Last Monday, I and fellow sauve scholar, Naomi Kincler, were among key speakers at the Garnet Key Leadership Symposium at Concordia University. Below is part of my discussion at the conference. The critical questions that dominated our discussion include, among others, how we can develop youth to become agents for positive change? Why corruption continues to trouble our leaders and what should be the role of education in nurturing the next generation of leaders? The debate covered issues ranging from education, access to health care, poverty eradication, youth empowerment, corruption and mismanagement of public resources, human rights abuses and the promotion of democracy and good governance. To achieve any of the factors named above, the media’s role remains and continues to be central. Why is this so? The answer lies in the media ability to sway public opinion and to influence the direction of social change. This is so because a strong media acts as a tool that can put civil society principles and government’s policies into action, and that can facilitate effective public participation in development programmes.
In Uganda, for example, I have seen great progress in the area of health, education and poverty eradication, thanks to civil society organizations involved in the monitoring of the use and management of public funds. In this context, there are noticeable initiatives that have astoundingly halved the level of infant mortality and helped to bring services closer to local communities, yet such initiatives have not been well-covered in the mainstream media. Why is this so? The answer lies in the failure by civil society leaders to frame their message right. In Uganda, advocacy groups have consistently exposed their inability to initiate a well-thought-out strategy that can appeal to the media and the public. I see a need for a new approach that can put to the fore issues which can appeal to the younger generation, who are high consumers of news media. The younger generation can spread information about public services such as healthcare to the older generation. In a country like Uganda where the media constantly come under government clampdown, the civil society should embrace internet and other forms of new media to spread their message.
The internet would then allow the public to share information with little limitation because the government, as of today, lacks technology that can potentially close-off internet from one section of the public. That said, the civil society is not the only institution which needs to put its house in order. The media in the sub-Saharan, too, has a very simplistic understanding of the work of civil society organizations. This has resulted in over simplifying civil society work or portraying them in very stereotypical ways. That’s why the media usually have a tendency of individualizing effective civil society campaigns and attribute their success to the efforts of one great leader. In the national newspapers, radio and television stations, such campaigns are never represented as a collective or professional effort. Nevertheless, this is not to say that I entirely blame the media for this. Civil society organisations are often unable to articulate what they are thinking. Truly, they need to show that they have a wide reach and impact, and are able to make a difference; that their initiatives are more than just “doing well”, and that they also have a political and social relevance. This is just part of a bigger problem about how civil society organisations engage with their external environment because, even within civil society, there is an obsession with internal priorities such strong emphasis on donor accountability over public interest.
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