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Helping Farmers Talk Back to the Radio in Tanzania

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Helping Farmers Talk Back to the Radio in Tanzania 12 Helping farmers talk back to the radio in Tanzania How Viamo Helped • 43% had listened to 10-20 episodes of the program. • Up to 70,000 people reached. • 58% considered the program content “very good.” • 69% of farmers said they were using the tips they learned on the show. Farm Radio now receives more substantive agricultural topics. They used a system whereby engagement from their audience surveys listeners used phones as polling tools. For example, a beyond the yes or no option of flashing missed radio host could invite listeners to answer questions calls. on agriculture by leaving a missed call (or beep) on a cell phone that corresponded to their choice: beep Background number ‘A’ for yes and number ‘B’ for no. Farm Radio International is a Canadian charity working with more than 500 radio partners in 38 African But Farm Radio wanted a solution that was more countries to fight poverty and food insecurity. interactive for a program on improved vegetable production for its partner Radio 5. It was a 30-minute Their goal is to help their weekly program that broadcasting partners would run for 29 weeks. produce content that Viamo’s technology has changed the way we do things. They’ve improved the voice services we have The topics included serves the interests of been using which had limitations and lots of technical benefits of growing and small-scale farmers and problems. Using Viamo, we can create surveys and eating certain vegetables, helps improve food use them easily in programs. They have simplified the how to produce them for security. They develop way we are working. Our content is much more the market, managing soil radio scripts, information interactive now. fertility and how to packages and a weekly - Kassim Sheghembe, Farm Radio Tanzania prepare a seasonal electronic news service. production calendar. Their broadcasting partners then use the material to What we did produce and present relevant and informative Viamo (via VOTO Mobile) developed a voice polling programs to millions of farmers. solution for the program. Instead of “beeping” in answers between two options (e.g. yes or no), Challenge participants could beep in as a way of requesting a call Farm Radio wanted to survey their Tanzanian back from the Viamo system. The participant answers audience to see how effective their Swahili language the return call and a voice message prompts them to programs were and how their audience was complete a multi-question survey, which captures responding to them. their answers. They had already been using mobile technology to get The poll was announced on the radio broadcast and their listeners to participate in polls about various was also sent out to 420 listeners who had previously registered with Radio 5. Farm Radio was able to analyze how many people participated in the survey and gauge how useful the audience found the information on the programs. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Photo: Farm Radio http://www.farmradio.org/ Case study title goes here Results Seventy-thousand listeners called and participated in the surveys, effectively talking back to the radio. What we learned The benefits of having people answer polls via voice message for radio programs are clear: it transforms a one-way media (the radio) into a channel that can initiate dialogue. With the IVR survey, Radio 5 was able to get detailed answers to their questions in real time. Farmers were able to give their feedback beyond answering yes or no by flashing a missed call. This dialogue not only helps farmers’ voices to be heard in the wider community (which is Farm Radio’s key mandate) but it also helps broadcasters improve their programming based on audience comments, questions and feedback. Future Farm Radio in Tanzania has already started using the Viamo voice survey as a regular part of their programming. For example, Listening Post is a radio show that promotes two-way discussions with farmers and policy makers. They have been using Viamo’s platform to send out a “question of the week” and collect data, questions and responses they can use in programming of subsequent shows. Listeners are also encouraged to send in questions they may want to ask experts who are either live on the program or that can be answered during a later show. Hosts are also able to play listeners’ recorded comments live on air, which increases audience participation and adds greater context to program topics. Farm Radio has also been using Viamo’s solution to develop programming and training materials in other offices and shows across Africa: Mali, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Burkina Faso. Looking ahead: Viamo will continue to expand its services to other broadcasting services, including television. Case study title goes here .
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