Contribution of Radio Broadcasting to the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Southern Madagascar

Funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) and carried out by Media Support Solutions Limited, this evaluation explores the strategy of using radio to impact audience knowledge and attitudes relating to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Focusing on Andrew Lees Trust's Projet Radio (ALT/PR) in Southern Madagascar, the 82-page report shows that this initiative's use of radio is achieving some notable success in changing and enhancing knowledge and attitudes on topics including HIV/AIDS, family planning, mother and child health, environmental issues, social and administrative issues, and gender inequality. Radio is also reportedly having a positive impact on uptake of health services, enrolment in literacy classes, construction of environmentally-friendly woodstoves, tree-planting, agricultural yields, and awareness of strategies for poverty reduction through income generation and community associations.

Specifically, ALT has been implementing an educational radio project known in French as Projet Radio (PR) in Madagascar since 1999 in an attempt to empower isolated populations to improve food security and reduce the effects of poverty. ALT carries out this work by involving local radio stations, village listening groups, and 49 local (governmental and non-governmental) service providers collaborating under the name Partners for Communications and Information for Development (PCID). PR's role is to train, provide materials, and facilitate a network between these 3 groups of stakeholders. The project is responsible for producing an average of 33 programmes per month; 1,540 programmes have been aired to date, reaching an audience of over 500,000.

Eleven different research studies were carried out across Southern Madagascar between August 2005 and December 2006 by researchers independent of the project. A key purpose of the research was to understand how - and to what extent - ALT/PR has contributed to meeting specific MDGs by using radio strategically to enhance the on-the-ground work of local service providers.

The evaluation examines ALT/PR's methods and organisation, finding many advantages to its use of the strategy of partnership for the production, distribution and broadcasting of radio programmes. All affiliated radio stations are locally based, community, or commercial FM stations. Radio programmes are created in local dialects, using formats that were found to be "engaging and relevant". Furthermore, the provision of radio sets to listening groups was touted as successful, and research found a high level of commitment and enthusiasm on the part of listeners, especially women. The ability of radio to scale up and extend the on-the-ground work of local service providers was highlighted by evaluators.

The research also found that ALT/PR's strategy has worked to address and/or contribute to the meeting of specific MDGs; in summary:

• With regard to MDG #1 (related to extreme poverty and hunger) - ALT/PR and its partners have so far produced over 400 radio programmes specifically on this MDG topic. The research found that women were particularly influenced by radio, whereas men had access to other information sources, such as word of mouth, because of their greater mobility. Eighty members - both men and women - of 8 listening groups who had been regular listeners of ALT/PR for at least 4 years were asked whether they had been able to implement actions that the radio programming advised. Three out of 8 groups had built windbreaks to protect cotton fields; 3 groups had used insecticides to protect their crops; 4 had tried to follow radio-advice on grafting manioc; and 3 had planted sorghum. The majority claimed they now use "modern agricultural techniques".
• With regard to MDG #2 (related to educational lapses) - Between March and April 2005, ALT and local non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners produced a series of radio programmes encouraging attendance of literacy classes. Researchers found a clear cause and effect relationship between the radio and literacy enrolment. A random survey of 273 adult literacy students was carried out in 165 literacy centres in 17 different communes. Respondents were asked what encouraged them to attend their literacy centre. The majority (59%) cited the radio as the main reason.
• With regard to MDG #3 (related to gender inequality) - ALT/PR encourages
  communities to elect women as recipients of the project's clockwork radios, and as heads of listening groups. The percentage of female heads of project listening groups was found to stand at 68%, and "the listening-groups are an important gathering point for women (though they are open to both men and women)."
• With regard to MDG #4 and MDG #5 (related to childhood and maternal health issues) - ALT/PR and its partners have produced a variety of radio programmes on such themes as childhood diseases and hygiene, as well as on the advantages of prenatal consultations, vaccination, exclusive breastfeeding, and family planning. The team's survey of 100 listening groups found that health ideas from radio programmes were reportedly being put into practice by almost all of them, such as the use of mosquito nets (46 out of 173 practices mentioned), use of condoms (32 mentions), take-up of family planning measures such as injections and pills (31 mentions), and prenatal and neonatal care (25 mentions).
  
  Beyond ALT/PR, the following findings illuminate the use of radio in general as a strategy:
  • 134 women were asked about their knowledge of ways to avoid pregnancy. The research found that women from villages with good radio reception were more knowledgeable about all types of family planning methods than those from villages with low radio listening (the sample was controlled for the effects of age, distance from a clinic, or the possible effect of field agents promoting family planning). For example 46% of the former knew about contraceptive pills compared to only 18% in the latter.
  • 89% of women from villages with radio had vaccinated their children, compared to only 75% of those from villages with low radio-listening. Significantly more women from radio villages (68%) knew that a child needs a total of 5 vaccinations, compared to women in non-radio villages (42%). (All villages had equal access to vaccination services, and were visited equally by health workers promoting vaccination.)
• With regard to MDG #6 (related to HIV/AIDS and other diseases) - The team analysed the impact of a specially-commissioned series of radio programmes on HIV/AIDS broadcast between 2004 and 2005, covering a variety of HIV/AIDS awareness themes. A 2-month-long questionnaire-based enquiry was carried out which involved 270
  randomly selected individual interviewees (122 women and 148 men), and 27 focus groups; an average of 89% of respondents cited radio as their most important source of information about HIV/AIDS, with an average of 75% of rural respondents quoting ALT or PR as the organisation that produced the programmes they remembered.
• With regard to MDG #7 (related to environmental degradation) - Between 1999 and 2006, a total of 354 programmes were made by different PCID partners on the environment: topics included the promotion of fuel-efficient wood-stoves (or "Toko-Mitsitsy (TM) stoves") and tree-planting as well as the dangers of slash and burn agriculture and the protection of tortoises (among others). The team's research on TM stoves involved a survey of 268 randomly selected respondents in 11 rural communities. Findings from this sample (total number of women in random interviews = 134) show that 61% of women respondents from radio villages understood and were using an improved stove, compared to only 47% of women respondents from non-radio villages, despite having been visited equally by field agents promoting the new stoves. According to field agents in the villages with radio access, the women were more willing to adopt the stoves; in fact, once they heard a trainer was coming, they would often collect the materials needed in advance.
  
  The team also assessed the extent to which radio informed and encouraged people to purchase trees, or associations to apply for free trees. Results showed that of the 88 individuals or associations visiting the nursery to obtain tree seedlings, radio was responsible for 39% of total visits, while 48% had heard about trees directly from ALT staff they knew. However, radio was responsible for more trees actually purchased (or received free in the case of associations): 635 trees or 59% of all trees distributed were requested because of the radio announcements.
• With regard to MDG #8 (related to poor availability of information) - ALT/PR has taken advantage of the liberalisation of the media and has significantly improved access to information by launching two new rural radio stations, upgrading the signals for three, and improving the technical capacity of 17 stations. In the team's survey of 100 listening groups, 25% said there was an association in the village that had been formed around the listening group, and 29% said an association existed in the village but independently of the ALT listening group.

The study also looks at challenges that ALT/PR has tackled and, in some cases, continues to address - involving management and networking, as well as issues relating to ensuring its radio programmes are consistently and truly participative. The concluding discussion compares ALT/PR with other educational radio projects in developing countries and takes a step back to examine what radio can and cannot achieve. Some thoughts on scaling up are followed by specific recommendations geared toward DFID. For example, researchers stress the importance of funding more projects which involve local service-providers supporting and collaborating with radio stations to produce good quality radio content; supporting national-level advocacy for decentralised, plural and development-oriented broadcasting policies; supporting initiatives focused on sustaining local-level media (including radio, but also telephony, television and print); and exploring research and development (R&D) and distribution of new energy/power sources for technologies such as solar/windup radios, windup chargers for mobile phones, and solar panels for radio transmitters.