Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

What communication strategy for promoting tobacco control in Africa? Can the African Media Initiative be part of it?

Here is an ad for a communications officer position with the Gates Foundation. How do you think tobacco control could/should be part of this job? What could/should be a global communication strategy to promote tobacco control in Africa? How could tobacco control be part of the African Media Initiative who just got a new CEO, Eric Chinje?

New website for the Alliance Congolaise de Controle du Tabac: still with problems

10 days after our previous visit, the ACCT website is still incomplete (and with a few typos on the homepage).

Tobacco Control Journalism Fellowship in Nigeria funded by CTFK

Here is one announcement but where are the articles? Where is the beef? There are no details about the $ amount of each award and there is no mention (apparently) of any radio project while radio broadcast remains a dominant medium in Africa. Another copycat reprint of the press release that does not provide any additional information.

What audience for the nosmoke revolution clips?

Visiting the youtube channel of the Nosmoke Revolution advocacy campaign one can see that the most viewed of the 9 videos (apparently) is the spot by model LISSA (Mame Diarra THIAM) with 12000+ views (see her on FB). All the other videos have on average a few hundreds views but for the rappers with a few thousands (but on 2 months instead of only one)

Workshop for journalists in Ouagadougou

Sylviane Ratte continues to travel around the African continent. The journalists invited to this workhop in Ouagadougou seem happy but how many articles or radio programs did they produce, for what investment? Is this a cost effective way to produce tobacco control content in the media? What about paying them directly to produce content? How much is spent on travel and hospitality that could be invested in writing stipends?

Grant makers and media

This article is about the situation in the US but what about the situation in Africa and more precisely what is the grant makers strategy to raise the visibility and awareness about tobacco control issues in African countries/media? Do they even have one? Shouldn't they have one considering the millions involved? Subsidiary question: who is aware of the most recent grant awarded by the Gates Foundation for innovative programs in Africa? Do you know where to look?

Supporting African Journalists Who Report About Tobacco Control?

This article explains how US foundations fund journalists. The Gates Foundation is one of them. In 2008 a reflexion was started about how to support journalists willing to report about tobacco control issues in their country. The most effective way would be to directly compensate journalists for the documents they produce. Such contracts could be designed so that the various aspects of the MPOWER strategy are covered. How about giving it a try? The rate? $100 per story (would have to include at least one picture) and a $100 monthly bonus for the best segment. The rythm? one story per month with a precise deadline. Please let us stop the expensive capacity building workshops and let us directly pay the journalists to produce content for everybody to see.

Studying tobacco control laws in Africa

Visiting the tobacco control laws website initiated by the International Legal Consortium of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids I find analyses of the existing legislation of a few countries (5) but not the texts themselves. Maybe local advocates could provide the original texts so everybody can access them?

About how the Gates Foundation partners with journalists

Here is an interesting post by Reuters blogger Felix Salmon. I wish the Gates Foundation would realize that compensating African journalists to write stories (and produce radio shows as radio is such an important medium in Africa) about tobacco control would be the most cost effective way to raise the awareness and support advocacy about those issues.

Global Integrity: governance research in Africa

This is a very interesting model. Can you imagine what it could achieve for tobacco control, that none of the present projects is doing, despite much bigger funding? Remember that you first learned about it here. Maybe some of your could be interested to be part of this project as local researchers.

Small grants are beautiful, but are there any?

This post is about the effectiveness of "small" grants ($5.000/$10.000 and under). What happened to small grants in the strategy of the present programs? 

What makes an effective campaign?

Each campaign needs to have a focus in four areas throughout the campaign. The campaign needs effective management, it needs the right policy, it needs an effective communication strategy and it needs the right network. These elements interplay with each other.

From the Network Advocacy blog.

Does Gates funding of media taint objectivity?

That's the title of this article in the Seattle Times by Sandi Daughton and Kristi Heim. What do you think?

Gates Foundation: Guide to Actionable Measurement. How to evaluate progress?

The Guide to Actionable Measurement (pdf) is a document published by the Gates Foundation about how they try to evalate their grantee's work. Does it apply to the tobacco control program for Africa?

Cameroon: workshop to train and sensitize journalists to tobacco control

20 journalists took part in this one day workshop in Youndé. Strangely there is only an article in English while 80% of people in camaroon are Frencg speaking and the government controlled Cameroon Tribune is bilingual. Why no article in French about this workshop?

Source: Cameroon Tribune by Victorine BIY