This issue of The Soul Beat focuses on information from the network about using radio to address health and health issues in Africa. If you would like to contribute your own experiences, please contact Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com

If you are interested in information about community radio, visit our Focus on Community Radio window

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EXPERIENCES

1. He Ha Ho - Ghana
A radio drama and magazine show that aims to educate listeners about issues related to malaria, reproductive health, family planning and HIV/AIDS. The shows are part of a programme that aims to improve home-based care (HBC) for childhood illnesses and malaria by informing mothers and caretakers on how to appropriately care for children with malaria. This includes providing information on how to treat malaria correctly in children by recognising fever as a symptom of malaria, giving a full three-day course of treatment, recognising signs of severe malaria, and getting a child with any severe signs of malaria to the nearest health facility immediately.
Contact Emmanuel Fiagbey efiagbey@jhuccp.org.gh OR Ian Tweedie itweedie@jhuccp.org

2. Radio Zibonele - South Africa
A health-focused community radio station broadcasting to Khayelitsha, a semi-urban township, outside Cape Town. The main aim of the station is to provide health care and education information to people so they can take better care of themselves and their families. Health workers and community members collaborate with producers at the radio station to develop the content and format of programmes. Outcomes include songs about health, role-plays, storytelling and poetry that combine to encourage taking precautions and healthy practices. Specific health programmes focus on women, children and senior citizens.
Contact Epaph Mbezi zibonele@sn.apc.org

3. Taxi Tunes - Zimbabwe
Taxi Tunes is a series of educational radio cassettes, produced by Radio Dialogue aimed at discussing topics and educating the people of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe on topical issues, including health, sexuality, environmental responsibility and gender issues. Taxi Tunes are distributed to Radio Dialogue members such as the Bulawayo United Public Transports Association (BUPTA). Commuter vehicle-owners helped make Taxi Tunes popular in Bulawayo by playing them in their kombis so their message reached a larger audience. The cassette topics are accompanied by popular or new music tracks.
Contact Zenzele Ndebele info@radiodialogue.com OR enquiries@radiodialogue.com

4. Ichi Chalo (This World in Which We Live) - Zambia
A radio soap opera highlighting risks to food security in Zambia. The goal of the programme is to encourage people to draw the link between food security and their own security. Programmes are broadcast in English and indigenous languages on both national and local community stations. Ichi Chalo radio shows have two segments, a 12-minute dramatised soap opera followed by 18-minutes of interviews and discussion. Depending on the topic being addressed, the soap opera is set in either a typical urban or rural community, where characters are confronted with a range of issues linked to hunger and food security. Topics include the impact of HIV/AIDS, childhood malnutrition and natural disasters, such as droughts and floods.
Contact Richard Ragan wfpinfo@wfp.org

5. Making a Difference: We Are All Affected - South Africa
Produced in four languages, Afrikaans, SeSotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu, this HIV/AIDS series aims to improve the quality of HIV/AIDS-related programming on community radio stations of South Africa. A twenty minute-programme and a one-minute summary "spot" are distributed to participating community radio stations. Themes include positive living; eating well; knowing about medicines; equality; living together; and dealing with death. Baseline studies were done before the programming began and the results of an evaluation will be used to assess the success of the project and to inform any decisions about rolling out the project to other stations.
Contact Shepi Mati shepi@idasact.org.za

6. West Africa Regional Radio Soap Opera - Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali
This Bambara-language radio drama series addresses children's rights, child trafficking and reproductive health. The programmes are broadcast on the Africa Learning Channel (ALC) and then re-broadcast by community radio stations. The programme organisers say that the use of edutainment makes the issue-based information and programming entertaining and engaging. More than 150 community radio stations in the three countries were trained and equipped to use WorldSpace satellite radios and to rebroadcast content.
Contact Sebene Selassie sselassie@firstvoiceint.org

7. Freeplay Lifeline Radios - Rwanda
The Freeplay Lifeline radios project provides orphaned child heads of households in Rwanda who often cannot attend school, with access to radio programmes providing information, such as how to prevent disease, increase garden yields, and maintain goats. As the Freeplay Lifeline radios need no batteries or electricity, children can access radio programmes at anytime. They can listen non-stop to broadcasts on health care, HIV/AIDS, clean water, farming and animal husbandry, music and sports.
Contact Kristine Pearson pearsonk@freeplayfoundation.org

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Mobile Populations Discussion

AF-AIDS has launched an online discussion about mobile populations and HIV/AIDS. Questions being posed include:

1: In your view, what are the major factors that affect the HIV/AIDS vulnerability of mobile populations in this region?
2: What are the other key factors increasing the HIV/AIDS vulnerabilities of families and communities in migrant-sending areas?
3: Based on your experience, what methods or interventions have/could be used to reduce the vulnerabilities of migrants and mobile populations?

To join, send a blank message to join-af-aids@eforums.healthdev.org
For more information, Click here.

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EVALUATIONS

8. Local Voices: Preliminary Findings from Radio Content Analysis - Kenya
The Local Voices project aims to mobilise and equip radio professionals in Kenya and Nigeria to play a more meaningful role in helping their societies cope with HIV/AIDS. As one of the objectives of the Local Voices project is to increase frequency and improve quality of HIV/AIDS radio reporting and programming, radio content analysis is an important part of their three-pronged evaluation strategy. Content analyis found that sponsored HIV programmes had dropped out as they were deemed unsustainable. However, unsponsored news stories and talk shows/call-in programmes on HIV had increased.

9. Impact Data - Journey of Life Radio Show - Ethiopia
A final impact evaluation of the 26-week radio soap opera by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP) surveyed 792 respondents before the radio show, Journey of Life (JOL), aired and 662 of those same respondents again after the show was broadcast. Almost one in five (17.1%) urban youth surveyed reported having heard of JOL, while 15.7% of youth surveyed reported being listeners of the show. Over sixty percent of respondents reported talking about JOL episodes with their friends; 40.5% with their family; and 32.3% with a romantic partner.

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STRATEGIC THINKING

10. Communicating HIV/AIDS Media Research: Assessment Of IEC/BCC Needs For Radio Programming On HIV/AIDS Among Youth In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
by Michael Tamiru and Tadesse Kebede
"The government identified the youth in Ethiopia as the high-risk group for HIV infection and primary target for HIV/AIDS intervention activities. Several studies reported from Addis Ababa have revealed radio to be a powerful and important tool for the dissemination of HIV/AIDS messages to youth. However, information about the needs for Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) of the target youth audience relating to designing HIV radio programming was lacking. This prompted research in Addis Ababa. The aim of the study was to assess the priority needs and demands of youth for BCC on HIV/AIDS, existing HIV/AIDS media interventions, and the feasibility of designing a new HIV radio programming to youth in Addis Ababa.

11. Baseline Survey on Truck Drivers' Demographics and Media Habits in Four Border Towns of Uganda
by Tushabe Basil, Cheryl Lettenmailer, Anne Gamurorwa, and Chris Opit
This report presents findings that aim to guide the development of a communication strategy to influence positive behaviour in relation to reducing HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STI) reduction among truck drivers in Uganda. According to the report, truck drivers are often referred to as core transmitters of HIV/AIDS. The report includes information about the study design and methodology. As well it provides details about the respondants characteristics, including language spoken, location of permanent residence, and accomodation used while on the road. The baseline study further examined access to media, particularly in terms of radio.

12. Enhancing Community Over the Airwaves: Community Radio in a Ghanaian Fishing Village
by Blythe McKay
This study is an exploratory analysis of the role of a community radio station, Radio Ada, plays in fishers' livelihoods and lives in Anyakpor, a fishing village in southeast Ghana. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) activities, semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis to determine whether Radio Ada was providing priority information perceived by fishers as important to their livelihoods, what other information and communication networks fishers relied on for their fishing/fish smoking livelihoods, and fishers' perceptions of the role of radio in their lives and livelihoods. The goal of the research was to investigate fishers' information and communication networks in Ghana in order to assess the role of community radio in their livelihoods and lives.

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EDUTAINMENT

13. Tale-Telling Tradition Techniques in Africa and Soap Opera: The Case of Tanzania
by Herbert F. Makoye
This paper explores the use of radio soap operas in Tanzania and proposes that the acceptance and success of these programmes is largely because of the tradition of tale telling in Tanzania. "The nature of communication or the exchange of ideas in tale telling and in radio soap operas may be similar to other process of communication in which the communicator transfers a message to his/her listener. However, the additional factor of entertainment that the listeners/audience experience is what in most makes the difference when compared with other channels of communication."

14. When the Broadcast Ends, the Programme is not Over: Maximising the Effectiveness of EE Programmes at Community Radio Level
by Adele Mostert and Prof John van Zyl
This paper shares the experience of ABC Ulwazi in South Africa in interacting with and creating educational and developmental radio programmes for community radio stations. The paper states that they have learned that producing a well-researched, well-scripted, well-produced programme using familiar situations and colloquial dialogue is not enough. In addition, station “buy-in” must be ensured through short adult education courses for presenters and station managers. This helps them to “localize” scripts to address regional issues, problems and languages. In addition, in order to extend the usefulness of the broadcast programmes, Listeners Associations are being established. These create further opportunities for selected opinion-formers in the community to maximise the impact of the broadcasts.

15. Entertainment-Education and HIV/AIDS Prevention: A Field Experiment in Tanzania
by Peter W. Vaughan, Everett M. Rogers, Arvind Singhal, & Ramadhan M. Swalehe
"Entertainment-education is the process of designing and implementing an entertainment programme to increase audience members' knowledge about a social issue, create more favourable attitudes, and change their overt behaviors regarding the social issue. The results of a field experiment in Tanzania to measure the effects of a long-running entertainment-education radio soap opera, Twende na Wakati (Lets Go with the Times), on knowledge, attitudes, and adoption of HIV/AIDS prevention behaviors are presented. "

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Requesting photographs of radio stations

TRAACE is calling for digital pictures of African community and associative (rural and local too) radio stations, as a way of sharing experiences among African broadcasters. Please send your digital photos to editor@mediafrica.net or postmaster@mediafrica.net
Be sure to note the name of your station, the city and the country, and a short caption. Be sure also to note any photographer credit or copyright information, to be included when posted.

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MATERIALS

16. Strengthened Partnerships among Local FM and Community Radio Networks and RH Agencies on HIV/AIDS [CD-ROM]
This interactive CD-ROM presents all materials developed for and discussed during two pilot regional training workshops in Africa and Asia in 2003. During the workshops, managers learned how to use entertainment-education methodologies to produce radio serial dramas that are culturally sensitive and research-based. The aim is to use this popular medium more effectively to reduce risky behaviour and prevent HIV/AIDS. The workshops were organised by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Population Media Center (PMC).

17. Case Studies of Non-Formal Education by Distance and Open Learning
The case studies in this report aim to demonstrate the potential and importance of distance learning approaches in enhancing the contribution of non-formal education to socio-economic development in Africa. For example, according to the report the Zambia Radio Farm Forum programme enables the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries to reach larger numbers of peasant farmers than is possible through other extension services. The Radio Farm Forum programme helps over 21,000 small-scale farmers/peasants in rural areas, who listen and participate in the programme, to learn new knowledge and develop new skills. In the Ghanaian case study, the use of radio strengthened the coverage, by the literacy programme, of the functional and developmental themes.

18. Change Radio: A Radio Script
This publication provides news and features on environment and development issues in the form of radio scripts. Communication For Change produces the script in English and translates it in to Nigeria's three main ethnic languages, Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. Change Radio is also being distributed in West Africa, which is mostly French speaking, there is also Change Radio's French edition. Some of the issues discussed are HIV-AIDS in Africa, micro-credit as an engine for growth in developing countries, international women's conferences in Namibia and New York, pollution and global warming, violence against women, children and women's human rights, the trade of endangered species, ethno-botany, press freedom awards and development broadcasting.

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The Soul Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Please send material for The Soul Beat to the Editor - Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com