Community Radios for Peace & Dialogue

Activity Report

 Below we shall look in to each three activity areas conducted to meet the purposes of the project. Although a separate report was already submitted on the training and broadcast, we shall reflect and briefly highlight some of the major undertakings.

 Training

 The training attendees were in total 46 individuals representing 23 community radio channels. The invitation was sent to currently active 31 community channels but only 23 managed to attend. Some of the channels like Korre Community reported they couldn’t make it because of road blockage. All the trainees are young journalists from each channel, and no member of senior leadership was in attendance, except one from Dibate community in Benishangul Gumz. Most of the trainees are very young, fresh, energetic and some of them are even volunteers. EMMA- Ethiopian Mass Media Authority, did that intentionally to give training opportunities to junior members of the community. In terms of ensuring equitable resource sharing for all, this is probably the right approach. The fear was some of the higher leaders of the channels in some of the stations could take this move negatively. As expected, a few channels, namely Addis Ababa University, Civil Service University, Haromaya University and Segele Adama channels failed to complete this project. A few others like Kembata, Wolaita and Wollega University were resistant initially, but through further discussion and clarifications on why the juniors were selected, we reached to some kind of agreement and they managed to complete the project with a high degree of performance, carrying out both the broadcasting and producing assignments well and in time. The training was so inspiring for some, they managed to produce their original show even if they are not on air. Kombolcha and Woldia University did really well in spite of the challenges they are facing at the moment. A channel that didn’t even attend the training, Kore Community,  surprised us delivering on time and in good quality by producing a local peace show and broadcasting the Voice of Peace. All in all, the training was so helpful for most and it achieved its intended results.

 Production

 There are two aspects of production in this project. The production of the national Voice of Peace show in Amharic language to be aired on multiple channels across the community stations and the local original peace shows to be produced by each community channel.

The Voice of Peace was produced with a great quality involving young and experienced journalists, as well as well-known experts in the areas of mis/ dis information and hate speech, with smart editing and mixing layouts involving catchy and soothing background and transitional music, as well as signature jingle and intro theme sound track. Journalists who took part in the show as producers and interviewers include well experienced Meleskachew Ameha, Begna Simesso, Etagegnehu Mekonnen as well as the young broadcasters Abel Endalemaw, and Kassaye Damte. Mahlet Kebede and Hassen Abrar, known on Fana Lamrot show, hosted the program. The experts featured in the show include Getaneh Mekuanint, Solomon Goshu, Befikadu Hailu, Abel Wabella, Rehobot Ayalew, Eyouel Robel. The 13 part series covered key areas of the spread of fake information, hate speech, violence inciting content, and media literacy tools with in the frame work of promoting peace. The show has additional four segments in addition to the core interview session which takes about 50% of the air time. The segments include- message of the day (a 1 minute powerful message on virtues of peace, love, unity, etc.) a warm-up session of lite introductory content as well as a concluding Fun-Fact session where truth mixed with fun is presented.

The other aspect of the production is the local peace shows each community channel is tasked to produce. Attending channels were invited to send a show proposal even before the launch of the training though only few of them responded to the invitation. During the training they were given the assignment again to come up with a show plan to produce a peace promoting show and present it to the group. After the training, each channel was asked to send sample productions as a testimony of their work. Of the 23 channels that attended the training, majority of them, 15, sent samples of their production. 2 of them failed to send because of  internet connectivity problems- Finote Selam and Argoba. 2 of the channels that sent their shows- are not even on air- Kombolcha and Woldia.

Table 1 below shows all the local shows produced by the 15 community channels:

Table 1: Local Peace Radio Shows of Community Channels

Broadcast

 Of the 23 channels who took part in the training, 15 of them reported that they broadcast both the Voice of Peace national show and their own peace program. Of the 15, majority 10 provided detailed broadcast report. The total amount of air time dedicated for this project, as collected from the broadcast report is 6,330 minutes/ 105.5 hours. It can be well understood the figure cane be way higher, considering those channels that didn’t provide detailed broadcast reports,. Across the 15 channels, peace has been promoted 211 times (frequency of airing the program). Broadcast planning and air time allocation were left for each channel to do in the way they want to. Some channels broadcasted two episodes per week. Others prefer to do one episode per week, with a rebroadcast of the same episode. All in all the amount of air time dedicated for this program is so huge, if an attempt was made to air all of these in commercial terms, it would have been very expensive.

Table 2 below shows the broadcast performance of each channel

Table 2: Broadcast Reports of Community Radio Channels

Challenges

As any project, this one too is not free of challenges. In short the challenges can be categorized in to three major parts-

• Unfunctional channels– these are the 6 channels that took part in the project. Of them two of them were active participants in the production of local shows, but with the rest, involving them was a resource wastage
• Unresponsive channels- at least five of the participant radios were disappointingly unresponsive and uncooperative. Sadly, three of them are university channels- AAU, Civil Service (both based in Addis but with very little audience), Haromaya and Adama. The latter one is in stage of expansion as it is opening a TV channel as well
• Challenges of working with community media- there are lots of issues that can be raised here- major ones include the need for regular follow up, weakness of the channels as they rely mainly on volunteers, internal and management related problems, inability to deliver on dateline are worth mentioning here.

Another major challenge that is related to the broadcast medium of radio is that it is hard to measure impact and result.

Achievement

In spite of the aforementioned challenges, all in all this project can be considered a successful one. It is delivered on time and up to expected results. It echoed the need for peace in vast communal areas of the country. It inspired local media to be instrumental in peace building and tackling mis/ dis info and hate speech. For some of them promoting peace is not an easy task. Some are still in the middle of conflict like Wollega which was hesitant initially for fear of offending opposing sides. Others are emerging out of conflict- like Woldia and Kombolcha. But they are at the fore front of the production phase. Theirs a truly heartfelt plea for peace. Majority of them get awakened that they can do something like this, especially considering the formative research we conducted before launching this project. Only close to one-third of the channels (33%) had stated that they have regular peace shows, but only 22% had testified properly and in detail about their peace shows. Nearly half, about 44% of channels did not have peace shows at all. It is a big jump for many to be engaged in such important endeavour.

 Sustainability

Sustainability is the big issue. Will the 17 channels continue to produce the peace shows after this project? With the post-project conversation we had with each channel, we observed two possible scenarios regarding the sustainability of continuing what we started

• Committed channels- some of the participants expressed their commitment to continue producing peace shows. Jimma University is committed to make the show permanent in both languages- Amharic & Affan Oromo. Similarly Dilla University expressed its commitment t continue the work with their peace show Asham in three languages- Amharic, Gedoffa and Affan Oromo. Other committed channels include Ari and Kore from southern Ethiopia as well as Debre Markos and Finote Selam. Though Kombolcha and Woldia are off air now, they too expressed their commitment when they come on air.
• Channels in need of additional support- there are some participants that need further support and encouragement to continue the good work. Wollega is one example. Hesitatnt at first, encouraged after they produced the show, but still unsure how to go about it in the future. This channel seem to intentionally avoid political and controversial content. Channels like Adola Geda Guji, Suude Community, Kembata and Wolaita can do more if supported. Hawassa University is capable but it seems it requires regular follow up. A couple of channels namely Argoba and Dibate seem to work on this cause just for the sake of this project. They need even more aggressive additional support.

Extending this project with a probable follow up season 2 could probably helpful to ensure sustainability of the call for peace. We can frame the upcoming season with a focus may be on the national dialogue, as the first one focused on tackling mis/ dis info and hate speech. Additional input for the upcoming season can be extending the production beyond radio and get in to TV and online streaming as well, without forgetting the need for continuing the local community based peace shows as well.

 Conclusion

Brining and building peace in the current Ethiopian context needs the involvement and cooperation of many players in addition to the media. Political forces, community and religious leaders, conflicting armed groups, the business community and security forces need to contribute their fair share to ensure the realization of peace. The media’s role is to make the call regularly so that the general public as well as the ones who can influence the process get involved in the efforts. We believe The Voice of Peace national show and the local peace shows have started the good cause. But it needs to continue until we see some good results.