Interview with Bunmi Makinwa

CI: Can you describe how you got involved in Communication for Development to begin with and what excites you still about your work?

BM: I was a journalist, a sprouting journalist in some campus newspapers back in Nigeria and I worked for the biggest news agency in Nigeria. Later on I worked as a journalist at the international level for major media houses including the New York Times, Voice of America, and at one time, Pan African News Agency. And from there, I went to work for WHO as an information officer. The next move was probably more logical, now, to understand that communication was more than media and I worked on what we called behaviour change communication and that was the progression. So I started from regular media and journalism work and then looked beyond media to see the whole of communication.

CI: By working with WHO?

BM: Working with WHO…well actually, WHO – it was not media work, it was after WHO, I worked in Boston with the School of Public Health and Communications at that time and I worked with Family Health International on Behaviour Change Communication in the US…and so on.

CI: What still excites you about your work?

BM: It's the depth, the discovery…it's an ongoing work. There's still so much to do. And as I said yesterday [in a presentation at the VIII International Communication for Development Roundtable], communication in our area, in HIV and AIDS, is actually the ground-breaking area of communication today. We are dealing with an epidemic of...especially when you work in Africa and developing countries of Asia, and in Latin America...we are dealing with an epidemic that produces different faces of life, very special, private sexual life, an epidemic that touches on socio-economic issues, touches on government policy, touches on everything. What is the role of the communication specialist in this? How do you deal with behaviour? How do you deal with social issues? How do you deal with politics? How do you deal with funding issues? There are a whole range of issues. So we are using the private sector communication style and approaches with development communication and with the other types of communication that are possible – traditional media – everything is applicable at one point in time or the other. So it is very exciting.

CI: Do you think we are winning or losing?

BM: I think professionally, we are winning. Because we are learning more, we are doing much more than we used to do. We know much more about how to communicate today than we did about 5 years ago on HIV and AIDS. But as far as the epidemic is concerned, we are losing. It is a major epidemic. We don't have the amount of resources that should go into different parts of programming, not just communication. We do not do things at scale… One of the examples I give is if I wanted you to buy a pair of scissors from me, and I wanted to you buy that scissors and no other, as a private sector marketing person, I'm going to put so much resources into [promoting that] over a period of time – 2 to 3 years. So you, when you mention scissors, you remember only that scissors to buy. That's how it is also in development communication. We have to put in the resources, we have to almost indoctrinate people…in some ways. Although, it is an “indoctrination” in the way that we agree with people that it is good for them. So that it is not negative indoctrination.

CI: You say that, regarding funding / resources, we don't have enough of them…if you could double the budget that you work with, what would you do?

BM: You see, in my area of UNAIDS, we do not raise any funding ourselves to do programmes. UNAIDS is a co-sponsored organisation, not a UN agency. Our interest is that the 8 UN agencies that co-sponsor UNAIDS should have the resources that are needed to do the job. So if I could multiply the resources by 20 times, I would give these resources to those agencies and I would move them to do the communication that is required. As well as other programmes.

CI: And that communication that is required, is there anything specific that you would pinpoint that money for?

BM: That I would pinpoint the money to be spent on? Well, start with understanding behavioural change. Understand social change …and this varies in various communities. This means we are going beyond communication strategies working with behavioural specialists, working with sociologists, working with psychologists, working with people who are specializing in understanding culture, anthropologists. The work is more than communications today, it is an expanded scope - and that study, that understanding needs to involve these various disciplines. That is a major job to be done.

CI: In your work at UNAIDS, do you work at all on planning strategies with these agencies? The Framework that you have developed, does it include the planning strategies for implementation of the Framework?

BM: Yes, we do, because we are tracking the use of the contextual factors that are in the Framework. Sometimes they (the implementors) do not even have the capability or the staff to do the job. So, although we are not an implementing agency, we are sometimes called upon to help an implementing agency. To assist. Including strategy planning, including execution of programmes, including what is going on with evaluation…so, we do assist.

CI: Yet that is not part of your mission.

BM: Strictly speaking, no.

CI: Whose voice, or what voices, that are not presently being heard, do you think need to be heard more often?

BM: This is not something that one can be categorical about. But we need to hear the voices of the so-called “target audience”. One of the reasons I rebelled against communication programming and said that we needed to revisit it and we set up the Framework, was because I worked at various levels…I was once based in Boston, I was once based in Washington, I was based in Nairobi. And at each level, when I went out to train people in communication, when I went out to develop communication programmes, I wasn't schooled adequately about the audience with whom I was working. In spite of the adaptation of communication tools that we used – surveys, questionnaires, focus group discussions, there was a lot that was still lacking in really knowing the audiences. And that's wrong. We have to go back to a learning mode. And this is very difficult as so-called “experts” and specialists to now have to go and listen to what people are saying. All of these so-called “wiz-kids” who talk so much about “lack of capacity”…I think these are the wrong words. The capacity is there… Any community that exists today wherever in the world…has been resilient, has been able to overcome adverse conditions, has been able to overcome diseases…otherwise, they would have failed. How did they do it? This is where we have to begin. We have to learn from them. We have to work with them to develop their own programmes and to execute them. This is a long-term undertaking. We have been doing the short-term - come with programmes, come with tools, tell people what they have to do, give those tools to them…give those tools to them, and if they will do it, then come back and we monitor and do an evaluation. And of course, most of the time, the evaluation reflects positively, because we need more money. Independence of the evaluation must be guaranteed. We must not evaluate our own programmes – we do it in the UN all the time and it is very suspect. We produce lovely glossy evaluation reports, but how can we be sure the evaluation is honest without an outside evaluation? We cannot.

CI: The UNAIDS Communication Framework addresses cultural and contextual issues in development quite substantively. Could you speak about the role of traditional communication forms and patterns within HIV/AIDS communication programmes?

BM: Traditional communication forms are another way of using communication. And when we say “traditional” – traditional as opposed to what? Traditional – that's just the way, perhaps, the people communicate. It is not traditional for them. It's current. Traditional suggests past. And the way they used to communicate in the past. Let me give you an example. There was a seminar held by the Government of a particular country. And the organisers said one of their frustrations was that people just did not participate. And then one of their facilitators went to a meeting of women - this was a seminar of women – and asked them if they would like to participate in the other seminar. And the women said, “Of course we would like to participate!” And he said, “Well, how? How would you like to do this?” “We would like to participate by dancing and singing.” So he said, “Ok. Dance and sing.” And so the next day, they came back already with songs and they…those songs had all the lessons, all the ideas of what they thought people needed to know, in their own language and... They wanted to sing their participation. They wanted to dance their participation. This is not “traditional” for them. This is just the way they communicate.

CI: How do you assess the value of the new technologies for your work?

BM: This is very important. Because 2 months ago, I was in Dakar, Senegal. And I was in an internet café. And it just confirmed what I have already always thought. The people using internet were very ordinary people. Some of them wore no shoes, they were shoeless. They were there typing messages or whispering messages to somebody who was typing. New technology is pervasive. It is all over. What is more interesting is how is it being used? Technology is sometimes adapted. Bicycles were made to carry one person. But in some parts of the world, they carry four. Bicycles were probably made just to run around with in the city. But in some parts of the world they run between villages, they carry goods, and so on. So, technology is adapted and it is appropriated. As communication specialists, we need to be very aware of what technology can mean, and how it has been appropriated, and therefore, what does it say or what does it sell in the various communities. My mother, she does not write letters to me anymore. And we don't speak on the phone. She has no phone in our home. I get all of my messages from her by email. How? My cousin, who has an email, is the bearer of that message. So technology has fulfilled the purpose of linking me with my mom on an almost weekly basis.

CI: To change the topic just a little bit – if you had to choose, which one communication initiative (and you don't need to name it if you are not comfortable) has most disappointed you, and why?

BM: By initiative, do you mean like a programme I was associated with or…?

CI: Not even necessarily that you were associated with…

BM: Well, it is difficult to say which one, on a scale of disappointment, which one is more than the other…or the worst…

CI: One that comes to mind…?

BM: Some of them…I just notice sometimes…we do not serve the purposes we are intending to serve. Especially where you notice that there are some communities that have programmes that are carried out without checking with the audience for which that programme is meant. But right now I cannot think of one, but maybe it will come to me…because I have seen several, you know…and [I think,] “This just can't go…” Sometimes it is an advert, even a local programme…it doesn't need to be [in] development, it could be a private sector…where, you just know, this is not going to work. There is a lot of money being wasted down the drain.

CI: What about one that most impressed you?

BM: Well, some of the peer education programmes that were done by the AIDSCAP project (AIDS Control and Prevention Programme) under the USAID grant, they are very good. Why? They actually were done by local organisations. Some of the tools that were brought from abroad or from other programmes, that were probably not even relevant. So what you find out is as time goes on, these peer groups have appropriated the tools and amended them to suit their own purposes, you go to some communities and you see [for example,] the peer educators [in the sex worker programme] and they do not use those tools to train people – What is sex? What is HIV? What is AIDS? – No. They are going there, they have conversations with people, they dance with people, they talk with people, they sit down and they tell stories and discuss. So in that way, [the programme] becomes part of the local milieu. It just moves, it just goes to the core. That is very good.

I think the Soul City approach is very good. It's multi-media, it's hip-hop, it's “high”, but it's for that audience – the people who watch TV, who listen to the radio, who read magazines and cartoons... Africa is not all rural. It has rural segments. So, for the segment that it targets, [Soul City] uses a multi-media approach that is very effective, very well pre-tested, and involving the people and also keeping tally of the feedback, the evaluating constructs – to see what needs to change and what needs to be kept.

CI: From your experience, what is the most important communication initiative that you know of, and why?

BM: That is also very difficult…Very difficult questions… the “most” and the “more”… It is very difficult [to answer] because various initiatives respond to different needs and…they have degrees of successes and degrees of weaknesses….

CI: Is there one that you can see as the turning point? …a turning point?

BM: In HIV/AIDS Communication? I think what I see as the turning point is the need to go beyond the individual based approach and to look at the contextual approach. And that is really a conceptual thing. I think, from what I heard here yesterday [at the Roundtable], we are beginning to move forward. Jose Rimon, from JHU, talking about a convergence…that is where I am right now. I see a convergence. It is neither one nor the other. It is both. Individual behaviour change is important because as I said, it was central. Contextual behaviour change must support individual behaviour change. That is the point. They must go together. So, the turning point for me in communication is the convergence of paying attention, particularly to social change, while we are doing work in individual behaviour change. And that they go together. So in HIV/AIDS, we cannot do one or the other…it has to be both. For me, this is the turning point. This is a conceptual move that is necessary, this is a shift in the way we think.

CI: Yesterday you had a question from the Roundtable. This person was asking – “How much do we as communicators need to do? It sounds like we need to do everything...” Have you [considered] that question any further?

BM: We do not have to do everything. That is wrong. Indeed we need to do less. We need to focus on our area of specialisation. That is the point. We need to do less. I couldn't make that point yesterday. And if it came across as ambiguous, that is a pity…we need to do less and we need to allow others to do what they ought to do. The multidisciplinary approach is – a true communication specialist ought to know that there are limits on what communication alone can do. And therefore, we do what communication can do - we come up with a good communication programme, very well developed, and get this ready for good implementation. But that communication programme is incomplete until we have the other relevant sectors who should be involved…

CI: So you are talking about [a] cooperation that needs to happen…?

BM: That is the key. At various levels and indeed, across sectors. As I said, communication about provision of condoms is an ineffective programme, indeed can be a useless programme if these condoms are not there… So, what is the job of the communication specialist? To do the good communication programme, but draw the attention of the organisation or whoever is working on provision of condoms and make sure that there is collaboration between the condom programme and the one on communication. But it is not the job of the communication specialist to go and set up condom logistics and go into provision of condoms and making sure that they are there, and making…no, no, no. That actually becomes a problem. So, we must do less, do it better and allow others to be more involved in their own various areas.

CI: Thank you for sharing your perspective.

BM: You are very welcome.