I have been preoccupied with the phrase “valuing voices” ever since the earliest days of Africa’s Voices as a pilot research project at the University of Cambridge. It has all sorts of meanings and motivations: a call to arms, an ethical commitment, a cautionary counsel, a methodological challenge amidst data revolutions, a test for people...
We invite you to join us for Africa’s Voices inaugural Academy. Our senior researchers will deliver practical and engaging training sessions on the opportunities of the digital revolution to gather citizen-generated data, and cutting-edge research techniques to generate rich insights. Africa’s Voices is committed to sharing our learnings, growing the capacity of others, and demonstrating the...
Learning is core to Africa’s Voices development and innovation. Recently with our partner, Oxfam Kenya, we reflected back on the challenges and lessons learned from our interactive radio project that sought to understand peoples’ motivations for paying taxes and their perceptions of the quality of public services. In Oxfam’s write up of the discussion are suggestions for improving the...
On Monday 27 June, Africa’s Voices presented how we overcome three common challenges that many organisations working with citizen-generated data face. The presentation was broadcast online for DataShift’s community call (webinar). We discussed: how Africa’s Voices builds and sustains citizen engagement during interactive radio projects, how we gather and analyse local language data, without relying on translation,...
Radio forums, both national and local, are powerful tools for discussing issues affecting people’s lives. Many listeners participate using SMS texting – a rich source of data which, if analysed with care and using sophisticated techniques, can provide invaluable insights into changes in the audience’s beliefs and opinions. These changes can be readily linked to socio-demographics (i.e....
