How text messaging gives voice to marginalized communities

Communications technology has changed the development landscape. Developing countries now account for three quarters of the 7 billion cellphone subscribers worldwide, with mobile telecommunications systems increasingly able to reach even the most remote communities.

Whether it’s the use of mobile money systems to provide cash transfers to refugees in Rwanda or the transmission of local weather forecasts by text message to farmers in Malawi, development agencies are tapping into the potential of low-cost technology platforms to complement service delivery and promote innovative solutions to local issues.

“Access to technology can be transformatively empowering for local communities. … Technology has the potential to disrupt existing power structures, rewriting relationships both within a community and outside it,” reads the European Interagency Security Forum’s recent report on communications technology and humanitarian delivery.

I witnessed this “empowering” effect in Sierra Leone last year, when I helped to deliver a pilot community reporting initiative that used text messaging to promote dialogue between Sierra Leone’s citizens and their elected officials.

Launched by international development charity Christian Aid in January 2014, the project — SMS Voices — was run in partnership with ENCISS, a Sierra Leone-based governance program funded by U.K. aid and the European Union, and was designed and delivered by Radar, a U.K. communications nongovernmental organization.

SMS Voices trained 45 volunteers from Sierra Leone’s Bo and Koinadugu districts — farmers and teachers to students and traders — to become citizen reporters. Throughout 2014 they used text messaging to highlight issues of local concern to their local councilors, by sending them anonymous microreports.

The length of a standard text message, each report includes factual material crowdsourced from their communities, covering any of the five thematic areas: youth, governance, access to services, gender, and justice and security.

Among the issues raised are the scarcity of school teaching materials, unsafe roads and bridges, conflict between local groups, access to clean water, inefficient waste management, female genital mutilation, teen pregnancy, and incidents of violence against women and children.

These messages were received by nine participating local councilors, who also received training. The councilors were asked to respond to these microreports via text messaging and explain to reporters their planned response to the problems raised in their respective communities.

Some councilors promised to investigate, raise issues at council meetings or pass the information to the relevant individual such as the police or mayor. Others described the background to the problem, advised reporters to wait for an issue to be resolved or explained how they or others had already sought to address it. The emphasis was on dialogue, effectively creating a feedback loop between local government and citizens.

Rather than going from handset to handset, the SMS reports were transmitted via a custom-built online platform created by Radar. With all reports stored online, they could be tracked by theme, location and councilor responsiveness, allowing for further follow-up.

Some 300 reports were sent over the 12-month period. In the latter half of the project, approximately two-thirds of these reports were related to the Ebola crisis: Volunteers used the system to discuss households affected by quarantine regulations, raise concerns about infections and report breaches of Ebola regulations.

Likewise, councilors shared information on travel restrictions, food and medical supplies, and public health messages. One councilor even used the system to communicate with his community while under quarantine following the death of his brother.

All this may sound prosaic to those of us in the “global north,” where elected officials are just a mouse click or tweet away. But it’s not the case in Sierra Leone, where less than 10 percent of the population have access to electricity and only 2 percent use the Internet. Power cuts and mobile network outages are rife in the West African country as well, and many local councils lack the capacity to be responsive and accountable to constituents. Nevertheless, this project demonstrated that it’s possible to run low-cost, innovative and resilient schemes in low-resource environments.

During follow-up interviews, a number of participants highlighted examples of change, which they believe are attributable to or supported by their microreporting. These include the long-promised start of a school building project, repairs to roads and hand-pump wells, the stationing of a police warden to direct traffic at a high-risk junction, and an improved waste management system.

“I have seen change. I have now seen council officials in the community raising awareness on issues around teenage pregnancy and early sexual activities [of young people] which I have been reporting on,” one volunteer, Evelyn Turay, said.

“Soft results” were also documented. Citizen reporters said the project increased their engagement in local issues, improved their awareness and appreciation of councilors’ work, and created a better relationship between citizens and councils.

“It has brought the community closer to the council and vice versa. There used to be a distance between community and councilors. Previously councilors in my ward didn’t visit our wards and now they do,” teacher Jia Kangbai said.

There are also indications that SMS Voices was able to increase councilors’ local-level accountability to their constituents and their capacity to carry out their functions, leaving them better equipped to respond to community issues.

“It’s been challenging, but it’s helping me to improve on my job and to know the problems in my community, so that I can find solutions to them. It has improved my interaction with civil society and shown me how to act immediately and promptly to community concerns,” Martin M. B. Goba, Bo district councilor, said.

It seems the best results can be gained if projects such as these emphasize constructive dialogue, rather than confrontation with elected officials.

To be clear, there have been challenges. These include the issue of how to maintain sufficient levels of involvement from citizen reporters and councilors, the need to clarify expectations around anticipated results and the question of how to incentivize unpaid participants.

With careful planning, these challenges can be overcome. However, the long-term sustainability of such projects depends on one crucial ingredient: buy-in. Without local ownership from citizens and governance stakeholders, participatory communications projects struggle to gain traction.

This is a lesson Christian Aid continues to learn and apply — most recently in northern Kenya, where last week we launched SMS Voices in Marsabit County, connecting local government administrators and remote pastoralist communities.

SMS-based participatory projects can’t promise to turn local authorities into accountable, responsive and fully functioning machines overnight. However, as long as the telecommunications sector continues to expand, text messaging will remain a powerful tool for giving voice to marginalized communities across the developing world.

Know other examples of successful SMS-based participatory projects? Share these success stories by leaving a comment below.

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