Fighting the rampart analphabetism in Africa by broadcasting lessons over the air: this is the ambitious project that UNICEF has entrusted to DM Broadcast - an Italian Company based in Argelato, Bologna , which creates turnkey radio/tv system in every part of the world installing the best broadcast solution with top of the line and latest generation materials. Illiteracy is one of today’s world principal problem, especially in Africa, where access to education is a mirage. Even though in the early 2000s great progress in this area were carried out, the pandemic forced the governments to close down the schools.

This fact aggravated an already critical situation, for example, in Liberia, which 14 years of civil war have struck the scholarship system: today the literate population is less than 50% and only the 20% of the teachers are properly formed.

In Zimbabwe, where once there was the best scholarship system in Africa, the education has been brought down by 20 years of embargo, and the places which lost  more are the rural areas, in which children, often orphans, live at the margins of the society.

But, while the pandemic aggravated an already instable situation, on the other hand it took to “awaken” the Government of these two countries: together with UNICEF, actually, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) in Zimbabwe and the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Liberia decided to offer everyone in the country the possibility to study at home, through radio or tv, creating real educational channels.

“This project consists in broadcasting lessons with a double purpose: to impart basic education to pupils and keep teachers trained and up-to-date. Podcasts will be also available for streaming via app, so that they can be followed in different moment”, explains Didier from DM Broadcast.

This project has already been tested in July 2020 in Zimbabwe: it reached an extraordinary coverage, but it was developed through too expansive structure to be truly sustainable. The MoPSE, to overcome this obstacle, had his old studios renovated at the Education Technology Center (ETC), so that they can manage the radio/tv productions by itself with a reduction in costs.

UNICEF chose to entrust this project to DM Broadcast.  The company is training all operators who’re working in Zimbabwe and Liberia, so as to make them autonomous, and it’ll provide1 year online assistance in Zimbabwe and on site assistance in Liberia, where the project is set to become the national radio of MoE.

All of it, active from January 2023, will be used not only to increase the schooling of Zimbabwe and Liberia, but also to improve lessons quality.

“An achievement that fills us with joy because Africa is the continent with whom we work the most and we know well the school realities of different countries. We have developed many similar projects on other aspects, for example, with Invisible Children to denounce child soldiers. But these are different interventions. With these ones we can really give a perspective to the Zimbabwe and Liberia populations, also creating future jobs as technicians. This project is surely the best “gift” to celebrate our first 10 years in business”, say Didier Muragwabugabo, DM Broadcast managing director.

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