CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
by Mwana Bwalya, Namibia, January 2000
THEME = WOMEN
Namibia's Media Women's Association (NAMWA) has joined
sister organisations
in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region,
which have been training women at a grassroots level,
to produce their own radio programmes
Namibia's female media practitioners have started implementing a "Development Through Radio" (DTR) pilot project for rural women in the country. The idea is to fight for women's increased access to the Media, together with its management and utilisation for their own developmental needs.
During NAMWA's annual general meeting held in October in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, Jennifer Sibanda, director of the Harare (Zimbabwe)-based Federation of African Media Women in the SADC (FAMW-SADC) said: "Many women's issues have not been addressed. As professional women, we should look after our own".
In November 1999, Namibia's women media personnel and other experts on media and rural women, embarked upon a two-months' field study, to assess possibilities of having such a project nationwide. The study is being conducted with Jennifer Sibanda's help. However, the moving spirit behind the DTR project is the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) through which NAMWA is trying to implement the project.
NAMWA is also assisted by the Department of Women's Affairs, which falls under the Office of the President and other locally-based Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Nora Appolus who is NBC's controller in the News and Current Affairs Department and also an NAMWA executive member, says N$300,000 has so far been, raised for the DTR project. She says such a pilot project will first be implemented in the northern town of Oshakati through NBC Radio. The project is expected to play a crucial role, here, where rural women's voices will be heard for the first time on radio.
Appolus says that later, the Eenhana Community Radio, also in the northern region of Ohangwena, will be used for the project's implementation before it is extended to other parts of the country.
Namibia is just the latest of SADC member countries to start implementing the DTR project. Zimbabwe introduced the DTR for rural women in 1998. According to Sibanda, the women in that country were involved in the production of programmes, "and I have to say that when playing back their cassettes, there's an electrifying feeling when women hear their voices for the first time on the air". She says women are not normally heard on the radio, and it is high time that they thought of setting up community radio stations owned by themselves. She cites the example of Malawi where there is a very successful community radio owned by women. Another one is being prepared in Mozambique.
The FAMW-SADC has already established 10 chapters in the SADC member-countries of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Soon, it intends to form other chapters in Congo RDC, Mauritius and The Seychelles. The association has already been helping to develop DTR projects, and implement these in countries where it already has branches. Other projects in the pipeline in these countries are Information and Technology courses for training women how to use the Internet.
The other is a "Gender Training" programme whereby women will be trained how to "cover" meetings of Heads of State, parliamentary debates and economic issues. "Resources have already been mobilised", says Sibanda, "and we are looking for other possibilities in other countries".
NAMWA was established in 1995 to fight for increased women's access to the media. With Namibia's favourable media environment, the country's Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, and has a clause specifically on Press Freedom.
There have been some setbacks. NAMWA's newly elected chairperson, Sarry Xoagus-Eises, says that in the past, the association lacked personnel and could not, therefore, function as expected. Also, some of NAMWA's executive committee members resigned, while others died, leaving only two part-time people to run the show. Another setback, she says, is that NAMWA is a non-profit-making organisation which has not received any outside funding. It depends on members' contributions.
Despite these setbacks, NAMWA was represented at major women's fora, including the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995, and prior, to this, the one held in Dakar, Senegal. In addition, NAMWA participated in a Cape Town, South Africa, Conference on "Community Media for Democracy", organised by the Friederich Ebert Stiftung and UNESCO, where the idea to start up the DRT project was mooted. Since then, NAMWA has looked forward to implementing the DTR scheme, which could eventually lead to the establishment of listeners' clubs in rural areas. As a first step, UNESCO donated N$50,000 for NAMWA to organise grassroots media training workshops for the most disadvantaged communities in rural areas. Such workshops have already been conducted in Uis, Omatjene and Tubuses in Central Namibia. The focus has been on how rural women could produce their own programmes, and these have been described as a success.
NAMWA has also worked closely with the Namibia Non-governmental Organisations Federation, a grouping of all the country's NGOs, by organising other Workshops on encouraging skills among NGO members. These activities, which took place even when NAMWA was functioning with just two-part-time members, have impressed Sibanda, who foresees that Namibia's DTR project is heading for success now that it has executive committee members in place.
END
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