Media and Telecoms Landscape Guides

"Mobile phone use and internet access are expanding rapidly across the world. Voice and text messages and social networking sites offer new platforms for aid agencies to establish an effective dialogue with the communities they are trying to assist."

This series of guides provides comprehensive and detailed information on the media and telecommunications landscape in developing countries that are vulnerable to humanitarian crises. They are designed as a tool to help humanitarian agencies communicate effectively with crisis-affected communities. Each guide profiles an individual country that is at risk of natural disaster caused by climate change, extreme weather, and seismic activity and/or is exposed to the consequences of human conflict.  The country guides include - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Niger, Chad, Kenya, , Somalia, South Sudan, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Haiti, Colombia, Indonesia, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The guides:

• contain practical information about media consumption habits and news and information flows in each country, including data and trends related to mobile phone coverage and mobile phone and internet usage;
• profile the main media organisations and their audiences;
• highlight the news, information, and entertainment channels that reach vulnerable sectors of the population;
• show which languages and which media outlets reach different communities most effectively;
• identify local partners who can help to produce radio and TV programmes and public service announcements and ensure that these are broadcast to the intended audience in a timely manner; and
• document cases where these new channels of communication have been used successfully for communication with beneficiaries.
• include web-based maps showing radio and TV stations and the area covered by their trainsmitters.

They were published by infoasaid, a collaborative project of two CDAC (Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities) Network members: Internews and BBC Media Actionm which closed in 2013.  The CDAC Network is funded by the United Kingdom (UK) Department for International Development (DFID).