African journalists present during the third Convention of the Parties (COP3) have been galvanized into the creation of blogs with the assistance of Philippe Boucher, communication expert presently working as consultant with the International Development Research Center on the communication strategy of ATSA (African Tobacco Situational Analyses, a project funded by the Gates Foundation). When asked to assess the level of communication of tobacco control in Africa, he said:
“In 2007 I worked for a programme funded by the Norwegian
Cancer Society in which we spent one year to develop Global Link Africa where
they started to create blogs for tobacco control in Africa, so I developed the
blogs of fervent tobacco advocates such as Adeola Akinremi (www.adeola-akinremi.com ) from
Nigeria, Veronique Le Clezio (www.veronique-leclezio.com
) from Mauritius, Pascal Bogui (www.pascal-bogui.com)
from cote d’Ivoire, Francis kabo (www.francis-kabo.com
) for from Mozambique, and Jackie
Tumwine (www.jackie-tumwine.com ) from
Uganda. This gave birth to a new set of tobacco bloggers in Africa. Today, more
and more Africans have seen the importance of this communication tool and as
you can see I have created about 10 blogs since the start of COP3…this make
Africa the number one blogger continent on tobacco control. It is rather
unfortunate that some other organizations have not seen the importance of this
tool. I understand it is because each of them wants to control information on this
issue thus forcing to dwell on traditional websites...”
What
is the difference between a website and a blog?
A
very conspicuous difference is that blogs do not require any technical skills
to manage whereas a website demands the services of a webmaster that most of
the time may not be immediately available thus slowing down the updating
process. So it sometimes takes time for information to be published in a website
as to a blog where as soon as your article is ready, you need not more than
five minutes for it to be on the internet…which can also be dangerous (he laughs). Blogs are also very interactive
communication tools! Blogs are considerably cheap as compared to traditional
websites.
But
do you think this is the best means of communicating tobacco looking into our
local realities where not everyone can have access to a computer not talk of
internet?
It
is true that the business of trading internet is still a dilemma in Africa…but
it is a tremendous potential tool for tobacco control advocates to communicate
amongst themselves, for researchers to put information at the disposal of these
advocates. Not many people in Africa are interested in tobacco related. This means
blogs on tobacco control should be focused on a specific audience (e.g. professionals
in the field as mentioned above) who will intern relay information to the
general public. A good example on the
importance of tobacco related blogs is in Nigeria where radio programs where
produced for a local radio and put on internet for free download and airing by who
ever. http://www.tobaccoandyou.com/ has more on the Nigerian experience.
If the tobacco industry’s efforts remain unchecked,
they will continue to develop new and innovative campaigns to create a positive
image of their product and attract new users. This conclusion forces
journalists and other tobacco experts and advocates to be more and more
involved in investigating the “hidden” efforts made by tobacco industries to
counter our global strategy to free the world from the dungeon of tobacco.
To prevent the population from being enticed by the
generous mask worn by the tobacco industries, journalists and communication
experts are faced by the challenge to develop communication strategies on
anti-tobacco that will reach the general public.
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