"It aims at providing a holistic view of digital transformation in the agriculture sector of 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The region’s digital agriculture landscape is assessed through six key themes, namely: infrastructure, digital penetration, policy and regulation, business environment,
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human capital and agro-innovation. Beyond the analysis of the region against the six focal themes, the report presents both the status-quo and challenges faced by countries in their digital transformation journeys, which can assist policymakers to identify possible areas of intervention to drive the process of agricultural digitalization in the region. It highlights the need to strengthen digital infrastructure for universal connectivity, to connect the unconnected in sub-Saharan Africa and to support the integration of digital technologies to advance digital agricultural transformation." (Foreword)
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"Das Werk bietet, nach Ländern bzw. Regionen aufgeschlüsselt, einen kompakten und aktuellen Überblick über geschichtliche Herkunft, weitere Entwicklungen und aktuelle Herausforderungen der afrikanischen Kirche aus katholischer Sicht. Dabei liegt ein Akzent auf den Beziehungen der Ortskirche zu a
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nderen Konfessionen und Religionen. Experten aus den jeweiligen Ländern bzw. Kenner der jeweiligen Situation vor Ort ermöglichen einen raschen und gründlichen Zugang zu den Besonderheiten der Kirchen und ihrer jeweiligen Rolle in den afrikanischen Gesellschaften heute. Dabei werden die Komplexität und die Vielfalt der verschiedenen Situationen innerhalb Afrikas deutlich." (Klappentext)
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"For the first time, a complete mapping of the film and audiovisual industry in 54 States of the African continent is available, including quantitative and qualitative data and an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses at the continental and regional levels. The report proposes strategic recomme
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ndations for the development of the film and audiovisual sectors in Africa and invites policymakers, professional organizations, firms, filmmakers and artists to implement them in a concerted manner. The film and audiovisual industry in Africa has the potential to create over 20 million jobs and generate US$20 billion in revenues per year." (Short summary, page 2)
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"Radio is the dominant news source in Liberia, tuned in “every day” or “a few times a week” by 87% of adults. Almost four in 10 citizens (38%) say they regularly get news from the Internet and social media, while only about one in five are regular consumers of news via television (21%) and n
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ewspapers (16%). Three-fourths (76%) of Liberians say the media should “constantly investigate and report on government mistakes and corruption.” Six in 10 citizens (61%) say the media should be free to publish without government interference. But only one in five (19%) see Liberia’s media as “somewhat” or “completely” free. Despite support for media freedom, majorities say the government should be able to restrict the sharing of false information (74%), information that criticizes or insults the president (69%), hate speech (68%), and information or opinions that the government disapproves of (59%). Politicians (76%) and government officials (74%) are most widely seen as knowingly spreading false information. Among Liberians who have heard of social media, most (80%) see its impact on society as positive, although majorities also think it makes people more susceptible to fake news (73%) and more intolerant of other viewpoints (66%). More than seven in 10 Liberians (72%) say access to social media and the Internet should not be regulated by the government." (Key findings, page 2)
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"With the exception of the introduction of new press passes for the journalists by the Deputy Minister of Information and the harassment that followed its implementation, the media landscape in Liberia in May and June has been open and free. Even though the Ministry of Information reduced the freque
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ncy of updates on social media and stopped the regular press briefings especially in May, information about COVID-19 incidents and prevalence was generally available through the NPHIL website and social media pages. The information from the NPHIL helped the media greatly in producing news stories and articles. However, the recession in business and the continued drop in advertising and sponsorship significantly impacted media operations and viability. Due to the financial constraints, some journalists have been laid off, while some fulltime employees have been made freelancers. The situation has also made it difficult to honour salary obligations in some media houses." (Conclusion, page 7)
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"Media Audience Mapping & Targeting Techniques in West Africa: 1. Audience measurement and ratings culture: The culture of audience measurement and ratings is still very rudimentary in much of West Africa. Within the current media milieu, where new technologies are yielding new forms of content and
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channels, and given the trends towards multi-media, cross-media and trans-media models, audience insights need to be mainstreamed into the routines of media work by removing the skills deficits and logistics barriers to such effort [...] Media Capacity Building & Institutional Sustainability in West Africa: 1. Journalism professional training: Current journalism training activities have often not been informed by prior diagnosis of particular need, and are not designed to respond to the peculiar realities of the media in West Africa. Training models need to be more customised, coherent and comprehensive by ensuring that beneficiaries go beyond field reporters to include all actors along the value chain; combining a mix of models that are bespoke to particular circumstances; by training and renewing the skills and competences of media practitioners to respond to the digital media ecology [...] Media Ownership Patterns & Implications for Democratic Plurality in West Africa: 1. Regulation of ownership: There are growing concerns about a gradual and insidious hijacking of the media sphere by few dominant private owners and political patrons. Such an outcome raises the spectre of substituting state monopolies with private monopolies. There is a need for regulatory reforms to ensure that pluralism of ownership and diversity of interests are protected and promoted. This could include regulatory restrictions on multiple ownerships, mergers and network affiliations. There must also be transparency and equity in (especially broadcast) licensing processes, and in access to ownership and stakeholder information [...]" (Findings and recommendations, page 2-4)
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"This report presents findings and recommendations from the whole-of-Intermediate Result (IR) evaluation of activities generated from the USAID Civil Society and Media Project Appraisal Document (PAD) created in 2015. The evaluation included two current activities—Liberia Accountability and Voice
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Initiative (LAVI) and Liberia Media Development (LMD)—and incorporated information and interviews from the Civil Society and Media Leadership (CSML) activity, which predated the PAD. The evaluation determined how USAID activities made progress toward achieving the Project Purpose—Increased influence of citizens in the governance of public goods and services—and provided recommendations to inform development of a future Civil Society and Media strategy.
The evaluation found that the PAD contributed to increasing opportunities for civil society organizations (CSOs) and media outlets to play a “watchdog” role over governance. However, evidence is lacking that (1) CSOs can sustain the coalition approach beyond current USAID support, (2) CSOs can use the coalition approach to mobilize citizens more broadly to engage with government decision makers, and (3) media outlets can increase the quality of news and information disseminated to citizens.
Critical gaps exist in making connections among the three stakeholder groups within governance accountability systems: (1) Political Leaders, (2) CSOs and Media Outlets, and (3) Citizens. A key priority for a future PAD would be to create interactive information and activity loops that better connect political leaders to citizens, using CSO coalitions and media outlets as channels through which citizens directly engage with government institutions." (Abstract)
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"Our study is the first to identify and analyse who is shaping African Twitter conversations during elections over the past year. The study found that 53 per cent of the leading voices on Twitter around ten elections on the continent during the past year came from outside the country in which the el
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ections were contested. Bots, and accounts displaying machine-like behaviour, were active across all elections, particularly in Kenya, where they accounted for a quarter of all influential accounts. One of the more surprising findings from the study was the limited influence politicians had on the conversation. Rwanda was the exception, where 1 in every 3 influential handles was a political account – the highest figure across all elections analysed. This doesn’t mean politicians weren’t being talked about. Many of the top hashtags included references to politicians or political parties, including #UmaAngolaParaTodos in Angola, #Weah in Liberia and #Kagame in Rwanda. This study demonstrates that people continue to seek out the voices they trust with established journalists and news outlets consistently ranked in the top three influencers across all elections. With fake news and bots influencing conversations on social media, people continue to search for traditional sources of verified, accurate information." (Introduction)
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"In this moment of unprecedented humanitarian crises, the representations of global disasters are increasingly common media themes around the world. The Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action explores the interconnections between media, old and new, and the humanitarian challenges that
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have come to define the twenty-first century. Contributors, including media professionals and experts in humanitarian affairs, grapple with what kinds of media language, discourse, terms, and campaigns can offer enough context and background knowledge to nurture informed global citizens. Case studies of media practices, content analysis and evaluation of media coverage, and representations of humanitarian emergencies and affairs offer further insight into the ways in which strategic communications are designed and implemented in field of humanitarian action." (Publisher description)
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"The relationship between the media and security agencies, including those in the law enforcement and intelligence services, has always been a delicate one. In the West African context, this relationship is often characterized by frequent clashes, arising from a somewhat startling inability of eithe
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r side to fully appreciate the role of the other in society, particularly in democratic governance. This report pulls together experiences and reflections from Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone, distilling lessons learnt and best practices in this regard and outlining a framework to inform future initiatives by a variety of stakeholders." (www.mediasupport.org)
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"La relation entre les médias et les agences de sécurité, y compris les services de police et de renseignement, a toujours été délicate. Dans le contexte de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, cette relation est souvent caractérisée par des affrontements fréquents, résultant d'une incapacité quelque pe
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u surprenante des deux parties à apprécier pleinement le rôle de l'autre dans la société, en particulier dans la gouvernance démocratique. Ce rapport rassemble les expériences et les réflexions du Liberia, du Ghana et de la Sierra Leone, distillant les leçons apprises et les meilleures pratiques à cet égard et esquissant un cadre pour informer les initiatives futures d'une variété de parties prenantes." (www.mediasupport.org)
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"In this paper we assess the electoral consequences of candidate selection into the supply of widely-disseminated programmatic information in the setting of Liberia, where clientelism is pervasive and the media sector is weak. We partnered with USAID and the NGO Internews to study the impact of rand
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omized elements of a nationwide initiative to hold debates for all 73 House of Representatives seats ahead of the Liberian election of October 2017. Beyond lawmaking, House members in Liberia control access to development funds as well as play key roles in the allocation and implementation of public goods, and thus voters have incentives to care about the policy priorities of the candidates and vote accordingly. However, historically, votes have been bought as often as won (Bowles et al., 2017). In an effort to improve democratic accountability, Internews organized 129 standardized debates, with at least one in each electoral district, to solicit the policy promises of the participating candidates. In the debates, the 59% of candidates who participated were asked a series of questions by moderating journalists on particular issues of local policy relevance, most often relating to district schools, primary healthcare facilities, and infrastructural investments. Rather than large townhall-style debates, the emphasis was on soliciting concrete policy platforms and promises from the candidates that would then be rebroadcast by community radio stations. To shock the supply of policy promises, we randomly varied the intensity of invitation efforts to persuade candidates to participate in the debates. The decision to participate is risky, particularly in clientelistic settings where the returns to programmatic competition can be both limited and highly uncertain. Candidates who ‘win’ a debate may enjoy greater publicity and net electoral gains, but ex ante they risk performing poorly, revealing their policy priorities to be disconnected from their constituents and restricting their ability to target campaign promises to small groups of influential voters. These risks are especially pronounced for the leading candidates (incumbents and their challengers), who enjoy greater resources for campaigning, are adapted to the existing clientelistic equilibrium, and are more likely to be attacked by opponents to gain publicity." (Pages 2-3)
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"Gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts begannen indigen-christliche Eliten in Asien und Afrika, sich stärker in der kolonialen Öffentlichkeit ihrer Länder zu artikulieren. Sie gründeten ihre eigenen Journale, kritisierten Missstände in Gesellschaft und Missionskirchen, beteiligten sich an sozialen Be
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wegungen und entwickelten eine nicht-missionarische Sicht auf das Christentum. Der Sammelband stellt die Ergebnisse eines Forschungsprojektes dar, das der Analyse indigen-christlicher Journale als eines bislang weitestgehend vernachlässigten Quellenkorpus gewidmet ist und singuläre neue Einsichten in religiöse Emanzipationsprozesse in Asien und Afrika um die Wende vom 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert erlaubt." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This research looks at the information needed by in-country development stakeholders with an emphasis on accountability actors including civil society organizations, charities, government workers, and the media. To collect this information, semi-structured interviews were conducted in Sierra Leone
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and Liberia. The majority of interviewees wanted information about financial resources and the channels they flowed through, and all respondents wanted information on the services provided and where the work was happening subnationally, suggesting that these two sets of information may be the most important. Unfortunately, information on subnational locations and services provided is infrequently available through open aid data portals, implying a need to update what aid information is shared." (Page 1)
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"Five weeks prior to the 2011 general election in Liberia, women in randomly selected villages were allocated radios and organized into groups to listen regularly to radio programs on the electoral process broadcast by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). The field experiment was designed
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to ascertain the direct effects of women's access to politically-relevant information through radio broadcasting on their political behaviors and attitudes in a post-war context. Results point to positive significant effects of access to United Nations Mission in Liberia Radio on female political participation both at a national and a local level. Communities that received the intervention also exhibited smaller gender gaps across the majority of outcome indicators. The results suggest that UNMIL Radio effects likely occurred through increased political efficacy of women voters in the lead up to the elections. The study concludes that women's exposure to politically-relevant information through mass-broadcasting, even if brief, can boost their political efficacy and participation in public life." (Abstract)
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"The findings show that community radio stations in Anglophone West African countries are owned and controlled by the community; the community radio in Anglophone West African countries is regulated along the broad guidelines that guide broadcasting in those countries; and community radio is used fo
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r various purposes with the central focus on development. The study recommends that Governments should encourage the operation of community radio by granting license to willing communities; avoid undue interference in the operation of the community radio; and big organizations and non-governmental organizations should support community radio financially and logistically and the Nigerian government should commence the licensing of community radio in the country." (Abstract)
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"Overall, the program set out what it achieved to do—namely to strengthen the institutional capacity of civil society organizations to improve their credibility, visibility, effectiveness and sustainability. There is evidence that many partner CSOshave refined theirmission, developed a multi-year
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strategic plan, a communications plan, a gender policy and an HR policy. In addition, they are beginning to integrate new financial reporting and M&E structures. All of the partner CSOs have improved their sustainability byreceiving additional funds to continue their work, and many of them hav developed strategies to diversify their revenue generation, such as expanding their offices to rent out board rooms. A number of organizations are eager to pass their new knowledge onto others, with many training peer CSOs on what they learned through the Search program. Finally, the program was effective in improving their own confidence, with all of the partner CSOs expressing their appreciation of the program, and in particular the freedom they had to define their own priorities and objectives.A number of lessons emerged during the course of implementation that are relevant for Search’s future work in civil society strengthening, as well as for other organizations working in this sector: 1. The participatory benchmarking approach is useful to help organizations track improvments in their organziational capacity over time. However, there was a tendency for CSOs to overstate what was possible within a limited timeframe. As a result, benchmarks were not consistently met, and many of the capacity-related development were not fully institutionalized by the project end. 2. The integration of radio programs with other civil society organizing approaches—town hall meetings, workshops, and house to house outreach—is an effective way to improve awareness and engagement of citizens in governance reform issues on a mass scale. 3. Programs to improve the capacity and sustainability of CSOs, and to professionalize the sector, are crucial but often overlooked, in efforts to improve local governance in fragile and trasitional countries such as Liberia. 4. There is a need to continue efforts to link civil society actors together for cohesive action and to further improve the enabling environment for civil society in Liberia by providing opportunities for CSOs to develop strategic collaborations, improve organizational capacity development, and attract donor funds to support their work." (Conclusions)
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"Heather Bourbeau finds that in a crisis, media professionals and humanitarian aid providers negotiate a delicate balance between thorough and consistent coverage, and coverage that sensationalizes a crisis and leads to hysteria, misery, and fatigue. In "F" Bourbeau compares the media coverage of th
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e Ebola crisis in Liberia to reporting on the Second Congo War in the DRC. She finds that when the topic is a contagious disease outbreak, media themes can swing the international community into action, but can also create unnecessary fear in countries far from the affected areas. By contrast, ongoing conflicts such as the war in the DRC often become background noise relegated to the back pages of major newspapers, if covered at all by the international press. She concludes that without continued media interest and informed coverage the international community's response becomes dulled or muted and atrocities can be overlooked despite a continuous need for assistance and diplomatic efforts." (Introduction to part 4, page 186)
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"Few aspects of Liberian society have suffered more under UNMIL than the media, which is critical for any young democracy but all the more so for one emerging from civil war. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.N. mission itself, and other donors have spent more than $10 mil
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lion since 2003 to develop a robust independent media market capable of holding Liberia’s leaders accountable — only to watch UNMIL turn around and build a media behemoth that monopolized the country’s talent, resources, and audience, making it impossible for smaller outlets to compete. UNMIL Radio, the U.N. mission’s flagship media outfit, has a budget of $1.4 million this year — more than the annual revenue of the country’s commercial media combined. We are not aware of a media market in any other democratic country where one player so dominates all others in terms of revenue and resources. And there’s a massive misrepresentation at the heart of UNMIL Radio’s presence in Liberia. Although it now masquerades as an independent media outlet, operating in the same radio space as other news providers and delivering a product that looks like that of other news providers, the U.N. shows little interest or aptitude for the hard, dirty work of independent journalism. It claims to set a standard for journalism in the country but then fails to deliver on the industry’s most important responsibility — holding leaders, not just Liberia’s but the U.N.’s own, to account." (Introduction)
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"For over five and one-half years, the Civil Society and Media Leadership (CSML) Program, led by IREX in partnership with The Carter Center and Social Impact, contributed to building a more capable, collaborative, and agile civil society and media sector in Liberia. The CSML team provided intensive
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support including training, mentoring, small grants, and equipment to over 60 civil society organizations and 35 media outlets in 15 counties. IREX has distributed over $6 million in grants to civil society organizations to conduct advocacy, reconciliation, civic and voter education, Ebola awareness raising, and contribute to their own organizational development. Community radio stations have received a total of over $400K worth of equipment, including 19 transmitters. The Carter Center trained 3,500 chiefs, women, and youth to advance access to justice and resolve community disputes, and broadened awareness of Freedom of Information to over 15,000 Liberians across the seven original target counties. Beyond these outputs, CSML has contributed to true impact, fostering an improved and enhanced civil society and media sector. These accomplishments are a result of the collaborative effort of IREX and its wealth of partners both international and national who sought, together, to achieve the goal to “sustain peace in Liberia through greater inclusion, giving a voice to, informing and engaging Liberian citizens.” As a result, in part, of the CSML program, IREX’s civil society partners conduct advocacy that is more informed and less confrontational, engage the media as a key stakeholder, and have more productive strategies for engaging local and national government." (Executive summary)
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