Radio Bubusa

In developing messages and programmes for the station, SAMWAKI and GTZ Santé hold discussions with community members and look at their perceptions, beliefs, and behaviours around an issue, for example, HIV/AIDS. Following up on the discussion, a message of prevention is created by the villagers themselves. According to the organisers, SAMWAKI then uses the information and messages gathered and developed during discussions to make sure the messages they broadcast are accurate, relevant, and reliable.

As part of their communication efforts, SAMWAKI and GTZ Santé support and develop listeners' clubs, which use solar powered radios supplied by Dimitra and the King Baudouin Foundation to listen to the programmes. The clubs provide a platform for discussion of issues raised in the radio programmes, and, according to the organisers, are giving villagers the space to talk about taboo subjects and challenge traditional norms.

Gender, Rights, Women, Health.

In the words of María Teresa Aguirre, Programme Manager, WACC: "Bubusa or 'kabubuso' in the Shi dialect describes a cry used exclusively by women and young girls to wake each other up when it is time to leave to work in a field in a distant village.The cry is also used when they need to go and fetch firewood or the fresh grass used on the floors of huts. As a celebratory chant, kabubuso is used for accompanying a marriage or for calling women to gather before going to church in a parish far from the village. The call is a way of communicating that is clearly defined as a specific traditional means of communication among rural women and one that is widely accepted by all sectors of the community. Now the grassroots organization Sauti ya Mwanamke Kijijini (SAMWAKI) – a Swahili word meaning 'the voice of rural women' - have chosen Bubusa as the name of its radio station."

Launched in 2002, SAMWAKI is a women's organisation active in the rural areas of South Kivu. Its mission is to ensure that rural women are empowered by access to information, training, and communication in a country that has seen a great amount of generalised violence in the last years. In addition to the marginalisation resulting from extreme poverty, women in rural areas also face specific forms of violence, their developmental efforts are constantly undermined, and deep-rooted prejudices and general exclusion from decision-making prevails. SAMWAKI is a founding member of the Network of Community Radios and Television of Congo and the Association of Community Radios of Congo.

According to the organisers, since Radio Bubusa began broadcasting programmes around reproductive health, they have seen an increase in fathers accompanying their wives to antenatal consultations, taking the HIV screening test, and understanding its importance for themselves and their families. Previously, this was very uncommon.