Twaweza Tanzania has partnered with an SMS agency, Dar411 Mobile, to pilot a text messaging program. The program will consist of 24 text messages concerning the education, health and water sectors deployed over 4 weeks. The text messages are in Swahili.

The text messages will inform subscribers for free on policy and research relating to citizens and, in particular, service delivery in the areas of health education and water.  The messages will also ask questions focused on citizens' experience.

With the help of Dar411, Twaweza will monitor both the deployment of and feedback from this SMS program. The objective is to learn whether SMS is an effective platform with which citizens can improve public services. If SMS is seen as effective, a longer-term program will be considered with the possibility of regularly providing subscribers with on-demand information about particular services.

To subscribe to this pilot initiative in Tanzania, compose an SMS with the word "Twaweza" and send it to 15678.

Dhamira Communicating Artists and Twaweza have formed a partnership to produce Uncle Kochikochi, which pokes fun at the absurdities of life and shows how ordinary citizens can prod the authorities into doing the right things.

The radio drama encourages listeners to compare and analyze realities – such as practice vs. policies, actual vs. budgets, political promises vs. what happens – and using it to discuss, question and drive change in basic services: education, health, water and freedom of press. The idea is to provoke people to think and engage, to analyze, to speak out and devise solutions to their problems.

Twaweza provides Dhamira with quality research studies and data that can inform the underlying serious basis of the satire, and seed funding for the research and development costs of this new idea. Dhamira develops and produces a high quality show and syndicates it to national and local stations (between 1915hrs and 2000hrs). The partnership envisages 13 weekly episodes will be created and aired in its inaugural season.

The show started airing in late 2010, and by early 2011 five radio stations were airing Uncle KochiKochi. These include the national broadcaster Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation and Sauti FM in Mwanza and Shinyanga, Safari FM for Mtwara and Lindi, Country FM for Iringa, Mbeya and parts of Ruvuma, and Radio Boma in Kilimanjaro. 

Based on feedback received, Dhamira is excited to expand its reach. “We are at the brink of realizing the possibility that we can reach 90 percent of all Tanzanians for ten minutes every day,” says Robert Mwampembwa, its director. It looks like another Twaweza bet of investing in a new idea with start-up funds and ideas is likely to pay off, with millions of Tanzanians having a better chance of being well informed and having a good laugh.

In 2010, a great deal of effort was expended on researching and understanding basic theological positions and the structure, functioning and potential political pitfalls of the main Christian (Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal) and Islamic groups. This was done by establishing contact with key religious leaders, engaging in dialogue, and recruiting a knowledgeable consultant.

Building on this understanding, just prior to the national elections in Tanzania, support was provided to major religious umbrella bodies to develop a joint statement on leadership and accountability to citizens, and the attributes of a good leader. An illustrated booklet in Swahili popularizing these ideas was developed and over 700,000 copies were printed (at unit cost below USD 0.1) and distributed through religious networks and as newspaper inserts in early October 2010. According to our partners, an estimated 2.5-3 million people read and used the booklets. Feedback indicated a strong uptake and positive reaction, with many religious bodies using them in community discussion groups. Many requests were received for additional copies, and a large reprint was undertaken. There is no credible manner of attributing their impact on the elections, though it is notable that many of the themes featured strongly during the campaign in what many observers note was a watershed moment in the country’s history.

Other ideas were explored including the role of religious leaders in monitoring service delivery and flow of funds, and engaging citizens to solve local problems. A particular interest is the health sector, where many services are provided by religious bodies.

Building on the success of this work in 2010, in 2011 Twaweza and Masoko are partnering on an effort where Masoko will visit 27 districts in Tanzania (about a quarter of the country) to inform and engage citizens on two issues: the capitation grant meant to improve quality in primary and secondary schools, and publicizing the Uwezo tool to enable citizens to test their own abilities in literacy and numeracy. Among others, a total of one million copies of three popular materials in Swahili will be distributed to citizens – a story booklet about how a community deals with discovering that their children are not learning, and two pamphlets “My money, my schools” and ‘Are you learning’.

In 2010 Twaweza entered into a partnership with Tanzania Printing Services, one of the largest printers of exercise books in Tanzania, to print and distribute messages on at least 40 million exercise books. The books do not pile up or get lost, for they are sold through the printers’ extremely efficient distribution network in Tanzania.

Each exercise book (in Tanzania they are popularly known as daftari) featured a cartoon character on the front cover inviting readers to turn the page and attempt a test. This is the same Uwezo Test—previously administered by Uwezo to test basic literacy and numeracy among children. After doing the test the reader is encouraged to share it with friends. Inside the back cover of each exercise book there is a list of things that students, teachers, parents can do to improve learning.

“We hope that giving more parents, children and teachers opportunity to look at the test will invite them to measure abilities and discuss what do to at school and home to improve learning,” said, Twaweza Tanzania Programme Manager, Joseph Ngwegwe. In the meantime the learning, monitoring and evaluation unit at Twaweza is keen to assess the extent to which the approach increases understanding and encourages citizen action.

In any case, the marginal unit costs involved in undertaking this partnership are very small, for the approach piggybacks onto a system that works. Twaweza compensates the printer less than USD 0.001 per notebook, or more than one thousand notebooks will carry the information and reach citizens for less than one dollar.
 

Thus d.light and Twaweza entered into an innovative partnership to expand the marketing and availability of subsidized low-cost, high quality lights to secondary school students and teachers. The partnership is designed to have multiple benefits. First, it provides solar lights at an affordable price in a country where 85 percent of the population does not have access to electricity. Second, it intends to enhance learning by providing reliable light at night for learners and teachers. Third, it replaces rudimentary kerosene lanterns that are more costly to run, increase carbon emissions and have been shown to cause serious respiratory illnesses. Fourth, information materials will be included in the packaging of the lights and affixed on to the light fixtures. Fifth, in the course of distribution of lights, telephone numbers will be collected of teachers who get the lights, to enable easy follow-up monitoring on the lights and other relevant aspects.

The business model crafted here is also an interesting experiment. Other than providing the popular materials free of charge (whose unit cost for printing is less than USD 0.1), d.light will be given a challenge amount of USD 1.25 per additional light successfully sold to secondary schools, for up to 100,000 lights. This challenge provides d.light with a nudge and an incentive to achieve far greater scale. Yet payment is based on performance: if only 20% of the target is reached, only 20% of the maximum amount will be paid. It will be interesting to follow whether this challenge model of investing works, and how it could be applied in other contexts.