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If a Tree Falls in the Forest: African Press Encounters the Millennium Villages

Project

By Michelle Chahine and Anya Schiffrin

“A stronger media in Africa is an indispensable part of tackling poverty, improving

development and enabling Africa to attain its development goals.” (AMDI, 2006:

1)

“I never covered the villages. I just didn’t think they were that important, ” a

senior journalist based in Kampala, Uganda (2012).

Introduction

The Millennium Village Project was launched in Africa to great fanfare. With

economist Jeffrey Sachs at the helm and with the support of the United Nations

Development Program, the goal of the MVP is to provide integrated solutions to

the problems of African development and become an example for the rest of the

continent to follow. Instead of just focusing on one aspect of economic

development, the villages implement a multi-pronged approach: investment in

agriculture, health, education and infrastructure all at the same time. It was

hoped that as these model villages developed, they would become showcases, so

that development practitioners and policy makers could learn from their example.

In order for this to happen, the press would naturally need to play an important

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role in highlighting the successes that could be replicated and the failures to be

avoided. The role that the press can play in helping economic development

generally has been well documented (Besley and Burgess, 2002; Norris and

Odugbemi, 2010). In Africa, there is a solid tradition of development journalism

and a tradition of government calling on journalists to help build national unity

and advance economic development (Ansah, 1993; Bourgault, 1995: 228;

Hachten, 1971). However there is an inherent paradox: the Millennium villages

are located in remote areas and therefore difficult to get to. Nor do they give rise

to the kind of clearly defined news events that would naturally attract the

attention of editors. How then is the MVP covered? The research done in this

paper looks closely at the press coverage on the African continent of the MVP,

starting from the hypotheses that the coverage would be mostly positive, reliant

on press releases or UN reports and limited by a lack of media interest in the

subject on one hand and the lack of funding/time to visit the villages on the other.

It was expected that the flow of information would be based on personal

connections between journalists and local MVP officials rather than on an

institutional apparatus of messaging—MVP press releases would appear in print

when a personal connection between journalists and a PR person had been

established. The research undertaken for this paper confirmed these theses and

will be discussed later in greater detail.

Background on the Millennium Villages Project

This millennium began with the global community’s biggest promise to the

world poor, a promise to end poverty in fifteen years (Khan, 2009). Country

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representatives at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit made this pledge in

the year 2000, which culminated in the definition of eight goals, the MDGs, to be

met by 2015. The 193 United Nations member states pledged in September

2000, at the Millennium Summit held at the United Nations Headquarters in New

York, to spend $40 billion by 2015 to ensure the goals would be met (Hanrahan,

2009).

Several development projects sprung up across the world’s poorest

countries and areas with the aim of achieving the MDGs, spearheaded by various

United Nations (UN) agencies such as the United Nations Development Program

(UNDP), and by international non-governmental, non-profit organizations such as

the World Health Organization and The Hunger Project. One of the biggest

projects, if not the biggest focusing on achieving all the MDGs, is the Millennium

Villages Project in Africa. Bringing together, the United Nations, the Earth Institute

(EI) of Columbia University, donors, foundations, governments and business the

MVPs were aimed at providing integrated solutions in the villages where they

worked. Instead of focusing on one or two aspects of development (like education

or infrastructure) the MVPs tried to overhaul many aspects of village life.

The MVPs focus on “simple solutions like providing high-yield seeds,

fertilizers, medicines, drinking wells, and materials to build schoolrooms and

clinics” (Millennium Villages Project, 2012). Each community has received

financial support to make measurable improvements in five main areas: food

production, education, health, essential infrastructure (such as roads, access to

clean water) and business development. The hope is that these communities will

strengthen healthcare, the education of their children, boost agricultural

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productivity and start exporting products in order to raise revenue and join the

global system of trade.

While it was understood that the expenditures per village would be high, the

hope was that the villages would serve as role models; governments and donors,

seeing these successes, would seek to imitate the model. The principal idea of

this project is to use “simple solutions” in these model villages to meet the MDGs

and show that basic, somewhat cookie-cutter interventions can be replicated in

the same way, everywhere, at a relatively low cost—or at least a high ratio of

benefits to costs. Essential to this project is the idea that governments and

communities, over a ten-year period, would take over and “develop a solid

foundation for sustainable growth” (Id).

The MVP was first launched in Sauri, Kenya in August 2004; the second in Koraro,

Ethiopia in 2005. After the seeming success of these two villages, an additional

ten were implemented. At this writing, there are a total of 15 Millennium Village

sites in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania

and Uganda (Id).

The first stage focused on the idea of simple interventions in the villages. The

second phase, launched in October 2011 raised pledges of $72 million, is focused

on business development of the rural village clusters and sustainability of the

project beyond 2015. This stage aims to improve the living standards of around

half a million people across the African continent (UN News Centre, 2011).

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As mentioned, crucial to the project is the notion that successful villages can

become a model for others to follow but the modeling can only happen if the

results of the project are publicly known and if the successes are characterized in

a way that motivates emulation. One of the main avenues for dissemination

about the successes and failures of the villages is, of course, the media. But there

is almost an inevitable tension here: if the MVP were to actively disseminate all

research results it would provide credibility to the project but might risk

undermining enthusiasm for the project. Therefore the communications and

press officers of the MVP/UNDP have incentives to show only the best parts of

the village experiment . It would be hoped that good journalists would recognize

the potential for bias in the information they receive from MVP/UNDP and would

try to counteract this by looking at independent sources.

Aim of our study

Accordingly we decided to examine the press coverage to see if the African

newspapers were accurately and comprehensively covering the project, both its

successes and failures. We wanted to see whether journalists were able to report

from the villages rather than from their desks, whether there was any evidence of

truly investigative reporting (exposing the weaknesses as well as the strengths),

how much coverage there was, whether it was balanced, whether it quoted from

a wide array of sources and whether journalists did follow up stories. This paper

is not an examination of the success or failures of the Millennium Development

Project, as that is a question for development experts, local governments and the

villagers themselves to determine. Rather we wanted to see the extent to which

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the media has been able to educate the public about the villages and larger

development practices.

PR Strategy of the Earth Institute

For a number of reasons that will be discussed later, African journalists depend on

the PR/Communications departments of the UNDP, the Millennium Villages

Project and the Earth Institute for information about the MVP. A good PR

department’s job can include assisting journalists with information, providing

them with background, giving access to sources and placing press releases and

news about events or studies in local media (Lattimore et al ). In the case of the

Millenium Villages, the communications strategy would involve two unspoken but

sometimes contradictory, goals. One would be to provide frank assessments of

the MVP so that others can learn from its mistakes as well as its successes. The

second would be to highlight successes so as to help raise funds for the villages.

In trying to raise awareness about the villages, the Earth Institute (EI) and local

MVP/UNDP press offices have adopted several practices:

1) Producing a steady stream of reports and press releases that can be

reprinted or quoted from.

2) Creating or highlighting news events such as donation of equipment or a

visit by a high-ranking UN official and encouraging journalists to cover

the events by providing transportation.

3) Utilizing Jeffrey Sachs to spread the messages of the project and the

goals. “We try to get Professor Sachs to get out there and talk about

development issues because we want people to understand them

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better. He is a really great spokesperson for these issues,” said Kyu Lee,

Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing of the Earth

Institute; (author interview, February 2012).

4) Organizing visits for the journalists even when there isn’t a news peg.

These organized visits (usually arranged by local UNDP or MVP offices)

include paying for or providing transportation and hotels. These visits

may be initiated by journalists who have heard about the villages and

are eager to learn about the MVP more generally.

5) Finding news pegs and encouraging journalists to write stories using

these as a hook. For example a global trend could be turned into a

reason for African journalists to write about the MVP eg the Earth

Institute office at Columbia University in New York could make Jeffrey

Sachs available to discuss how the global rise in food prices could affect

the Millennium Villages.

6) Paying for supplements in newspapers across the continent.

Supplements are usually handled by the advertising department of the

publication receiving payment in return for publishing a supplement.

The content is determined by the advertiser and may be written by a

reporter from the publication or provided by the advertiser. This

strategy has likely raised awareness across the region about the MVP,

but because the articles in the supplements are so positive they do not

give enough information to communities that hope to replicate the

achievement of the MVP.

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7) Appearing on local television and radio in order to comment on the

MVP.

While some of the above tasks are carried out by the communications

department of the Earth Institute in New York, they may work with MVP and

UNDP staffers in Africa, other parts of the UN as well as the press departments of

the corporations involved in the villages such as telecom companies Ericsson or

Zain. “We write joint press releases with them,” said Lee, “That’s a key part of our

collaboration” (author interview, February 2012) . Other tasks, such as placing

supplements, arranging visits to the villages and appearing on local radio and

television are more likely to be carried out by the MVP/UNDP communications

staff in Africa.

Research Methodology: Content Analysis and interviews

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the research of this

paper. The bulk of the research was a content analysis of the press coverage of

the MVPs, mostly in African print publications. The first step was a list of major

publications in the ten countries that have a Millennium Village, as well as a more

general list of pan-African publications that cover the continent broadly. Due to a

dearth of hard copies in the Columbia University library, the study relied on online

versions of print publications as well as an analysis of two videos found on

YouTube, three blog posts and one write-up of a radio news announcement.

In total, 97 African newspaper articles of various lengths and formats were

analyzed for this report. These include articles written from the inception of the

MVP in 2004 until the beginning of December 2011 (just after the launch of the

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second phase of the project). The number of articles found and analyzed may not

reflect the total number of African newspaper articles that have covered the

MVPs. However, this collection reflects the articles found on the Internet based

on rigorous search efforts and includes newspapers in eleven African countries.

The content analysis codified articles by country, publication, title, byline and

word count. Based on structure and composition, the articles were divided into

three primary categories: basic news story, feature or opinion. Then, each article

was labeled as either “positive,” “negative,” or “balanced,” according to the tone.

The “balanced” label, used the least, was sometimes clarified as “somewhat

balanced- leaning towards positive.” This describes articles that presented briefly

the remaining challenges for the MVs but remained generally positive in tone.

Third, each article was labeled either “direct” or “indirect,” to indicate the level of

attention given to a MV in the article. The “indirect” label applied to articles that

were about other development subjects—such as water, food, poverty,

sanitation, health (the MDGs general), or often about Jeffrey Sachs—with a brief

mention of a certain village, usually as a success story. Roughly a third of the

articles analyzed were pieces directly about a certain MV. Additionally, key words

and phrases were analyzed.

Interviews

The content analysis was supplemented with (formal and informal)

discussions in person, on the phone, via Skype and by email. These discussions

included eight Ugandan journalists and four communications staffers at the Earth

Institute, UNDP and Millennium Promise Organization.

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Findings

The first notable finding was that there was little coverage of the MVP by

Africans. Given the importance of rural development to Africa, the fanfare with

which it was launched, and the ambitious scope of the MVP project it could be

expected that this would be a major news story for African media. It was not.

Instead, we found only 103 instances of reportage pieces in total in the seven-

year time period, 97 of them newspaper articles, 4 blog posts and 2 YouTube

videos. The average story length was 584 words with some articles having a word

count as low as 100. Only 16 stories had more than 1,000 words. The most

common word count for the articles we looked at was around 420. Of the 97

total, 65 were spot news stories about visitors from the UN (or celebrities),

events, new program launches or new donors. Only 26 were features. Of these, it

appears that only the features were based on visits by reporters to the villages.

The rest apparently came from press releases or reports issued by the MVP or

their partners.

An average of 1.7 sources were used in the articles. In most cases these

sources were officials from the villages including Jeffrey Sachs, government

officials and donors. There were 16 pieces with zero sources ie information was

presented as fact without citations of any document or person or source for the

information. There were only two pieces which used an independent voice as a

source (an academic from the United States).

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Although it took place after we had completed our study, the lack of African press

coverage of the controversy over the evaluation of the MVP is consistent with the

findings of our study. In the spring of 2012, the UK medical journal, Lancet,

published a paper authored by the MVP Director of Monitoring and Evaluation

Paul Pronyk claiming that infant mortality had fallen dramatically in the villages

(Pronyk, Munz, Nemzer et al 2012). Michael Clemens from the Center for Global

Development, a Washington DC-based research institute, publicly disputed the

claims and indeed there turned out to be problems with the methodology. The

paper was partially retracted (Pronyk 2012) and Pronyk left the employ of

Columbia University. The controversy was discussed in donor countries with

comment and news appearing in Nature (Gilbert 2012), the letters column of the

Lancet and on multiple blogs that cover development (A View from the Cave, The

Economist 2012). However, the discussion was largely ignored by the African

press with only one article appearing on Allafrica.com (Taylor 2012), the site that

aggregates news from African magazines and newspapers that are archived

online.

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Figure 1: Articles analysed, by Country

As can be seen in Figure 1, the amount of coverage varied in each country.

Ghana, with a lively media sector, had 16 articles; Nigeria was in the middle range

with 9 articles, while Ethiopia, which has a far more restrictive media

environment and far fewer journalists, had 5 articles and 2 blog posts. Only one

article was found from Senegal, two from Mali and three from Malawi. Uganda

had the most coverage, a subject we will return to later.

Type and Tone of Story: short and sweet

0 5 10 15 20 25

Ethiopia

Ghana

Kenya

Malawi

Mali

Nigeria

Rwanda

Senegal

Tanzania

Uganda

Pan-African

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Figure 2: Articles analysed, by Type

Overall, articles about the MVP in the African press tend to be supportive

of the MVPs, taking information from local officials, press releases and reports at

face value, with little, if any, analysis or investigation. Only 20 out of 103 pieces

include interviews with local villagers, and even in these articles, it appears that

the villagers were introduced to the journalists by the MVP/UNDP staff. Only two

pieces cite academics as independent critics (from the West). None refer to

African academics or other critical thinkers and external evaluators. The coverage

relates to news announcements, focusing on events, new projects, donations and

partnerships or official progress reports. The large majority of African newspaper

coverage consists of basic news stories (refer to Figure 2), with features in a

distant second place and opinion pieces in third. There were no articles that

could be classified as “investigative reporting.”

Positive

The articles generally took a positive tone. Some 79% of the articles analyzed (81

out of 103 pieces) were positive.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Basic News

Story

Feature Opinion

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Figure 1: Articles analysed, by Tone

Remarkably there was apparently no negative coverage of the MVP. Only

six articles were coded as negative (five of which were opinion pieces) and none

of these were directly about the MVP. For example, in an opinion editorial from

Ghana, “Keeping Ghana clean; our responsibility,” the author writes: “When the

world renowned U.S Economist, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs hailed Accra as the ‘jewel and

crown of West Africa’ at the Millennium Village Project (MVP) Annual Retreat

which took place recently, I was very much amazed. I was amazed because of the

fact that the capital city, Accra, as we all know is barely clean” (Tastsu, 2010). This

was the most negative comment found in an article associated with the MVP in

any of the print articles analyzed for this paper.

There were 64 articles in the category of basic news stories (see Figure 1)

and all provided positive portrayals of various MVP programs and progress. These

sample headlines and introductory sentences from the stories give a flavor of the

coverage:

Positive

Negative

Balanced

None

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• ‘World renowned economist, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs conferred with President

John Evan Atta Mills’

• ‘Village records increased crop yield, attains MDGs’

• ‘Village digs itself out of hunger’

• ‘Ruhiira brings hope to pregnant mothers’

• ‘Turning banana yields into cash’

• ‘Riding on goats to escape poverty’

• ‘Tommy Hilfiger Foundation supports education in Isingiro’ i

In keeping with our sense that many of the news stories covered events that

involved visits to the villages by officials, the “commending” of the villages was

treated as legitimate news. The word was used frequently and sometimes in the

headline of the articles:

• MDGs-UNDP Millennium Village Commended (Buhari, 2008)

• Mayange’s Anti-hunger Campaign Commended (Niyonshuti, 2010)

And also within the stories:

• “The Regional Minister commended the UNMVP for the wonderful work to

improve the living standards of the people” (Freiku, 2009).

• “Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda has commended the Millennium Villages

Project (MVP) for proving that scientific agriculture can help peasants

develop and overcome poverty” (Kakwesi, 2010).

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The use of press release language, quotes, facts and figures is evident in the

detailed information given about how the MVPs are progressing in much of the

African press coverage surveyed for this report. Typically, there is no source

provided for the information, which is presented as fact. The use of official press

releases and reports from the MVPs is most evident in Uganda, Kenya and Ghana.

After the villages of Ruhiira, Sauri and Bonsaaso were featured in an MVP three-

year progress report “Harvest of Development in Rural Africa: The Millennium

Villages after Three Years” the numbers cited in the report were repeated in

newspaper articles that appeared around the same time.ii Two articles used the

publication of the report as the news peg. Others simply lifted or paraphrased

material from the report and presented it as fact without any attribution.

• “A report on the achievement of the project, in efforts to meet the

eight Millennium Development Goals, shows the yield of the crop tripled

from eight bags an acre to 24” (Mosota, 2009).

• “The report titled Status of MDGs Indicators After Three Years and Way

Forward, further reveals school enrollment of girls has surpassed that of

boys, with current ratio of girls to boys being 11:10” (Id,).

• “A report titled Status of MDGs Indicators After Three Years and Way

Forward, shows that 80 per cent of the population is food secure, with

between 15 and 20 per cent requiring support as they are buffered in

extreme poverty” (Mosota, 2010).

As well as press releases from the UNDP and MVP, a number of corporate

press releases seem to have crept into the coverageiii. One example: when the

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telecom companies Zain/Celtel and Ericsson announced they would increase

funding for the MVPs and expand cellular networks to the villages, Kenya’s The

East African published a piece nine days later that reprinted, almost word-for-

word, about half of the press release on Zain’s website (Ngunjiri, 2008).iv

Map showing distance between Kampala and Mbarrara

Reasons to be cheerful

The reasons for the positive coverage can be divided into several broad

categories:

Dependency on sources

Many African journalists have not heard of Jeffrey Sachs or the Millennium

Village Project and so have not considered writing about them. Studies have

found that there is little coverage of rural areas in African media (Pawlick, 2001)

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and so when journalists do decide to write about development they may not have

built up the expertise and contacts that come with beat reporting. For these

reasons, journalists may rely on press releases, reports and sources produced by

the Earth Institute and Millennium Village Project. As well as email distribution,

the reports and press releases distributed by MVP may be posted on the website

of the Earth Institute and milleniumvillage.org.

On these web sites there is a dearth of in-depth research papers written

by critics of the Millennium Village Project or external evaluations which were not

authored by EI staff. Indeed most of the information on the pages of the EI

website labeled “research” comes from the Earth Institute itself and virtually all

of it is favorable. The Millenium Villages website has a section called “resources”

but there too is a lack of research critical of the villages. Much of the material on

these pages comes from reports generated by the MVP/EI/UNDP.

Journalists who want to write about rural areas often say that they don’t

have funding to visit (Colmery and Diaz, 2010) and this constraint came up

repeatedly in our interviews with Ugandan journalists. In the case of the MVP,

many of the villages were deliberately placed in the poorest areas and are thus far

removed from urban centers. The remote location leads the journalists to depend

on the MVP/UNDP for access to the villages and the villagers. This was

commented on by all the journalists interviewed for this paper. One journalist

noted, “You have to be taken there. You cannot just wake up one morning and

say ‘I am going to the villages, I want to hear what the people are saying.’ It’s very

hard. It limits your, you know, your access to knowledge” (author interview,

March 2012) .

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It takes about five hours to get from Kampala to Ruhiira, which is actually a

cluster of communities. Ugandan journalists said that upon arrival, they are

shown a few successful projects and then taken back to Mbarara and given a

hotel room for the night. Because of the long time it takes to get there, visits are

short and so they didn’t have enough time to look behind the scenes to learn

more about what is going on at the village.

The influence that the PR staff of companies / organizations have on

journalists has been widely written about (Chomsky and Herman, 2002: 26;

Davies 2010; Potter, 2010). Even when not being “spun,” journalists’ views are

naturally shaped by those of their sources, particularly when they depend on

these sources for access (Gans, 2004) or for technical or specialized information

(AUTHOR REMOVED) Evident in the articles analyzed here were some of the

connections between journalists that gave rise to coverage. One reporter

interviewed noted that an editor at his publication was also working in the

Communications Department of the UNDP. As a result, his paper often printed

press releases and other communiques issued by the UNDP. Another example

found was an MVP official who was profiled by a journalist in 2007 and then over

the next few years was quoted by the same reporter as a source in stories that

included information drawn from press releases provided by his office. This

suggests that the PR department was able to establish a connection between the

reporter and the UNDP/MVP staffer, which contributed to his being used as a

news source to complement the releases. While these kinds of connections are

essential to the gathering of news they can make journalists reluctant to criticize

their sources (Gans, 2004).

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The second filter described by Chomsky and Herman in their seminal book

“Manufacturing Consent” is advertising (Chomsky and Herman, 2002: 14).

Journalists interviewed said that the MVP had taken out paid supplements in a

number of African newspapers. These supplements, whether written by the

newspaper staff or provided by the NGO, are considered a form of advertising and

are handled through the business side of the newspaper. The New Vision

newspaper, for example, charges about $3,300 US for each supplement page

which is about the same price as it charges for advertisements. However, since

advertisers often influence the tone or amount of editorial coverage (Bagdikian,

2000; Gambaro and Puglisi, 2009) it may be that newspapers publishing paid

supplements about the Millennium Village Project are less likely to criticize the

villages. There is also the risk that readers will be unable to distinguish between

paid content and news (Hadland et al, 2007: 48). A 2007 study on the use of

advertising supplements in the South African press concluded that they pose a

threat to the credibility of the media and may lead to an erosion of public trust

and the “poisoning” of public discourse. (Id: 1).

Ideology

The fifth filter that Chomsky and Herman write about is ideology (Chomsky

and Herman, 2002: 29). In Africa the notion that the media should play an

important role in promoting economic development and national unity has been

an essential part of thinking about media for decades. There is on much of the

continent a kind of national consensus about the need for the press to help

educate the public and push for economic development. This frame can be seen

in the positive coverage of the MVP. Implicit in the coverage is an uncritical view

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of the projects and the assumption that it is in each country’s interest is to

promote the success of the project and thereby helping it expand. This attitude

to the villages is found in the press coverage of the MVP and is akin to the self-

censorship observed by anthropologist Jennifer Hasty while doing her fieldwork in

Ghana. “This self-censorship is not driven by anything so simple as fear,

repression, or any such violation of the right to free speech; rather, it is the

product of an implicit contract between journalists and state officials,” explains

Jennifer Hasty, after experiencing this phenomenon firsthand at the Daily Graphic

in Ghana. (Hasty, 2005:78) To put it another way, “a media system that is

private, commercial, but acutely aware that it serves a nation bound to the state-

in other words, a ‘normal’ media system in our neoliberal age- is constantly but

softly controlled by the interests it serves” (Fair, 2008).

One manifestation of this implicit connection between the press and the

government is an emphasis on reporting news about officials, politicians and

corporate CEOs. Hasty describes this phenomenon:

“Many of the regular news stories carried by the Daily Graphic are based

on the speeches and statements of public officials, usually delivered at invited

assignments to meeting and ceremonies” (Hasty, 2005:32). Indeed, this

phenomenon not only applies to The Daily Graphic, or to Ghana, but is prevalent

in each country, every publication and almost all articles analyzed in this research.

The most quoted sources found in the content analysis were high-level

government officials, regional and local officials and, of course, MVP officials.

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This phenomenon is not unique to African press. There has been much

literature about journalists covering “manufactured” news, such as press releases

and official events, in general (Herman, Edward and Chomsky, 2002). Certainly

the reverence the US media historically showed towards Former Federal Reserve

Chairman Alan Greenspan or CEO of Chase bank Jamie Dimon and the close

relationships between the parts of the UK government and Rupert Murdoch and

his newspapers, suggests that gentle treatment of important government officials

is not a particularly African phenomenon, despite Jennifer Hasty’s view of the

cultures of deference she observed in encounters between journalists and

government officials in Ghana. What is different is the habit found in many parts

of Africa of giving government officials and their statements the most prominent

placement in the article and often beginning news stories with a mention of the

most senior official who was present at the news event being covered. This

phenomenon is referred to by Hasty as the “Who-lede” (Hasty, 2005).

Repression

The line between self-censorship and outright repression is not always

clear. African governments that called on the media to promote development

took what Guy Berger describes as a utilitarian view, they needed the media but

still wanted to able to control it (author interview 2011 ) ; Bourgault, 1995: 79;

Hachten, 1971: 45; Nyamnjoh, 2005: 70-71; Tettey, 2001: 6) and many of the

countries that have Millennium Villages don’t have a free press. Rwanda and

Ethiopia are both repressive environments for the media and this surely affects

the coverage of the MVP as the media in more closed societies are less likely to

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criticize a government-supported project.v Other countries, such as Uganda, do

not have a fully democratic government but still maintain a relatively free press.

Limitations to our study

One significant limitation of this research paper is the absence of radio

coverage. While a large station such as Joy-FM in Ghana has online transcripts

that could be reviewed, most community and local radio stations have no records

of their programming. Therefore, the research was unable to account for, not to

mention analyze, any radio coverage of the MVPs on the radio.vi This is an

important limitation of this paper since “radio dominates the mass media

spectrum with state-controlled radio services still commanding the biggest

audiences in most countries but regional (within country) commercial stations

demonstrating the largest consistent increases in numbers, followed by

community radio, where growth, although significant in certain countries, has

been inconsistent. Television is less widely available, especially in rural areas,

although it is seen as a growing force” (AMDI, 2006).

Even in the case of Uganda, the country in which we found the largest

number of articles about its MVP (20), radio still dominates “The radio sector,

with more than 80 stations, is the most geographically spread of the media, with

stronger presence in rural areas than TV and the print sector” (Khamalwa, 2006:

13). However, while community radio may be a useful way to promote discussion

about the MVP in rural areas, newspapers tend to have more urban circulation

and be aimed at policy makers so the role of the newspaper as an agenda-setting

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device for urban policy makers (Adesonaye, 1990) is still important enough to

merit study.

Another important limitation of this research is our use of the Internet. We

used the aggregations site AllAfrica.com to find the newspaper articles we coded

but this site does not include every newspaper and magazine in Africa. In

addition, some African media outlets don’t have searchable archives online.

Conclusion

The MVP needs media coverage if the broader public is to learn from their

development failures and successes, and if the lessons are to be replicated. Our

analysis showed that the media coverage was, at best, disappointing: limited in

scope and too often, more in the nature of publicity (sometimes, explicitly so,

with paid supplements) than critical assessments of the villages. We have

enquired into why that might be so. Some of this is because of a fundamental

paradox: the villages themselves are remote and so it’s difficult for journalists to

visit them. The pro-village bias may not only be a result of the fact that the village

(and its sponsors) pay for the transportation to the village, but also because of a

natural cognitive capture—journalists want to promote development efforts, and

not to discourage aid. Still, there is more that might be done both to garner more

coverage and to ensure greater balance in coverage. There are more news hooks

that could be used. More systematic analytic studies, some of which inevitably

would be partially critical, would provide the basis of more in-depth coverage.

With its deep commitment to development, perhaps the EI and the UNDP should

make a corresponding commitment to enhancing an understanding of the

25

development process among journalists, including discussions of the raging

controversies—which include the role of the MVP in promoting development.

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Notes

i Otushabire Tibyangye of Uganda’s The New Vision wrote all five of these articles.

ii Several newspaper articles published at the same time as the report use similar language although they vary

slightly in their wording (bags of maize instead of tons, for example). This may be because a different, perhaps

earlier version of the report was distributed locally to key journalists in each country. Or it may be that the

journalists made mistakes when reprinting the information from the report.

iii See Flat Earth News by Nick Davies for data on the use of press releases by UK newspapers.

iv For example, the article read “According to Chris Gabriel, Celtel's chief executive officer, people in this remote

part of Africa will have access to basic but effective mobile Internet access over an EDGE network” and the press

release read: “Chris Gabriel, CEO of Celtel, says: “It is wonderful that the people in this remote part of Africa will

have access to basic, but effective mobile internet access over an EDGE network.” This paraphrasing of the press

release was repeated throughout the entire article.

v Author interview, July 2012.

vi The existence of radio coverage of MVPs is confirmed in at least two cases, based on interviews, conducted in

October 2001, with students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, who had spent the

summer working in various MVs, including those in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and at an unofficial project copying the

MVP in Mozambique.