PARTNER PROFILE
In this section:
Voice of America and USAID Team Up to Beam Programming
Worldwide
Voice of America and USAID Team Up to Beam Programming Worldwide
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Josephine Kamara hosts Healthy Living, a twice-a-month
VOA television show that deals with a variety of health
issues. USAID provides funds for the program.
VOA |
Radio listeners in Angola, a country recovering from a long-running
civil war that ended in 2002, have been getting news and information
about their country for nearly a decade from the studios of
Voice of America (VOA) headquarters in Washington, D.C.
A few doors away in the same building near the Capitol, Josephine
Kamara, wearing a spectacular blue scarf and matching African
print dress, hosts Healthy Living, a television show
beamed into Africa that tells how to prevent or treat polio,
cholera, malaria, and other diseases.
The support for democracy in Angola and the fight against
disease in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have been backed
by USAID funding for key VOA programs.
“We started funding these broadcasts in the fight against
polio some years ago—VOA is a U.S. government broadcaster
with an enormous audience that has programs in 44 languages,”
said Elizabeth Fox of the Bureau for Global Health.
“The people we want to reach listen mainly to radio,
so we sponsor good, solid health reporting in Swahili, French,
Urdu, Hausa, and other languages.
“This is a national partnership. VOA has a lot of credibility.
In Nigeria, for example, it’s the second most popular
radio, especially in health and science.”
Recently polio began spreading in some African countries
after leaders in northern Nigeria refused to allow vaccinations,
fearing it was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. VOA and
USAID responded with urgent health reporting in Nigeria to
better inform people and dispel the false fears about vaccination.
Broadcasts included interviews with senior tribal, Muslim,
political, and health officials, discussing all aspects of
the issue so as to clear the air. They also aired reports
on the decision by the Muslim state governors to finally accept
polio vaccine from Indonesia, according to Sunday Dare, head
of the VOA Hausa service.
To assure that the volatile Hausa region in Nigeria’s
north does not become a flashpoint for Muslim unrest, VOA
and USAID have opened a Health Reporting Center in Kano—the
region’s major city—to train journalists, including
women journalists. “We want to help journalists learn
to cover health issues more effectively and tackle myths about
disease,” said Joan Mower, head of the development office
at the International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees VOA.
The USAID-VOA partnership in Angola—which officially
ended in September 2004 but survives in a new form—is
a model of capacity building. During the life of the program,
USAID provided about $4.3 million to VOA.
Started in 1995 when Angola was a closed society in the throes
of a brutal civil war, USAID’s funds allowed VOA to create
a daily, 30-minute news magazine show that helped make VOA
the leading international broadcaster in a country of 10 million
people and the size of Texas.
“When we started, the program concentrated on coverage
of the war, but we evolved into a forum for civil society,”
said Ana Guedes, chief of VOA’s Portuguese to Africa
service, which runs the program.
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Mary Arobaga-Reardon travels to Africa to cover health-related
stories for VOA-TV, which broadcasts across the continent
to affiliates in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda,
Kenya, and elsewhere.
VOA |
The show, broadcast into Angola from São Tomé,
covers topics rarely discussed by media in Angola: HIV/AIDS,
oil and diamonds, the economy, health, politics, women’s
issues, and democracy. No subject is off-limits, so long as
it is newsworthy.
“Our program tells the truth and allows everyone to
hear it. This is our contribution to democracy,” said
Amelia Mendes, an Angolan journalist who works with the show.
A key element of the partnership was training journalists
at the Luanda News Center and correspondents in the provinces.
They broadcast information back to Washington, where it is
packaged and disseminated.
Today, the Angolan journalists working on the VOA program
in Luanda have formed their own news organization, Multipress,
with the hope of eventually becoming self-sufficient as the
Angola market grows. Multipress has applied for USAID funding
in Luanda.
Providing Angolan journalists with training and exposure
to fact-based news has been beneficial to the country, said
Victor Silva, senior editor.
“Joining the Angola Project was a personal challenge
for me,” Silva said. “It opened the door to promote
the free flow of information in my country. Today it represents
more than just a radio program—it is an integral part
of the rebuilding of Angola.”
Whether supporting democracy or health, USAID’s funding
of VOA programs seems a far cry from the blankets, beans,
and medicines traditionally associated with aid to poor countries.
“VOA supports the mission of development,” explains
Fox of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health. Chris Thomas
of the bureau adds: “VOA supports balance on issues where
there is misinformation—such as polio—or HIV/AIDS,
where there is a lot of stigma.”
“We have no editorial oversight over the broadcasts,
but give technical briefings to radio staffers.”
Research on listeners in Latin America, Asia, and Africa
indicates that people do listen to the health programs and
“they did something” based on what they heard, such
as changed the way they cooked or cleaned or protected themselves
from disease.
Shows vary from interviews with leaders and experts, to informative
news reports, to documentaries, to soap operas that explain
to listeners or viewers how to recognize symptoms of illness
and what action to take.
Under the Health Communications Initiative, USAID can provide
VOA up to $20 million over five years. So far, $3.4 million
has been spent on programs, primarily in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America.
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