A Game Changer in Tana River

Amplifying Voices has been committed to supporting peace, health and community development in eastern Kenya’s Tana River County since 2014.  And our involvement is about to get deeper.

In partnership with the Amani Centre and FEBC Australia, a major opportunity has arisen to establish an “ICT” hub that we believe will bring dramatic changes for the region’s population, which has often felt disadvantaged and neglected. ICT stands for information communication technology, and initiatives like the one we are planning, have been widely documented as being crucial to reducing poverty, improving access to health and education services and creating new sources of income and employment.

Chairman of the Amani Centre, John Otunga, believes this community-led initiative will be a game changer for Tana River’s communities: “The ICT hub is so significant at this time as it will bridge the digital divide that has for years left the marginalised communities in Tana River and especially women and girls excluded from present-day opportunities.”

Central to the ICT hub will be Vox Radio (formerly Amani FM) which Amplifying Voices helped set up in 2017 and which has become a trusted friend to the communities that it it serves*.  It will continue to reach these communities and many more, however it will relocate 6km away to the town of Minjilla, a town that is fast becoming a nerve centre in East Africa’s largest infrastructure project, the LAPSSET trade corridor between Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

John says that most young people in Tana River are either unemployed or underemployed despite the government’s best efforts to create online jobs, but he believes this ICT hub, the first and only centre in Tana River,  will empower young people with employable skills in the digital space.  “It will build the capacity of the young minds to become creative, and access digital learning and digital jobs to empower them economically and have sustainable skills. The centre will offer mentorship while employing a collaborative learning approach that will spur development and inspire innovation that will hatch local solutions to local problems,” he says.

Working with other like-minded groups, we believe this ICT hub will greatly expand the transformative work of the local radio team, combining the power of the FM station with resources such as a digital learning centre, vocational training and a community library – alongside the vital misinformation warning project, Una Hakika.