Africa

Rose owns a shop in Omugo 4 refugee settlement in Uganda. It’s a place where people exchange news. Her ‘talking shop’ has just had an upgrade.

Soot Semee podcasts are proving their value, as more and more community members are finding ways to access the podcasts.

Adopting technology for learning is attractive in the digital era. It gives a sense that we are changing the old for the new. But technology itself is not transformative. Education technology is not about devices or exchanging a blackboard for a computer screen or tablet.   However with one in three children around the world lacking access…

Social distancing – a term that most of us were unfamiliar with pre-2020. These days, we can hardly have a conversation without mentioning it. Though it is essential to keep the virus from spreading, it is taking its mental toll. Communities in Sierra Leone are feeling it too. Ransford Wright, Founder and Chief Executive of…

Coronavirus has severely impacted our lives – from pressuring our healthcare to keeping families apart. Though we’ve been persevering through the global pandemic for nearly a year, it is hardly a new ‘normal’. Sierra Leone had its first reported Covid-19 case at the end of March 2020. However, in the first seven months of the…

Soot Semee is helping refugee communities in Northern Uganda to protect children at risk. A large child protection NGO has been working with Soot Semee volunteers to help community members recognise abuse and know how to report it.

Despite Covid-19, Amplifying Voices’ partner, Community Development Centre, Uganda (CDC) continues to bring communities together. CDC’s Soot Semee project uses community-centred podcasts to overcome physical distancing challenges caused by the pandemic. Physical distancing not only prevents people from seeing loved ones, it also exaggerates the separation between people from different community groups. Barnabas Samuel, from…

With Kenyan schools now unlikely to reopen until January 2021, radio has become an educational life-line for many families across the country.  Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Amani FM, HCR’s partner station in Eastern Kenya, in collaboration with Zizi Afrique Foundation, has been delighting children and parents across Tana Delta, with a variety…

This is Refugee Week. In Northern Uganda, refugee voices are at forefront of the battle against the problems Covid-19 brings to their communities. We heard about some places where the only information comes through megaphones. After a while this can seem a list of do’s and don’ts and people in those communities say they feel…

As the number Covid-19 cases begin to rise dramatically in Kenya, health authorities have been urging communities to stay at home, observe physical distancing and not to go back to work. However there is a major concern that many young people, particularly in Nairobi’s informal settlements, are not heeding the warning. To that end, Mtaani…