[Ict4ruralwomeninafrica] Re: Welcome to the "Ict4ruralwomeninafrica" mailing list

[alice@apc.org]

Dear all



My name is alice munyua working with the APC Africa ICT policy monitor
project.



I have worked with a community radio project, Radio Kwizera in Ngara
Tanzania, established by the Jesuit Refugee Service following the important
and controversial role that radio played in the Rwandan conflict. Radio
Kwizera's role was the encouragement of dialogue and promotion of peace and
reconciliation. I also worked on a radio based civic education campaign in
Malawi which aimed at establishing a sustainable framework for a broadcast
dialogue about civil rights, citizenship and development in Malawi and
increased ability of rural communities to demand entitlements from service
providers. The project aimed to achieve this democratisation and development
process through the establishment of a network of radio listening clubs,
which allowed rural communities to directly inform the programming they
receive. This process, known as development through radio is also practiced
in other  countries, Zimbabwe, Namibia and others  and provides a model for
participatory listening groups within distinct geographic communities to
share and learn from one another on a range of issues and where rural
communities are involved in both the design and feedback for development
radio programming.



During the initial stages in Malawi, significant gender bias was evident in
the airtime afforded to men and women within the rural voices of the
programme section of the project. On average men were found to speak for 7
minutes in comparison to women for only 3 minutes. Though the make up of the
RLCs showed that women numerically dominated them, it was not reflected in
the airtime afforded to women's voices.  This gave rise to concerns as to
where the true decision making process lied within communities whose
opinions had been sought in the widest sense. The social
dynamics evident between the men and women required further exploration,
especially within the context of securing social/development related
services.
We decided to send the MBC producers of the programme to live among the
women groups in the village for a period of about 2 months. The producers
Rhoda Zulu got back with this report



"the new programme for us people in the rural areas lack familiarity because
all the issues discussed are about our men and their needs and
projects...our world and words are not so valuable because only the educated
men speak on the programmes, which is okay because men are the leaders of
our communities. That is why we don't speak because we don't speak well and
do not use impressive words and we are always afraid and prefer the men to
speak for us...but we have to know what we want, if you say that this is our
programme. Then we have to learn how to use it to help one another. To help
women who do not live here with us as well..."


The lessons we learnt from this experience were that

The women were first and foremost constrained by typical radio formats and
expressive forms. The women were experienced to "moderate" expression of
their feelings and specify sources instead of valuing their source of
knowledge/conversation with others. These constrictions impeded the
participation of women by devaluing what was culturally seem as features of
feminine thought and speech. This revealed one of the limitations of typical
of not only radio but all other communication tools/technology. The radio
programme had to be capable of linking the social roles of women and their
informal networks at the local and community levels where women are seen as
developing their own forms of communication, at the interpersonal and
collective level as well as the development of women's communication
competence in indigenous knowledge. For the women's
groups it was important to ensure that programmes targeted at women for
development were able to identify women from a multiplicity of angles that
shape their perceptions and identities as subjects of struggles, as partners
of communication, as mothers, as workers, as activists, as citizens and
communication initiatives that address these broader issues and connect
questions of gender and communications with the various ways in which race,
class, culture, age, generation, history, colonialism and social division of
labour, shape women's communication experiences social participation and
identities. As well as the need to recognise that women in rural Africa have
assumed the responsibility of managing their communities an extension of
their
domestic role and as a result community development. Women shoulder
additional responsibilities of forming organising local groups to demand
services and promote networks for survival and mutual help.



Training


In Tanzania as well as Malawi, we learnt that training has to deconstruct
internalised cultural and media values
Training has to address questions of how to bring the marginalised into the
voice. Examination of sourcing and formatting to ensure participation in
production is also  essential.

Building links between local experience and national international policies
to make community stories effective advocacy stories. Issues of objectivity
value and expansion of community interpretations

How to consistently link with other development players? How to bring into
coverage domestic and international standards?
Training is needed in developing advocacy or public interest
journalism as well. Training in the technology of the medium, is important,
not just in understanding how
it works, but also in how it fits together ,  basic maintenance as well as
training on
dissemination is equally important.










Alice Munyua
Africa ICT Policy Monitor Project Coordinator
Association for Progressive Communications
Asociacion para el Progreso de las Comunicaciones

alice@apc.org
http://www.apc.org
P O Box 315, 00606 Sarit Centre Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: +254 733 731074
Fax: +254 020 4449490