Smart solutions sought to educate and sensitise the continent on COVID-19
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is collaborating with the Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), the leading technology innovation centre in Africa, to launch a call for innovative communication projects on COVID-19, based on indigenous African languages and targeted at the semi-urban and rural population across Africa. The communication projects are expected to help counter disbelief and misinformation, catalyse citizens actions and solidarity, as well as combat stigmatisation.
The collaboration will focus on projects delivering vetted and critical information from Africa CDC to Africans in remote areas using innovative and culturally sensitive messaging.
This involves educating the public and ensuring fact-based information reaches even remote locations through such approaches like comics, animation, illustrations, infographics, interactive SMS and mobile apps.
The selected teams will be supported with grant funding of up to $5,000 for research and design support. Proposed projects can be focused on one African country or multiple countries across the continent.
Dr. Benjamin Djoudalbaye, Head of Policy, Health Diplomacy and Communication at the Africa CDC stated that the collaboration is to “enhance efforts of the Africa CDC towards educating the public and ensuring that the right information reaches even remote locations across the continent to avoid unnecessary panic and misinformation.”
With a track record of collaborating with key players to explore the application of technology to solve Africa’s systemic problems in Public Health, Education, Governance across the continent, CcHUB, through its internal research and development unit, CcHUB Design Lab, based in Kigali, Rwanda, will collaborate with innovators to provide technical support using innovative digital and non-digital methods to ensure the mass messaging on the coronavirus reaches the semi-urban and rural population across Africa.
Bosun Tijani, CcHUB’s Co-founder and CEO, said “This is a critical time where tech in Africa should be used in smart ways to ensure broader citizen awareness and understanding of COVID-19 response strategies and precautions.”
A Call for Projects
Solve for Coronavirus (COVID-19) is looking for creative teams working on a project or who have an idea with the capability to build out the solution.
ABOUT THE PARTNERS
Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
Africa CDC is a specialised technical institution of the African Union established to support public health initiatives of member states and strengthen the capacity of their public health institutions to detect, prevent, control and respond quickly and effectively to disease threats. Africa CDC supports African Union Member States in providing coordinated and integrated solutions to the inadequacies in their public health infrastructure, human resource capacity, disease surveillance, laboratory diagnostics, and preparedness and response to health emergencies and disasters.
African Union
The African Union is a pan-African organization whose goal is to propel a united continent towards peace and prosperity. The AU supports political and economic integration among its 55 member nations. It aims to boost development, eradicate poverty and bring Africa into the global economy.
Co-Creation Hub
CcHUB, through its design laboratory based in Kigali, Rwanda is a research and development lab innovating for social impact. We collaborate with global stakeholders to explore the application of technology to solve Africa’s systemic problems in Public Health, Education, Governance and the Private Sector. CcHUB also collaborates with over 150 innovation hubs and co-creation centres across Africa on various collaborative projects across many themes.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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