In the midst of drought and famine in eastern Africa some hopeful news. A three-year study by Farm Radio International demonstrates conclusively that when properly used, radio is an effective way to give large numbers of African farm families knowledge needed to improve their food security, nutrition and livelihoods; knowledge that is vital in preventing famine in times of drought.

OTTAWA, 10 August 2011:

More than one in five of all African farm families living within the broadcast range of a carefully executed farm radio program series will adopt the new farming practices they heard about on the radio. That is the key finding of a newly released study by Canadian non-governmental organization, Farm Radio International.

For decades agricultural researchers have struggled to find ways to improve crop production and food security for small-scale farmers, especially those in Africa where drought and famine blight the already difficult lives of millions. Unfortunately, despite many promising findings, few farm families in Africa have taken advantage of any of the improvements. Food insecurity and malnutrition, especially among rural children and their mothers, is still a desperately serious problem. When drought is coupled with political instability a bad situation only gets worse.

Radio broadcasts designed to convince farmers in Africa to adopt these better technologies seem to have had little impact—until now. Farm Radio International, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created a new kind of farm radio program model and tested it for three years. It was a carefully designed experiment run in five African countries in partnership with 25 radio stations.

The program model is called a Participatory Radio Campaign (PRC) and differs in several key respects from traditional farm radio in Africa. The PRC gives farmers (men and women) voice in the programs. Their stories of trial, difficulty, innovation, struggle and success form the core of the broadcasts. Over the course of a 13 week broadcast season these farmers become the opinion leaders, not just for their own communities but for all the communities in the listening area. The shows are lively, entertaining and value farmers. The result has been large audiences and significant adoption of new practices in all regions where the Participatory Radio Campaign methodology was tested.

The way this program was done in terms of presentation and our voices being heard on air have made it to be a favourite program for most people,  said Rhoda Chatama, a farmer in Malawi.

In fact in villages where the only extraordinary intervention was information from the radio campaign about two thirds of the population said they listened to the broadcasts regularly and half could correctly answer a set of questions about what they had learned. Most significant of all, at least a fifth decided to try the improved practice.

Farm Radio International demonstrated its capacity to lead a multi-country research for development project and achieve extraordinary results, says Mercy Karanja, the Senior Program Officer for Agricultural Development with the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.

The Foundation recently awarded Farm Radio International further funding to implement the methodology with partners all across Africa.

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For a one-page brief on the Participatory Radio Campaigns, click here.

Ottawa, Ontario March 1, 2011 – Grace Amito was bitter when her manager at Uganda’s radio station Mega FM assigned her to the farm broadcast. “He told me all the other programs had been taken up by my fellow presenters since I was away.”

That was in 2002, when Grace says she didn’t have “a single clue on farming.” Today she says her farm listeners are now part of her family and her life.

They trust me so much. I cannot hesitate to receive them in my house whenever they travel to town and fail to find their way back to their villages. Others want me to be their surety whenever they seek loans from commercial banks.

Grace is host of “The Farmers and the Animal World,” a daily program for Ugandan farmers, who like millions of others in Africa often have no other source of farm extension information except radio.

From March 1-12, she will be in Canada to speak and to formally receive the George Atkins Communication Award, named after the famous CBC farm broadcaster who founded Farm Radio International, an Ottawa-based NGO that provides radio scripts and training to more than 360 partner radio stations in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Grace is a skilled, courageous, and creative broadcaster, highly committed to helping small-scale farmers in northern Uganda rebuild after years of civil conflict. We are proud that she is a partner in the Farm Radio International community,” says FRI’s executive director Kevin Perkins.

Mega FM used radio broadcasts through 2004 to 2006 to facilitate peace talks that helped end the war in northern Uganda. A program called “Dwog Cen Paco” (come back home) targeted Lord’s Resistance Army fighters and encouraged them to lay down their arms.

Over time, they listened to the messages channeled through the program and they started coming out of the bush and were granted amnesty, says Grace.

Since 2008, Grace has been working closely with Farm Radio International to produce a hugely popular radio program on beekeeping and honey production. To show their gratitude for her programs, farmers stop by to leave gifts of pails of honey in the Mega FM lobby.

Grace Amito will visit Canada from March 1-12 and will be giving talks in Ottawa, Guelph, Toronto and Montreal.

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Contact: Brenda Jackson

Farm Radio International

613-761-3646

brenda@farmradio.org

www.farmradio.org

About Farm Radio International:

Founded in 1979, Farm Radio International is a Canadian charity with the mission of supporting broadcasters to strengthen small-scale farming and rural communities in Africa. Farm Radio International researches and produces radio scripts on rural development issues and distributes them to over 360 radio broadcasters who interpret and use the scripts to provide their listeners with practical information about farming, land management, health and other issues. Farm Radio International also develops training opportunities; researches farm radio strategies and facilitates networking among and between broadcasters.

Ottawa, Canada, Jan 31, 2011 – Congratulations to Alice Bafiala Mutombo, an independent radio journalist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who won first prize in an Africa-wide scriptwriting competition on healthy communities. Nine other broadcasters and producers also won prizes for their entries.

In July 2010, radio professionals from across sub-Saharan Africa were invited to submit a radio script about a healthy community initiative. To help participants develop their scripts, they were encouraged to participate in a 10-week online training course on scriptwriting. One hundred and twenty-eight entries were received from 23 countries across sub-Saharan Africa.

The first-prize winner impressed an international panel of judges with her script about how community members mobilized to improve hygiene by purifying drinking water, encouraging hand-washing and building latrines. She also receives the Marie Coulibaly Award for the top entry by a woman. The Marie Coulibaly Award is named in honour of a Farm Radio International staff member in Mali who tragically died in 2009.

All 10 winners will receive high quality digital audio recorders. Winners will also work with Farm Radio International’s managing editor, using feedback received from contest judges, to improve and finalize their scripts. The winning scripts will then be published in French and English and distributed by Farm Radio International to several hundred radio organizations across sub-Saharan Africa. They will then be transformed into a wide variety of programs and shared with a rural audience of millions of farmers.

The winners and script titles in alphabetical order by country are:

Kpénahi Traoré, Burkina Faso – Composting human waste is a healthy way to reduce disease and feed the soil

Alice Bafiala Mutombo, Democratic Republic of the Congo – A clean village for a healthy life

Gabriel Adukpo, Ghana – A family fights malnutrition with local leafy vegetables

Simon Mukali, Kenya – Talking to teens about unsafe sex

Charles Kemboi, Kenya – Empowerment saves youth from drug abuse

Lawrence Wakdet, Nigeria – Occupational and nutritional therapy for people living with HIV and AIDS

Oluwakemi Aduroja, Nigeria – Empowering communities with participatory community enumeration

Ugonma Cokey, Nigeria – Florence saves girls from human trafficking

Bonaventure N’Coué Mawuvi, Togo – Collecting plastic waste: Cleaning the city and generating income

Filius Chalo Jere, Zambia – AIDS support program gives positive people a new lease on life

Farm Radio International carried out the scriptwriting competition in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). We would also like to thank the following organizations and individuals for their support: the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Government of Canada through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Anne Burnett, The Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA).

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For more information about the competition and winners, contact:

Blythe McKay, Program and Partnerships Manager, Farm Radio International bmckay@farmradio.org or 613-761-3652

Farm Radio International, in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and other partners, is launching a radio scriptwriting competition on healthy communities in sub-Saharan Africa. The competition is open to organizations and individuals that work with radio in Africa, including radio stations, broadcasters, production organizations, NGOs with a radio project, farmers’ associations with a radio program, health NGOs interested in collaborating with a local radio station, and others.

Competitors are invited to submit a radio script that tells the true story of a local initiative that is contributing to a healthy community. To assist participants with writing the radio scripts, a free, 10-week on-line scriptwriting training course will be offered. Click here to read full press release.

Ottawa, Canada, March 23, 2010 – Farm Radio International is a recipient of the ALINe 2010 Farmer Voice Awards announced on March 11.  Organizations from twenty countries submitted nominations for the awards which are given to projects that promote the voice of farmers.

ALINe works with a wide range of agricultural organizations, providing technical assistance, conducting research and promoting innovations. It promotes people-centred performance in agricultural development.

Dorice Kaunda (Tanzanian Broadcast Corporation) captures an interview with a Maasai woman in Mairowa village near Arusha, using her Sansa MP3 recorder. The AFRRI team of broadcasters was preparing a program on tick borne diseases as a part of their six day training for the participatory radio campaign. Photo credit: Susuma Susuma

Farm Radio International received the Award for its Participatory Radio Campaign (PRC)—a holistic model developed through broadcasters, farming communities, aid agencies and agricultural experts. Farmers’ input and feedback are the essence of all the radio campaigns.

The PRC is a strategy developed under the African Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI) launched by Farm Radio International in 2007 in various countries of the sub-Saharan Africa. The goal is to develop and document best practices for using radio-based communications with farming communities. AFRRI is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Radio stations from Tanzania, Uganda, Mali, Ghana and Malawi took part in the research initiative that involved the production of several radio campaigns to improve farming. The campaigns have already shown promising results. For example, a campaign on improved composting methods in Mali resulted in a fourfold increase in percentage of farmers adopting this practice.  In a follow-up study, farmers, broadcasters and officials attributed the success of the composting program to the radio campaign.

“We’re honoured and pleased to have received the ALINe award.  It affirms the importance of using innovative, participative approaches to sharing information with farming communities in Africa. These approaches help small and marginalized farmers achieve increased food production and better agricultural practices, while strengthening their voices within their countries” 

Kevin Perkins, Executive Director of Farm Radio International

Perkins also thinks that the PRC model developed by Farm Radio International can be successfully applied to health, natural resource management and even human rights issues and projects.   “Several agricultural organizations and other NGOs along with radio broadcasters are showing a keen interest in adopting the PRC model to deliver their programs,” said Perkins.

The radio campaigns were developed between 2007 and 2008 and implemented in 2009.  Farmers, broadcasters and agricultural experts were involved in an exercise to identify key improvements in agricultural practices that would become the focus of the PRCs. 

 “The PRC model isn’t a typical top-down campaign in which outsiders market a new behaviour to passive subjects”, says Perkins.  “ Rather, the PRC helps farmers make informed decisions about whether and how to change their farming practices.  Deep respect for farmers is the starting point.”

Farmers had a say in when the program would be broadcast, who the host would be, and how they would participate in each week’s episode. Local musical groups sang the program’s signature tune.  During the PRC, farmers could debate the issues, learn from each other, challenge the experts, and gain technical support as they adopted new practices.

PRC methodology was applied to twenty-five different campaigns involving one-hundred farming communities and twenty-five broadcasters from five different countries. The programs were broadcast at least once a week in the local languages at a convenient time for the farmers to listen.

The production, participation, delivery and effectiveness of the radio programs were carefully evaluated to develop a radio campaign model that could be replicated for effective radio-based communications with farmers.

The campaigns were based on the elements of adult learning and the theory of participatory communications for development.  The best PRCs were anchored by a farmer’s story and gave priority to the local farmers’ voice. The campaign programs’ tone and language is regional and colloquial—suitable for everyone in the community. 

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For more information contact:
Kevin Perkins, Executive Director
kperkins@farmradio.org
Tel: 888-773-7717
613-761-3658
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About Farm Radio International
Founded in 1979, Farm Radio International is a Canadian charity with the mission of supporting broadcasters to strengthen small?scale farming and rural communities in Africa. Farm Radio International researches and produces radio scripts on rural development issues and distributes them to over 320 radio broadcasters who interpret and use the scripts to provide their listeners with practical information about farming, land management, health and other issues. Farm Radio International also develops training opportunities; researches farm radio strategies and facilitates networking among and between broadcasters.

Farm Radio International, in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), Inter Press Service (IPS) Africa, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)  and other partners, is coordinating a scriptwriting competition on smallholder farmer innovation in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Open to organizations and individuals that work with radio in Africa, this competition also offers a free, two-month on-line scriptwriting training course to assist participants with writing the radio scripts. To read the press release, click here. For more information, visit the website here.

Helping millions of African farmers over the airwaves

Ottawa, Ontario, May 1, 2009 — Cayenne pepper to discourage elephants from grazing on farm fields. Placing a lit candle in a container of grain before sealing it to deprive pests of oxygen. Organizing a community to clean up its water supply.

When Canadian journalist George Atkins first visited Africa in the 1970s, he found that Africa’s farmers weren’t short of good ideas appropriate to their circumstances, but distance, language and limited literacy often prevented them from sharing them these ideas with each other.

Instead, the ideas being shared were those from the developed economies — the result of farm extension efforts aimed at Africa which tended to focus on using inappropriate or unaffordable machinery, chemicals or fertilizer.

Atkins, a farm broadcaster at CBC Toronto, had been part of the success in delivering practical extension information to farmers in post-war Canada. When he returned from his visit to Africa, he resolved to launch a second career doing the same for farmers in Africa in a way that would solve the idea-sharing problem. The Developing Countries Farm Radio Network was born in a small office in Toronto.

On May 1, 1979 the first script package was sent. Today, 884 radio scripts later, and with the new name of Farm Radio International, Atkins’ brainchild celebrates its 30th anniversary of successfully reaching farmers through what remains the cheapest and most reliable medium in the developing world — radio.

Now based in Ottawa with a staff of 10, Farm Radio produces scripts about farming and rural development for more than 300 stations in Africa.

One partner, Umar Baba Kumo of Gombe Media Corporation in Nigeria, says he broadcasts FRI script content to about a million listeners.

“The scripts are relevant, simple and easy to adapt to local languages and settings. Text messages from listeners indicate overwhelming support. A script on food/grains storage using pepper instead of chemical pesticides was particularly helpful.”

Thanks to continuing support from Canadian donors, Farm Radio has been able to expand its programs through a weekly e-newsletter, and it is now conducting a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded African Farm Radio Research Initiative in five countries to discover the best ways to use radio to support smallholder farmers.

Atkins, now 91, who stepped down from the Farm Radio board only two years ago, says “at this time, millions of the poorest of the poor farmers of the world are hearing this information to help them increase their food supplies and have better nutrition and health. If that isn’t what’s helping people in developing countries, I don’t know what is. I have to pinch myself when I think of the people who are helped by this service that is available to them by just turning on their radio.”

Atkins said he hopes Canadians will continue their generous donations to support the low-cost but effective approach he started 30 years ago, noting that the world food shortages of the past year have reinforced the importance of supporting smallholder farmers around the world.