RIU Tanzania switching media on to agricultural messages
14 November 2010

RIU Tanzania has opened talks with the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Dar es Salaam, to explore the possibility of accessing the School's students and facilities to reach farmers.

The School owns and runs a TV, a radio station and a newspaper. The School's radio broadcasts covers most of the areas where RIU Tanzania is active and broadcasts some development related material on environmental and health issues.

The plan is to start with distribution of available information from RIU activities and then later to include other sources of agricultural information and technologies. A more concrete plan will be drawn once the School begins its new academic year in November.

Jwani Tranquilino Jube, RIU Tanzania's programme officer for communications, said:

"The School of Journalism and Mass Communication is the main source of journalists in Tanzania. RIU hopes that this initiative will help to build long-term capacity of journalists who are better able to cover agricultural and rural development issues.

Meeting with the students confirmed that they are currently more inclined and interested in writing about political and entertainment related issues, but they agreed that they need to be more versatile. The quality of science writing is a problem in most countries. Journalist students have a built in bias towards the arts and social sciences."

Dr Nassor Masoud, associate dean for the school, said:

"This is a great initiative that will expose students to wider developmental issues than the traditional journalistic training that they get. Building such capacity will spark more interest from students, other journalists and media houses to cover more agriculture and rural development issues."

Note
There are a large number of universities working with RIU as partners and in capacity building roles. FIPS is also working with media students from Moi University to capture stories about their programme.