A thought-provoking session on ‘Impact beyond borders: Communications for Development’ with panelists from across Africa unfolded on Wednesday, 24 May 2023, Day 3 of Africa Communications Week (ACW).
The panel host, Funmilola Morakinyo, Communications Coordinator at session organiser LEAP Africa, a youth-focused leadership development organisation, noted that ACW is a week-long conversation bringing to the table best practices from all corners of the continent. She remarked that the audience for the webinar consisted of participants from across Kenya, South Africa (SA), Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia, and Nigeria, showing truly how ACW was living up to its overarching theme of a ‘Borderless Africa’.
She introduced the keynote speaker, Kehinde Ayeni, Executive Director, LEAP Africa, as an experienced resource specialising in communications for development and impact.
Speaking from Napa Valley in Northern California close to San Francisco, Kehinde noted that, given her background in communications for 10 years, she firmly believes that ‘we have one of the most important and relevant jobs of our times.’
Bringing the truth to the fore, guarding against the danger of a single story
“Communications specialists and professions, particularly those in the development sector, really need champions to drive campaigns. Upskilling is one of the most important aspects that continues to create opportunities we love,” she averred.
Kehinde noted that when communicating in development, you are a frontline worker, and that, during COVID, development communications professionals were accordingly classified as essential workers.
Emphasising that “we have the beauty of creating something out of nothing”, she reiterated that, while communications is a rewarding career, it is a difficult job, particularly in development communications. Here, speaking of impact across borders implies that far beyond selling a product, it is all about dignity of people, labour, ethnicity, tribes, and this poses a huge responsibility to share such stories of humanity with the world, she stressed.
She also noted that development communications professionals have a responsibility to shape – and NOT disguise – the truth. “This is difficult because we have donors and funders who want to know how we have performed. We speak so much about successes but not failures. Responsibility of shaping and not disguising means reflecting on what is the actual truth. We need to live upto the best of our ability in communicating the truth,” she emphasised, adding that we must also guard against the danger of a single story.
“Chimamanda broke records a decade ago when she wrote on the danger of telling a single story. There is a difference when you are an African and go out in the diaspora and when you are an African born in a different country,” noted Kehinde, cautioning that we must guard against self-aggrandisement, burying content in activities or spinning a narrative that’s for investors rather than the targeted communities for the initiative.
Secondly, she noted that, when speaking of communications for impact and development, you are an institutional knowledge carrier and must be mindful of the huge responsibility you carry.
Finally, she stepped away from speaking about people and communications to the actual power of communications. “When we are in the development space, we love words such as influence and impact. We have power when we do the work we do, to communicate impact and wield influence. We are in the era when impact and influence allow us to promote inclusivity and innovation in diverse communities. For instance, what’s happening in Nigeria in Abuja is not what’s happening in Lagos. There are so many people who are marginalised – women, youth, and differently gendered – who are asking to get a voice. We must think about framing the story so we are communicating hope and creating positivity,” she concluded, noting that the panel would reflect on aspects such as whether our communications are reaching the unreached as it is important that we understand all about these dualities and provoke change in a continent where ‘communities (rather than the customer) are king’.
Funmilola thanked Kehinde for her rich insights and mentioned that the session would be available on YouTube for the audience to refer to.
Pan-African panel on impact beyond borders, communications for impact
Taking over from the session host, panel moderator Ellen Ukpi, Communications Manager at LEAP, echoed that the audience from across Africa screamed Borderless Africa and went on to introduce the panel members who also represented experts from across Africa.
From West Africa, Blessing Sunday spoke as the Marketing and Communications Manager at the Nigeria-based FATE Foundation; East Africa was represented by Kenya’s Fiona Imbali, a strategic communications consultant with 16 years’ experience across the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), Head of Communications and Coordinator of the Livelihoods Programme at the Organisation of African Instituted Churches (OAIC), and graduate consultant for Christian Aid UK; Pan African expert Moky Makura who serves as the CEO of Africa No Filter in South Africa while being from Nigeria where she started out as an author and journalist; while North Africa had Morocco’s Khadija Idrissi Janati, Founder and Managing Director at Tn’Koffee, a Public Affairs & Media Relations agency based in Casablanca.
Interpreting impact beyond borders
Blessing Sunday spoke about what impact beyond borders means to her on the note of how important communications is to human interaction. “Every human being has the need to express themselves, exchange ideas, and to find common ground regardless of challenges. Communication is life! I don’t know how much we can achieve if we don’t do what is expected of us as communications professionals,” she emphasised.
Back to what impact beyond borders is from a communications perspective, Blessing notes that it is simply speaking to how the power of communications can help us define and refine the perspectives of the community and society, and to break physical or non-physical barriers to penetrate into a community or place so we can change their views.
It is about communicating what you do, how you do it, and why you do what you do, she added, noting that development communication is for the betterment of communities, and this makes it essential to communicate what we stand for. So, if your goal is to eradicate poverty and you have used different communication channels to achieve this strategy successfully, you can replicate this strategy in a different community in a different region – the implications of what you do goes beyond where you are, she emphasised. If you understand the communities you are working with, there will then be tangible changes in the life of the people you are called upon to serve, she noted.
Impact beyond borders is considering how you can deploy various strategies and channels at your disposal to affect the lives of the people you are called upon to serve, beyond the four walls of where you are, she concluded.
Solutions Communications is the way to go: Look back to go forward
For her part, Moky Makura rued that there is a trend among institutions to all too often display the wrong focus in development communications, “There tends to be a focus on what is not working. What we are trying to get people to understand is that we can speak about what is not working, but in a positive way. We call this ‘solutions communications’,” Moky emphasised. She noted that when speaking of themes such as poverty, gender-based violence or child health it is important to approach it from the perspective of what’s worked – the minister behind it or the health worker who implemented it – and from there you can go back to the general challenge and the issues on the ground.
She remarked that Solutions Communications requires you to go back to something that you did before, and to understand how it worked. Of course, we will always have new communications, but it is important to go back to what worked, as stories tend to ladder upto narratives and it is time to change the narrative, she concluded.
Why are communications important to Africa, and the challenges in the way
Khadija Idrissi Janati started by addressing how communications are important to Africa. “We are living at a time when Africa is becoming the center of the world. It is no longer about potential, but about today. There is an important role that communications and communicators can play.”
She emphasised that we as Africans don’t know our own continent, cultures, specificities of each economy and region – so an effective communications campaign must take that into consideration. Secondly, we must create campaigns that highlight Africa’s success and achievements if we wish to change the narrative, she stressed. Thirdly, we must build connections that foster collaboration and facilitate synergies – how can we make a campaign in Cameroon visible to those in Morocco, SA, and Uganda, and create in them the feeling that we share a lot and build on each other’s experiences, she cogently asked.
On challenges, she noted that this challenge of diversity – 3,000 culture, 2,000 languages and 54 countries – poses a big opportunity too, so long as we are open to thinking global and acting local. The second challenge is that everyone thinks that European standards are the only standards while Africa does have its own standards, and we have the responsibility to showcase them and get buy-in from these local standards as these come from our own culture, know-how and expertise, she concluded.
Technology influence on communication – challenges of false information
Finally, Fiona noted that the advent of digital technologies meant that people are sharing a lot of information online, implying on the flip side that a lot of misinformation and disinformation is also doing the rounds.
“In Kenya, for example, we have the Media Council of Kenya for ethics in the media space. This body ensures that all the information going out to the public is correct. There is a lot of training for mass media and journalists on how to identify and flag false information and check the various organisation as well as their accounts on social media that are sharing information on these platforms. As communications professionals, we have the responsibility to understand and stay updated on the ethical considerations that have been set across countries we are working in, to ensure that we understand the impact of the information we are reporting and sharing on social media and ensure the information we are getting on social media is valid and ethical to our various partners on social media,” she concluded.
Moving to the heart of the communications function
On how communications for change and impact could take a more central place from being a support function, Moky Makura noted that one of the challenges we have is that we see communications as a tool for publicity alone, but it has the potential to be a far more strategic tool.
“We have local solutions for local problems – in other words, Africans have agency. It is the local NGOs that are making a real difference on the ground. Communications must not only show local progress on the ground but also show local agency. There is a way of showing innovation in problem solving. It should not just be a tool for publicity but showing progress and agency,” she stated, cautioning that we must guard against the unsettling feeling that global development communications are perfect, and they do not face any challenges like we do on the ground in Africa.
Leveraging technology to advance development across Africa
Blessing Sunday noted that the advancement of technology means we are living in a global village where the barriers of geographical limitations are broken down. “FATE Foundation is a non-profit organization that helps Nigerian businesses with the support they need to scale and succeed in their business, not just in Nigeria but in countries across Africa. Every year we produce an impact report on what we have been able to achieve in the year – our strategies, our gender-lens programme and what we have been able to do to inspire entrepreneurs. We also engage in research activities, and policy advocacy to create an entrepreneurship ecosystem and sustainable development in the country.”
This gives them the ability to take informed decisions and through technology, to access information as much as possible, she noted, adding that, be it elearning courses for entrepreneurs or impact information for fostering partnerships and collaboration as well as attracting and onboarding new investors, technology has a key role to play.
This also causes us to pose questions such as – Which of these platforms will best serve you? How can you reach the people that you are called to serve? – she emphasised. In a nutshell, technology has really advanced our work at FATE Foundation, and we should use all forms of technology to drive our objectives and achieve our goals, she concluded.
Unique challenges in working across Africa
Elaborating on the challenges of thinking global and acting local, Khadija noted that the first challenge is to explain the Africa media scene to companies located outside the continent or having their Africa regional offices in Dubai, Europe or in the best case, in Morocco. The first challenge is to explain that we might be on the continent, but it is a continent not a country, and we will not be available as Tn’Koffee in DRC, let’s say, but have a partner that can support them there. That is also the beauty of a network like ACW in building these partnerships, she averred.
When collaborating, the second challenge is to explain that we cannot do the same things in same ways in different countries such as Morocco and Senegal where we have offices. Even in South Africa, attracting media interest is a different ball game, she explained, elaborating on how different media markets work in different countries.
We still want to convey a united image of the continent, so we focus on our commonalities and what unites us, stating we have an African culture that means it is best to have an office on the ground like in Morocco rather than in Dubai or Europe. Then, she rued that external stakeholders also speak about Africa as a continent within which countries do not have political stability. However, it is upto us as communications professionals to explain that it is only some parts of Africa that are not secure and guard against the danger of tarring the entire continent with the same brush, she concluded.
Working on strategic projects for fostering change across East Africa
Fiona noted that she had realised that many organisations do not take communications seriously till the end of the project, when they run to in-house teams or consultants to disseminate the outcomes of a project which may have run for around three years or so. Project officers must not work in silos and only incorporate communications at the later stages, she rued. Hence, she noted that she actively counsels executive directors of companies to rope in communications consultants at the start of the project when they can contribute the most – and advise at every stage of the project implementation.
“As I train people on strategic communications, I tell them that it is important to understand the objectives of such communications, and then also to understand who the audiences are. If you want a campaign on Twitter or TikTok, these may be popular channels but not where your specific audiences are,” she cautioned.
For instance, in a project on agricultural communications, church organisations were leveraged to reach farmers across Tanzania, Fiona stated, noting that she told a story around this initiative online that then reached donors in the EU, who reached out directly to these farmers to provide them funding. That’s truly impact beyond borders with well-told stories, she emphasised, also elaborating on a climate-change mitigation and adaptation strategy under a Green Climate Fund initiative for African Union countries where Kenya, Ghana and Tanzania came together to collaborate on projects considered impactful on the ground.
She also noted that behaviour-change communications, for instance, needs a deep understanding of cultural specificities and audience mindsets, so they avoid backlash from the communities. Getting girls back to school post-COVID in Kenya and Uganda was an important community initiative she undertook for ensuring such students are not segregated when they return to school. Moreover, monitoring, evaluation and learning are crucial to course correct if a communication is not having desired impact from the start, she concluded.
How to catalyse best-in-class borderless development communications across Africa
On this common question asked across panelists, Khadija concluded that ‘we need to know each other more.’ It is better if we own upto the responsibility as communicators to get to know more about each other and learn the differences so we can identify the commonalities and build upon them, she emphasised.
Blessing added that ‘no one can tell our stories better than we can’. If we allow others to tell our stories, it will be piecemeal at best, she cautioned, emphasising how much she appreciates the communications professionals who tell the story as it is, echoing the keynote speaker views on living up to the truth in telling the story. Know who and where your audience is and use the Power Interest Matrix to channel the message, she stressed. Identify the change you want to see and create the strategies to make that change happen with collaborations and partnerships, she concluded, adding that ‘it is possible to replicate successes across geographies by being strategic and intentional.’
Finally, Fiona harked to an African proverb: ‘Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero’. She noted that she was fascinated by African attitudes when she goes to the villages and sees innovation as well as people in poverty living their best lives – ‘for ensuring these people tell their stories, policies are put in place to make sure they are factored into decision making, and the voices of the marginalised are heard – we must put our best foot forward as communicators and ensure governments are involved in this effort as well.’
To watch the full recording of the webinar and see the panelists for yourself, click here!
