   To date, Internews has aided in the development of around 4800 independent media venues to include newspapers, radio outlets and television stations.  In addition, Internews trains between 8,000 to 10,000 people every year in management, journalism and production.

Internews’ mission has taken it to some of the most difficult environments around the world.  Presently Internews has programs in Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad and Rwanda; as well as Latin American, Eurasia, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

Internews’ modus operandi is very practical.  The organization adapts its focus according to the local needs of the community that they serve.  Internews achieves this objective several ways, one of which is by partnering with local organizations.  For example, Internews founded Radio Absoun in a remote region of eastern Chad.   Staffed by Sudanese and Chadian journalists Radio Absoun provides information to refugees from Darfur as well as the communities that host the refugees.   In another example, Internews established Local Voices in Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria to enhance journalism on HIV/AIDS.

Apart from local organizations, Internews also collaborates with international organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR, governments programs such as USAID, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Currently, Internews is responding to the Haitian crises by providing mobile broadcasting technology and support.

The table below shows the breadth of Internews’ reach:

Internews International Presence

*Internews Network office

(source Internews website)

On September 3, 2009, Sarata Jabbi-Dibba, vice president of the Gambia Press Union and reporter for the independent newspaper, The Point, was granted a presidential pardon and released from prison. Dibba, along with six other journalists, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for defaming President Jammeh. The sedition charges stemmed from an incident in which the GPU issued a statement criticizing the president for slandering the memory of the late Deyda Hydara, editor of The Point, who was brutally murdered in 2004.

At the time of the arrest June 15, 2009 Dibba was still nursing her 7 month old son. She was allowed to have her son with her the first three days. Prison officials took him away on the third day. Dibba and her lawyer went to the prison director. The director relented and allowed family members to bring her son to the prison for breast-feeding.

Since her release, Dibba has resumed writing her column, “She, She, She”, which addresses women’s issues. It was her late editor, Deyda Hydara, who supported Dibba when she started the column. Dibba attributes Hydara as her reason for going into journalism.

In a country where journalists are under serious threats and subject to an array of human rights abuses, the courage displayed by Dibba and her colleagues is laudable. Their fallen comrade, Deyda Hydara lost his life fighting for press freedom. Hydara was killed one day after publishing an article railing against two new Gambian laws that infringed upon freedom of expression. His killers were never found. The six journalists remain committed to his memory even if it means losing their own freedom.

Their vision is shared by Radio Free Africa which aims for an independent, free media to “facilitate the free flow of information, expose criminal wrongdoing, and disseminate ideas.”

What motivates the Video Volunteers? A 2002 World Bank study asked over 60,000 people living on less than a $1.00 a day what they consider to be the single greatest hurdle to their advancement. The poor placed “lack of voice” above things like food, shelter and education.

The Video Volunteers are working to provide an alternative media landscape to thousands of people around the world.  They help those living in slums and villages to produce high quality video content that brings awareness and empowers communities.  They envision something like a BBC or CNN for the poor.

Their strategies include Community Video Model, and Community Journalism Program. Currently they have 8 Community Video Units (CVUs) across India.

Here’s an example of some of their fantastic work:

Radio Free Africa is  going to investigate the feasibility of a CVU for villages with no electricity during our trip this month to Burkina Faso.

Here is the full text from the magazine’s write-up:

George Ayittey: ECONOMIST | AMERICAN UNIVERSITY | WASHINGTON

Ayittey, a Ghanaian economist and head of the Free Africa Foundation, has spent his career trying to convince the world that Africans, not aid workers, will set Africa right. Enough already with the victim complex, he argues: Let’s get to work. That philosophy has never been more relevant than in 2009, when the debate over international assistance kicked into high gear.  If it were up to Ayittey, the world would go beyond reforming the distribution of aid and gradually do away with handouts altogether. Aside from charity’s ineffectiveness, he notes, “[T]he presumption that Africans don’t know what is good for them and that Americans or other foreigners know what is best for Africans is extremely offensive.” [Full article on Foreign Policy.com]

It was with great concern that I read about the Liberian Ministry of Information’s actions to deny the printing of “The Bi-Lingual” and “The New Broom”.  Having gained peace after years of civil strife, these actions are contrary to the advancement of civil society.  This demonstrates why Radio Free Africa is needed.

Growing up in Europe from 1974 to 1988, I was able to witness and absorb the plight of millions of Eastern Bloc Europeans living under the iron grip of Soviet inspired totalitarianism.  In fact one of my earliest memories of the consequences of this ideology was viewing programs about life in Eastern Europe that depicted empty shopping markets.  Bare shelves greeted hundreds of shoppers.  Usually, older women, all of them it appeared, dressed by the same tailor.  What a contrast to life in Italy or Switzerland.  Being from Liberia, I was astonished to realize that Europeans also lived in abject poverty.  I did realize however, that the reason for these conditions was manmade.   The citizens of Eastern Europe were subjected to third world status due to the policies of their governments.  Two of those policies were the systematic suppression of free speech and the press.  This policy reached across the Iron Curtain and touched me personally while I was living in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 1979, my family re-located from Rome, Italy, to Geneva, Switzerland.  In Geneva, one of the first purchases that my parents acquired was a large Grundig radio and record player combination that was short wave capable.   Standard routine in our household was to keep the radio on nearly twenty-four hours a day tuned to the British Broadcasting Corporation.  Those familiar with the BBC know that at the top of the hour, the station broadcasts an updated news transmission, keeping its listeners apprised of the ongoing news of the day.   In time I started to take note of a recurring event that transpired as the hourly news was being broadcasted.  As the transmission began, it was accompanied by higher than normal interference, sometimes making the broadcast incomprehensible.  I later learned that the interferences were manmade, caused by the Soviet Union.  Diplomats at the United Nations in Geneva had been voicing their displeasure vis à vis this practice by the USSR.   This deliberate attempt at the suppression of the free press and freedom of expression, being extended past the borders of Eastern Europe, paled in comparison to the attack on these institutions in countries such as Poland, Hungary or the Czech Republic.   Radio Free Europe served to counter the effects of the suppression of a free press in countries behind the Iron Curtain by transmitting uncensored news to the citizens of these countries.  I remember reading and hearing about the hope, and the will to act against the status quo, that Radio Free Europe inspired among Eastern Europeans.

Radio Free Africa has the potential to be for Africa that which Radio Free Europe was for Eastern Europe.  Radio Free Africa can inspire, educate and help to empower Africans, not only on the continent, but also those in the Diaspora to take concrete steps into becoming transformative agents.  Time is definitely not on Africa’s side; in fact, Africa is running out of time.  In a few months we will be celebrating the year 2010.  Africa will be celebrating a return to the 1970s as the next generation of dictators prepares to assume power.   We have already seen the preview of this in Niger, Gabon and Mauritania.  Guinea is ripe to continue this legacy.  This is why Radio Free Africa is so crucial at this juncture.  Radio Free Africa can reinforce and help to sustain indigenous and grass roots efforts at self determination in Africa as Radio Free Europe once did in Europe.  As history will judge, attempting to control the free press in Africa will meet the same fate as such actions did behind the Iron Curtain.

Jacien Carr currently lives in the United States and works in finance.  He is a volunteer for Radio Free Africa and can be reached at jacien.carr [at] radiofreeafrica.org

” I would like everyone to write the following on postcards and send to governments around the world.

Freedom of expression and of thought was not invented by the West. It has existed in traditional societies — even primitive ones — for centuries. Human progress would not have been possible without it. I’m saying this as a black African from Ghana because today around the world, we have “educated” barbarians who want to suppress this freedom by arresting and jailing dissidents, writers, journalists and those they disagree with. In fact, the UN should expel those countries that do not respect Freedom of expression, which is Article 19 of the UN Human Rights charter.

When everyone has written this thought on postcards and sent them, they should also put them on POSTERS and hang them up in market places, in windows, on the sides of buildings everywhere. So that around the world will be the unmistakable visual reminder of the freedom everywhere.”

George Ayittey on the BBC, September 20, 2009

Listen to the audio of George Ayittey on the BBC

BBC 60 Second Idea to Improve the World