JamblabAfrica in collaboration with Civic Tech Innovation has organized a webinar to discuss “Africa Elections, Africa Voices: Old and New Roles for Journalism and Civic Tech Community.”
The webinar held on Thursday, 27th May 2021 was facilitated by four panellists: Kathy Magrobi, Founder of Quote This Woman, Ivan Louis Pinno, a co-founder of Digital Woman Uganda, Dr Caroline Khene, the Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University, Daniel Odongo, Implementation Director Ushahidi and the moderator of the programme is the Wits Journalism.
The panellists discussed the roles and strategies for promoting democracy and development during the upcoming elections across Africa.
Excerpts of the questions by the moderators and answers by the panellists follow:
Wits Journalism: “What are the roles of media and various civic tech actors who are typically involved with trying to strengthen citizen engagement, increase transparency, accountability, and democratic governance?”
Magrobi: “Where are the women? Global research the words and actions make news headlines/news analysis. Across the globe news media consistently amplify one part of the population’s voices at the expense of women.
Works to close the gender gap, and to all voices marginalized in the news media. We have a database of 500 leading women we curate, make it easy for journalists/newsrooms to choose women.
The voice that tells the story writes history, we can’t change how many women stand for elections, we can influence how many marginalized voices are foregrounded on election issues.
Put in the sweat factor, you going to have to work hard to get great women to be your sources and if you can train these women to be these great sources. Women’s voices aren’t heard, their stories aren’t reflected and history is written accurately. Women’s lived experiences are critical to the improvement of democracy.”
Louis Pinno: “Supporting women and girls in the rural areas in the technological/online space. Uganda had their general elections in January but the women weren’t participating. Uganda digital provided women with the skills to participate.
“Women in rural areas are unable to send text messages. The training includes how to send, receive messages. We also teach women how to be safe online, as some women are bullied online.
How women stay safe online, we have an SMS platform that assists women. We had an internet shutdown during the election so it was difficult to disseminate the news stories to community members.
It’s been challenging because some women don’t have phones or digital tools. So @uganda_digital has partnered with various organizations to disseminate their information on radios, whereby women can listen as a community.”
Dr Khene: “We need a collaborative effort from civic tech and journalists to encourage citizen engagement and empower citizens. We want journalists to know that there is data and civic techs that provide the data. Typically journalism is written but what about the data. We work with journalists to generate key reports, journalists are key in pointing us to key data as well.
There is an issue of a skills gap, trying to analyze and understand data, there are organizations that are training journalists.”
Odongo: “We created a platform to share their first-hand experiences such as violence in their community for accountability. We use tools to raise the voices of marginalized groups.
We can encourage participation, information needs to trickle down to people who need it and develop tools which are low-tech in order to be accessible to communities.”
Louis Pinno: “We encourage participation by bringing in experts to talk to community members about policy. We also provide them with digital skills/tools in order for women to participate in electoral processes.”
Magrobi: “When we started our biggest challenge we’re experts who were reluctant to join our database. It took a lot of action to convince these experts. We’ve done a lot of media training, who’ve recommended other people, we currently have 500 people on our database.
We think it’s important to allow people to speak in their own language. Not every expert speaks in perfect English, but their voices need to be amplified because their voices are important. We have been able to make a fundamental shift in what news gets platformed.”
Odongo: “The media plays an important role in setting the agenda and need to be mindful in who they place the spotlight on.”
Dr Khene: “You should not rely on technology as the only thing you look to. You have to look at it holistically. Need to make reporting user-friendly.”
Louis Pinno: “So many digital tools are built without the users considered.”
Dr Khene: “Journalists need to look at what is out there, start to promote civic tech. And not underestimating what citizens in rural areas can do, looking at opportunities and what has worked.”
Odongo: “People need to go on the ground and immerse themselves in communities.”
Louis Pinno: “COVID-19 has re-shaped the way we live, we need to innovate tools that are inclusive of communities in rural areas.”
