Internews media programme Zimbabwe

Internews supported many journalists, media, and CSOs to carry out awareness campaign and share accurate information about the pandemic. Internews support to local partners resulted in the production of more than 40 COVID-19 related stories and awareness campaigns in various formats. In April 2020, one of the Internews partner radio station; Skyz Metro FM produced content on COVID 19 programmes that reached approximately half a million listeners. Training and mentoring of Journalists and civic society players gave birth to new media initiatives as well as the revival of several defunct websites. The Community Podium TV; a youth-run vibrant, digitally enabled media organisation is one such example of an entity that was birthed as a direct result of the media entrepreneurship and media upskilling training. With Internews support and mentoring, the organisation produced a wide range of COVID-19 awareness campaigns both in video and print format reaching an estimated 4000 viewers daily. Internews support through the ZMD project also enabled CITE (our leading local partner) to become an authoritative source of Southern region information. Within the period under review, support from Internews enabled CITE to produce and post over 800 stories on its website. The increase in content ultimately resulted in a significant (about 20%) increases in audiences from about 67k to over 80k weekly across on all its platforms. Internews support also helped local partners to amplify and enhance giving voices to communities so that they can hold public officials to account for their actions. For instance, a programme which was flighted by CITE on Facebook and shared on YouTube resulted in the perpetrators of gender-based violence (GBV) in Cowdray Park suburb being brought to book. Moreover, another story on police brutality by CITE led to the Member of Parliament for Bulawayo East, to call upon the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) and Zimbabwe Peace and Reconciliation Commission (ZPRC) to investigate the conduct of the police. These initiatives ultimately led to the establishment of an online petition calling for justice for the deceased. Also, the coverage of the full council meetings of the council by CITE provides citizens with information on local governance to promote civic engagement for democracy and accountability. Internews also facilitated the youth and women roundtable events to enhance information dissemination in vulnerable communities. Internews also successfully fostered an online community engagements and social media campaigns for partner organizations CITE, Kubatana, HIFC, Sunshine Cinemas and ZACRAS which ultimately led to content sharing formats and platforms. As an outcome of the editorial meeting, Cite, and Kubatana collaborated positively in the campaign around Constitutional Amendment Number 2, police brutality in Bulawayo during the lockdown. Due to the ban on public gatherings during COVID-19, Sunshine Cinema had to go digital in efforts to reach audiences. They have since developed a free podcast series instead of the screenings. These were also shared across platforms and formats. Internews supported ZACRAS to lobby for more community radio licensing, and four of its members have since applied for licensing. To enhance media sustainability, all the Zimbabwe-based ZMD partners participated in the media market forum where the audience ratings conducted by GeoPoll were shared and discussed. These outcomes show evidence of an improved information ecosystem in the southern provinces of Zimbabwe, supported by a range of digital news platforms such as vlogs, websites, YouTube channels, virtual WhatsApp communities as well as an organic community radio sector that is broadcasting hyperlocal content in local languages to local communities. • The programme derived much of its strength from the bottom-up, partner-centric approach which empowered marginalised groups to be co-producers of content about their own communities. Through ZMDs core training interventions, Media Entrepreneurship and Mid-Career Upskilling, there has been considerable growth of community-based media organizations covering significant information gaps for marginalized voices and remote areas. This increase in the production of localized content confirms the findings of the external ZMD Final and the Mid-Term Evaluation that 93 % of the surveyed partner journalists witnessed an improvement in their skills and knowledge in digital media production and social media news generation. • The project managed to outreach marginalized areas, news desserts; national media usually shy away hyper-local news coverage. The project achieved this by focusing coverage on communities rarely reached by mainstream national media. • The gender mainstreaming approach helped fostering creativity and innovation among women, youth, and people with disabilities in predominantly patriarchal societies. They are not only finding voice and expression in local media but also occupy leadership positions in the media. During the project implementation, most partner organizations were able to amplify the voices of women and people with disabilities, usually underrepresented in the media. Womens roundtable events, demonstrated evidence of women's significant role in the media and community. • The upskilling of local citizen journalists helped the production of hyper local quality content (most of it via digital tools) addressing local community issues. • All community radio stations supported under this project have now functional secretariates and boards, helping them strengthen oversight mechanisms, accountability and fostering collective decision making. Based on the key elements of standard evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, and Internews added value, the overall assessment of the project is very positive as the project achieved most of its goals and met Internews mandate.

The intervention is expected to increase the quantity and reach of independent, reliable and data-driven information into the public sphere, with a focus on content production and consumption by women, youth and rural communities. Further it is expected to strengthen the capacity of media and civil society to inform and elevate citizen voices as key to holding the government accountable on key project themes i.e. governance, human rights, gender, corruption, health, environment, climate change. Finally, the ZMD programme is expected to improve the business and financial sustainability of independent media.