By Africa
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is collaborating with
the Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), the leading
technology innovation centre in Africa, to launch a call, for innovative
communication projects on COVID-19 based on indigenous African languages
targeted at the semi-urban and rural population across Africa. The
communication projects are expected to help counter disbelief and
misinformation, catalyse citizens actions and solidarity as well as combat
stigmatization.
The collaboration will focus on projects
delivering vetted critical information from Africa CDC to Africans in remote
areas using innovative and culturally sensitive messaging.
This involves educating the public and ensuring
fact-based information reaches even remote locations through such approaches
like comics, animation, illustrations, infographics, interactive SMS, Mobile
apps etc.
The selected teams will be supported with grant
funding of up to $5000 for research and design support. Proposed projects can
be focused on one African country or multiple countries across the continent.
Africa CDC Joins Forces with Co-Creation Hub to use Smart Ways to Educate
and Sensitize the Continent on COVID-19
Dr. Benjamin Djoudalbaye, Head of Policy, Health
Diplomacy, and Communication at the Africa CDC stated that the collaboration is
to “enhance efforts of the Africa CDC towards educating the public and ensuring
that the right information reaches even remote locations across the continent
to avoid unnecessary panic and misinformation.”
With a track record of collaborating with key
players to explore the application of technology to solve Africa’s systemic
problems in Public Health, Education, Governance in the continent, CcHUB
through its internal research and development unit, CcHUB Design Lab, based in
Kigali, Rwanda, will collaborate with innovators to provide technical support
using innovative digital and non-digital methodologies to ensure the mass
messaging on Coronavirus reaches the semi-urban and rural population across
Africa.
Bosun Tijani, CcHUB’s Co-founder and CEO, said
“This is a critical time where tech in Africa should be used in smart ways to
ensure broader citizen awareness and understanding of COVID-19 response
strategies and precautions”.
This collaboration is supported by the Joint
African Union – German Cooperation on Citizens Engagement and Innovative Data
Use for Africa’s Development programme implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). A Call for Projects- Solve for
Coronavirus (COVID-19) for creative teams working on a project or have an idea,
with the capability to build out the solution could be accessed through the
link: bit.ly/solve-for-covid19.
