Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

The CKWs already in <strong>the</strong> field are
doing journalism every day. In
October 2010, AppLab conducted a
small pilot project to document <strong>the</strong>
potential and study what needs to
be done to harness it. We picked
12 of <strong>the</strong> best performing CKWs in
one district, gave <strong>the</strong>m some very
basic journalism training, uploaded
a news-ga<strong>the</strong>ring template in <strong>the</strong>
form of a mobile survey on <strong>the</strong>ir
phones and asked <strong>the</strong>m to go
learn and tell <strong>the</strong> world about <strong>the</strong>ir
communities.
Did it work? Though it was being
done on a small scale, <strong>the</strong> answer
is yes. In four months of <strong>the</strong> pilot,
CKWs submitted 74 stories. We
published <strong>the</strong> best on a Facebook
page that soon had 134 people
following it. Ano<strong>the</strong>r two CKWs
voluntarily joined <strong>the</strong> corps of
community reporters.
The grassroots reporters took <strong>the</strong>ir
jobs seriously. 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. In December 2010, a CKW
reported on <strong>the</strong> genital mutilation
of 12 girls in his parish, noting that
it was done with <strong>the</strong> community’s
support.
In January, ano<strong>the</strong>r reported that
local health workers had employed
<strong>the</strong>ir unqualified spouses to administer
vaccines in a governmentdriven
immunisation campaign. All
<strong>the</strong>se stories came from areas where
no Ugandan media house was likely
to chance upon <strong>the</strong>m. I believed
when I first heard of CKWs that <strong>the</strong>y
had considerable potential for rural
centric journalism. Now I know.
We learned quite a few lessons from
<strong>the</strong> experiment. First, it is not enough
to get <strong>the</strong> stories in. You have to
market <strong>the</strong>m to <strong>the</strong> people who can
broadcast <strong>the</strong>m. We courted media
houses, and built a listserv to which
we sent <strong>the</strong> most promising leads.
But <strong>the</strong>re is no way of knowing
which seeds will germinate and
which ones won’t. To ensure that
this new form of journalism works
to improve coverage of rural areas,
one needs to integrate it more
deeply into <strong>the</strong> mainstream media.
As we move forward to a proof-ofconcept
stage, we will work closely
with <strong>the</strong> Uganda Radio Network,
which syndicates content to 56
community radio stations in Uganda
to disseminate <strong>the</strong> CKW stories, to
do just that.
“In a nutshell, we
saw some evidence
that <strong>the</strong>se rural
reporters, and <strong>the</strong>
customised mobile
technology that
enables <strong>the</strong>m, have
potential.”
Ano<strong>the</strong>r challenge will be to keep
<strong>the</strong> citizen reporters motivated
to do <strong>the</strong>ir work. While social
networking sites attract content
almost organically among urbanites,
rural people face many more
pressing and basic demands on
<strong>the</strong>ir time. So you have to give <strong>the</strong>m
reason to add your task to <strong>the</strong>ir todo
lists. In <strong>the</strong> pilot, we did not offer
any cash incentive for <strong>the</strong> CKWs
to report about <strong>the</strong>ir communities
beyond <strong>the</strong> small remuneration
Grameen Foundation provided for
<strong>the</strong> agricultural extension work <strong>the</strong>y
were doing.
Instead, we offered an airtime
reimbursement with a generous
bonus for everyone who sent stories
within a given month. In addition,
we offered a recognition award: The
person whose report was judged <strong>the</strong>
‘Story of <strong>the</strong> Month’ was recognised
and given extra airtime. These
Section 2: Pluralism
incentives were enough to get <strong>the</strong>
stories coming in. It also got o<strong>the</strong>r
CKWs interested in joining <strong>the</strong>
reporting corps.
When our pilot activities ended, we
stopped both airtime and recognition
incentives. As a result, we saw a
nosedive in <strong>the</strong> number of stories
being submitted. We don’t know for
sure how much <strong>the</strong> two incentives
contributed to CKWs’ reporting, but
in <strong>the</strong> proof-of-concept phase, we
will more scientifically test different
incentives to see what works best
to motivate rural citizen reporters
without draining <strong>the</strong> media entities
that may wish to tap into <strong>the</strong>m.
In a nutshell, we saw some evidence
that <strong>the</strong>se rural reporters, and <strong>the</strong>
customised mobile technology that
enables <strong>the</strong>m, have potential. Now
we need to understand what business
model will work to motivate
CKWs and media houses to tap into
this potential. Putting our heads and
hands toge<strong>the</strong>r with a media entity,
we’ll test that for three months
during 2011. After that, we plan to
start to scale mobile-enabled rural
reporting to <strong>the</strong> rest of <strong>the</strong> country
before <strong>the</strong> year is out.
It is a journey we know we’ll enjoy,
and we all stand to learn a lot.
Media in Africa - 2011 | 115