Partners Uganda :: Programs :: Twaweza.org

Singing for a change

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:12:00 +0000

Twaweza is working on a new partnership with Buzz Media in Uganda. Recognising the powerful potential of music in bringing about social change and inspiration through entertainment, this partnership represents a new experiment for Twaweza. Working with some of Uganda’s leading artists via Buzz Media, Twaweza conducted a group session on our values and ideals. Through this process, artists who were passionate about the vision signed up to create a series of songs with music videos on the theme of citizens making a difference in their own lives. The artists will also act as ambassadors for the message, giving interviews and promoting their work with Twaweza to their audiences.

This is the first attempt to partner with leading musicians in East Africa and we look forward to seeing the results. Although monitoring the effects of songs individually is a challenging task, and is often part of the reason why it is difficult to justify these types of activities, we will be looking more holistically at our work in promoting citizen agency messages. The songs, their videos and artist activity will be one piece of a larger puzzle that aims to embed the idea that ‘it’s us’ (Ni Sisi) in the popular consciousness of Ugandans.

Although the videos are still in production, the songs are all complete and we wanted to share them as early as possible. We will also be posting the videos here soon. What do you think? Send us your feedback to info@twaweza.org

Jackie Chandiru - education

MUN G, T Bro and Akello – citizen agency

OS, Michael Ross and Rehema - water

Bebe Cool - health

TRAC FM: Citizens keeping an eye through radio and SMS

Sun, 08 May 2011 15:56:00 +0000

Interactive radio talk-shows are the most popular platforms for political debate in Uganda. Twaweza partner TRAC FM builds on the success of these shows and involves citizens in high frequency monitoring of public services, such as reporting on teacher absenteeism, availability of text books, drug stock outs, waiting time at clinics, teacher payments, election proceedings, functionality of water points, potholes etc. TRAC FM combines Radio, Mobile, Print, graphic design and online media to create a new and popular approach to public monitoring of service delivery.

Together with local media partners, TRAC FM identifies pressing and popular inconveniences, often related to public services. The user-friendly TRAC FM software is used by radio presenters to hold surveys during their talk-show to which listeners can react via SMS (free of charge). During these popular radio debates, listeners are presented with a specific question which allows them to report on a failing public service, give their opinion on pressing public matters or elect worst or best service provider within a certain sector. Incoming text messages are collected by TRAC and instantly processed and visualized in an innovative way. The visualization is relayed to the FM stations where the radio talk-show host interprets, presents and feeds the data back into the public online debate. The data gathered during the radio-polls are processed into attractive infographics (Graphs, Maps and other visualization) and used in background stories in Print Media. With the support of Twaweza, TRAC FM was able to develop its ideas, design and test the software, with May 2011 as the set date to go live in partnership with Nation Media Group.

Uganda Radio Network: News for millions of rural Ugandans

Sun, 08 May 2011 15:53:00 +0000

Twaweza partner Uganda Radio Network (URN) reaches and informs between 10 and 20 million Ugandans daily with a variety of news and perspectives relevant to their lives and their every day surroundings. URN provides daily news and a weekly audio magazine to more than 50 radio stations in Uganda. News items, including sound bites, are posted on the secure URN website to which radio stations have access against a monthly fee. Subscribed stations usually broadcast all posted news and typically a news item reaches several millions of listeners instantly, often directly translated by local stations into one of Uganda’s 58 local languages. This provides URN with an unprecedented outreach and it has a central role in providing of news and insights to rural Uganda. URN plays an important role in protecting freedom of radio journalists operating in Uganda.

Twaweza supports URN to both increase the number of news items as well as their quality. To bring out the voice of ordinary Ugandans, Twaweza’s support is helping URN to expand its regional network of journalists and mentor member radio stations as well as independent journalists in the districts. Twaweza support is also enabling URN to make its website more interactive and powerful, and to try out some of the innovations URN always wanted, such as participatory radio, broadcast of public debates and syndicated radio shows on more radio stations.

CU@SCHOOL: Tracking School attendance in Uganda

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:12:00 +0000

Can mobile phones help bringing primary school teachers and pupils back into the classroom? Teachers’ absenteeism in Uganda is one of the highest in the world, with obvious implications for the quality of education. With absenteeism rates of 20% – 30% varying per districts, teacher absenteeism costs the Ugandan government US$ 30 million every year for paid services that are not delivered (World Bank, MoES). And if teachers are absent, why attend as a pupil? 27% of Ugandan children are not in school at any given moment, despite free universal education. And it appears pupil drop-out is on the rise. Surprisingly, despite these dramatic figures, no routine data is available on pupil and teacher attendance.

The CU@SCHOOL pilot project by SNV Netherlands Development Organisation in Uganda in collaboration with Makerere University Department for Computer and Information Technology uses mobile phones to monitor teacher and pupil attendance and absenteeism in 100 primary schools on a weekly basis. Mobile phone coverage is exceptional in Uganda: Almost one out of three people own a phone, and mobile networks reach 90% of Uganda.

This pilot project has been made possible with the support of Twaweza, which helped improving the initial the concept, design the software and implement the project. Twaweza also supports the result measuring and learning and communication of the findings. Provided the pilot is successful, measured using a randomized control trial methodology, the aim is to integrate the use of mobile technology in Uganda’s new Education Management Information System currently under development.

How does CU@SCHOOL work? Each Friday the head teachers type in attendance figures of boys and girls and of male and female teachers, using a simple pre-loaded form on their mobile phone. At the moment the form is sent, the numbers are automatically entered in a digital database, replacing any paper forms and separate manual data entry. The data is visualized (graphs, tables, geographical maps) real-time on the computers of district officials for their action. To engage school communities, information is also sent to the public domain in the form of a (limited) number of 4-page newspapers and local radio shows. These will not only inform people about the situation in their school, but also provide inspiring examples of actions others have taken themselves to improve their school, or how they engaged with their school management and local leaders. Targeted SMS messages will be sent out as soon the technology allows.

The pilot uses revolutionary open source software called openXdata: any data, anywhere, anytime on any device. Under leadership of Makerere University in Kampala, the software is developed by a consortium and is designed for the African rural context. OpenXdata is user friendly and allows for error-free capture of large datasets and digital photos on simple phones. More expensive phones will also support other features such as GPS. Rather than SMS technology, openXdata uses forms that are sent on GPRS, keeping the cost as low as 1 US dollar for 2,000 messages.

So can mobile phones bring teachers and pupils back in the classrooms? We will find out in the second half of 2011, when the pilot is concluded. Teacher and pupil absenteeism is a problem in many countries, and the CU@SCHOOL concept may be easily adapted to other contexts.

For more information contact Henry Kimera or Peter Wakholi.