Afri'Kibaaru Project

The anticipated outcomes of the Afri'Kibaaru project were:

• Improved access to reliable news in local languages for local populations;
• Production of editorial content on sustainable development issues and good prevention and adaptation practices, published by African journalists who have been trained to cover these issues; and
• The development of online debate platforms and innovative forms of engagement by local media outlets.

The project was intended for:

• Journalists from 48 media outlets, particularly from public and private radio stations in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal;
• Journalists from RFI (Radio France Internationale) local partner media outlets in this region (RFI, part of France Médias Monde, is a French news and current affairs public radio station that broadcasts worldwide in French and in 16 other languages); and
• Influencers, bloggers, and members of CSOs.

Project activities focused on two main areas:

Producing content in local languages by and for the people of the Greater Sahel region, which involved:

• Increasing the broadcasting of reliable and verified news and diversified content formats in Fula, Mandinka, and Hausa;
• Promoting local, sustainable development initiatives through on-air stories focused on securing access to drinking water, promoting renewable energy such as solar ovens, confronting the challenges of education and health, understanding the impacts of climate change on women's daily lives, fighting poverty and inequality, and preserving the environment and biodiversity;
• Establishing and training a network of community radio journalists who simultaneously acted as local correspondents for larger media outlets in the project target area;
• Making magazine programmes that were produced in other areas of the programme available to this network of community radio stations;
• Creating social media channels in different languages to increase access to news and improve interaction; and
• Improving access to interviews with experts speaking in local languages and the organisation of balanced debates on a variety of media channels. The project especially sought to increase the visibility of women in the media and trained female experts in areas related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to learn how the media works, how to speak to journalists confidently, and how to participate in a programme or a debate. In Chad, the project developed an online platform dedicated to female experts. This tool was designed to provide a pool of skills from which media outlets could select female interviewees.

Training and enhancing the skills of local journalists and media outlets, with the objective to equip media outlets with the tools they need to independently produce content around the SDGs, which involved:

• Supporting training, on-site coaching (adapted to the specific needs of each media outlet), and regional workshops to improve the capacity of media outlets to independently produce informative content. Examples include: media management training and training of journalists on editorial skills and fact checking, as well as on subjects such as education, health, climate, and gender equality.
• Offering training to improve the interactivity and attractiveness of content produced for radio and the internet. Examples include boosting skills to: manage listener call-ins and guests in the studio, manage contributions via interactive platforms (especially WhatsApp voice messages), and use digital technology and social media such as Facebook to complement broadcasts on radio or television. The programme also trained web developers and graphic designers to produce good, distinctive visual content for television and social media.
• Organising regular competitions to encourage and reward innovative media output. These competitions would, for example, highlight a specific issue within sustainable development and the SDGs, such as gender equality.

CFI, the French Media Development Agency, works to foster media development all over the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab world, and the European Union's neighbourhood. It seeks to support media players to foster dialogue between local authorities and citizens and to ensure that people gain the best possible access to information. Core topics include fighting misinformation, promoting gender equality, protecting the environment, and promoting democracy and civic engagement. CFI operates under the umbrella of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and is a subsidiary of the group France Médias Monde.