Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

To every village its own reporter
By Lydia Namubiru
Lydia Namubiru is a Ugandan
journalist taking a break from
active reporting to explore mobile
technology and how it can be applied
to improve journalism and o<strong>the</strong>r
information dissemination channels
of society. As described in this article,
she currently is working on an
experiment to use mobile technology
in citizen journalism to increase
media coverage of rural Uganda.
114 | Media in Africa - 2011
In Africa, as in much of <strong>the</strong> developing
world, rural people are disconnected
from <strong>the</strong> mainstream
media, which nei<strong>the</strong>r reaches <strong>the</strong>m
nor reports much about <strong>the</strong>m. In
early 2010, I started working with
Grameen Foundation’s AppLab on a
project in Uganda called <strong>the</strong> Community
Knowledge Worker Initiative
and that way chanced upon an opportunity
that could bridge <strong>the</strong> disconnect
— in Uganda at least.
A Community Knowledge Worker
(CKW) is essentially an ICT-enabled
agricultural extension worker.
Grameen Foundation goes into rural
communities — typically parishes,
which consist of five to seven villages
— and asks farmers to elect
individuals <strong>the</strong>y feel would make
competent farming consultants.
Once <strong>the</strong> foundation has recruited
such persons from as many as 50
to 120 parishes within a district, it
brings <strong>the</strong>m toge<strong>the</strong>r, lends each a
smart phone that is connected to a
central database, and trains <strong>the</strong>m to
find different bits of data — wea<strong>the</strong>r
updates, market prices, agronomy
advice, suppliers’ contact information
and more.
To sustain this service, which is
free to <strong>the</strong> farmer, Grameen also
finds data-collection business
activities that can be done by CKWs.
These might include, for example,
monitoring and evaluation data
for o<strong>the</strong>r development projects
operating in <strong>the</strong> areas where CKWs
reside. The CKW phones come with
mobile data-collection software
for <strong>the</strong> CKWs to use when <strong>the</strong>se
opportunities come along — and
<strong>the</strong>y often do.
Are any journalism bells going off
yet? They did for me. Grameen is
building a network of phone- and
information-savvy rural intermediaries
— a network that eventually
will grow to cover much more
of <strong>the</strong> country, both in depth and
breadth, than any media house does.
Grameen currently has trained and
equipped 468 CKWs in eight districts—
at least two in each region
of <strong>the</strong> county. Its goal is to deploy
1,200 such individuals by <strong>the</strong> end
of 2013. With <strong>the</strong> help of mobile
phones, <strong>the</strong>se individuals will be
collecting information from, and
disseminating it to, remote rural areas
where <strong>the</strong>y live. What better infrastructure
or human resource could
<strong>the</strong> local media industry want to do
rural news ga<strong>the</strong>ring and dissemination?
“From stories about
child abuse to reports
on destruction of
crops by wild animals
escaping from a
nearby park, much of
<strong>the</strong> news that came
was interesting and
important.”