Martin Nvyabandi, Burundi's Minister of Good Governance, Privatization, General State Inspection and Local Administration, addresses questions from young callers on Radio Publique Africaine.
WASHINGTON , February 18, 2009 -- A young man identifying himself as John Bosco of Ruyigi calls a radio station to voice his frustration over corruption. “For us young people, it’s not easy to find work,” he says. “You have to pay one to two months of salary for a sought-after job before signing a contract. If not, they tell you that you don’t have experience. Corruption has reached a point where you don’t know any longer whether it’s individual acts or government policy.”
John Bosco’s protest is part of a World Bank Institute (WBI)-supported program that essentially combines the two most powerful technologies in Africa—the radio and the cell-phone -- to engage Burundi’s youth on critical issues facing the country.Holding a national conversation in Burundi isn’t easy. The country has recently emerged from 12 years of civil war, large areas remain unsafe and many people fear that almost any public discussion might reopen old wounds. Yet without public participation, it will be difficult to build a consensus on future priorities—particularly within the critical constituency of Burundi’s young people.
A World Bank team working with Burundi’s government and civil society to strengthen governance and combat corruption decided to work with local radio to disseminate results of a governance survey and a study on the situation affecting youth. Under an agreed-to format, a local radio station targeting youth presented findings, aired a discussion of core issues, and invited call-ins from young listeners around the country. A rap song prepared for the program provided a unifying background.
With support from WBI Global Programs (WBIGP) and International Alert, Burundi’s Radio Publique Africaine has broadcast fifteen programs to growing audiences.
“It’s enabled us to reach hard-to-access areas in this post-conflict environment,” says WBIGP’s Susana Carrillo, who is in charge of the project. But more importantly, she says, the program provides a safe space for young people to express frustrations and worries, and to come away with a sense that people are listening.”
“We school children lack everything,” says Alain, calling in from Buja during one recent program. “We go to school without eating; we have no notebooks, no materials, not even water to drink at the school when we come after walking several kilometres. Is this peace?”
A subsequent segment takes up migration, including the struggle facing citizens who returned from refugee camps that sheltered them during the war years. A listener from Muyinga calls in to say “no one is taking care of us, but we aren’t beggars. We have the strength, the courage and the intelligence to manage for ourselves.” What disappoints him is that most media outlets focus on the latest round of political infighting, while providing too little information on critical issues like HIV/AIDS.
Governance and corruption challenge state-building
The recent survey on governance and corruption underscores the challenge of building a capable state that the population views as reliable and legitimate. According to the survey, 50 percent of the entrepreneurs questioned said that they make payments to government officials in exchange for public services. Among non-governmental organizations, 94 percent consider the national police to be corrupt, and 85 percent, the judicial branch. Access to services comes out low, with 48 percent of households counting on drinking water that isn’t healthy or safe. Nearly three-quarters of those interviewed were earning a livelihood from farming, but 91 percent of these said that the level of government support for the sector wasn’t satisfactory.
“ Burundi is a poor, land-locked country, subject to its own historic conflicts, plus regional instabilities, and widespread corruption,” says Carrillo. “But we wanted to engage the population in pushing for greater accountability and better delivery of basic services.
“Giving them a voice in setting priorities is itself a stabilizing force,” Carillo continues. “Radio is powerful, but it needs to be interactive—with a cell-phone call-in component – if it’s going to help give the population an experience of being heard.”
To some extent, interactive radio is helping to break an informal code of silence that affects many people traumatized by the conflict years, which pitted Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups against one another, with ordinary citizens taking part in patterns of lethal violence. According to one survivor living at a camp for internally displaced persons: “We must not talk about the crisis because we understand that these times are over, and because of a fear that it might start again.”
But it is healthy for people to talk about their day-to-day problems and to identify the problems they hope that the local or national government will help solve. Burundians want to think of themselves as having moved beyond ethnic polarities, according to opinion research. Opening spaces for practical discussions on governance and service delivery reinforces their sense that they are moving past the crisis years and are ready to address the challenges of poverty and exclusion.
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