Just How Digital Are We? - The Case of Africa

By David Montez, Research Analyst, InterMedia

"Digital media is the future of news. Newsprint is dead or is undergoing a slow death and all traditional media platforms will eventually be consumed via PC or your mobile phone."

Agree or not, this seems to be the dominant thinking when people talk about the future of the news industry, particularly in developed countries. However, much of the world continues to get its news from the radio and from friends and neighbors.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where headlines tell us about exponential growth in the adoption of mobile technologies, we find not only a continuing digital divide, but also a gap in quality news content and tailored digital tools and applications. A summer 2010 national survey of Tanzania conducted by AudienceScapes, InterMedia's development communication research project, found a strong percentage of adults using a mobile phone on a daily or weekly basis, 53 percent and 61 percent respectively. However, we found that only 15 percent of regular mobile users (at least weekly users) receive SMS-text message information services on a weekly basis.

Accessing the internet or social networking websites via mobile phone was even lower at less than 4 percent of regular mobile users. In comparison, the survey found that 85 percent of adults have a radio in their home and 72 percent listen to the radio for news on a daily basis.

The bottom line is that SMS remains the main information-sharing conduit for many on mobile phones. The use of SMS as a tool to discuss news has its opportunities and barriers. In recent years, SMS has been used successfully by national and community radio stations to engage listeners during discussion programs, however, the cost of sending bulk SMS messages to disseminate news has been prohibitive for news outlets in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Other constraints include widespread poverty, low literacy levels, and language barriers within multilingual societies.

Despite the relative lack of digital news consumption, there are initiatives throughout the region that are working to use new technologies to strengthen independent journalism and weed out government corruption. Two such projects are Huduma  in Kenya, a multimedia platform that allows citizens to comment via mobile or computer on the government’s success in performing basic functions, and YAAC, the Youth Alliance Against Corruption, in Zimbabwe, a group of young journalists who look to exploit social media to disseminate its investigative findings.

The merging of media platforms is taking place within the Sub-Saharan region, but not in the way that we come to think of it in more developed media environments. While individuals with access to a smart phone have the ability to easily stream audio programs or download podcasts, the trend in many countries is the listening of radio via an FM receiver within their mobile phone.  The AudienceScapes national surveys in Kenya and Ghana conducted in 2009, found that 25 percent and 33 percent of regular mobile users, respectively, listened to the radio via their mobile at least once a week.

This tells us that as mobile technologies continue to play a larger role in the African information environment, effective news organizations must not only begin to shift into the digital realm, but they must also shift to the use multiple platforms. A recently-launched national communication project in Kenya entitled ShujaazFM, launched by the East African non-profit Twaweza, uses several modes of communication to encourage youth to become active participants in Kenya’s ongoing development and cohesion processes.ShujaazFM has the potential to inform future news media partnership models that can pool resources in media environments that are financially constrained.

Many of this year’s sponsors and organizers do tremendous work supporting the development of local news media including the Open Society Institute, Internews, and IREX. It is crucial that journalists, news outlets, and those that support them find innovative ways to integrate media platforms so that all citizens can access independent news media. We are excited about the new opportunities that digital media offers, but we must be cognizant that in many places news is more often listened to on a radio than from a downloaded app.