Creating a new forum for dialogue between media and youth in Burkina Faso

The current crisis in Burkina Faso affects the youth in particular. Against this background, it is important for the media to be able to offer them space to express their feelings, frustrations and aspirations. This observation led UNALFA, as a long-standing partner of CFI, to devise a new weekly programme with the young people of Burkina Faso as its primary target.

This programme, being launched at the end of July, will talk about topical social issues that primarily concern them, including entrepreneurship, social media, sexuality, sport, traditional and contemporary cultures, empowerment, local and community development, etc. It will raise their awareness of matters related to employability, civic education or political and civic engagement, to encourage them to take an active part in their country's development.

The programme will be “young" in content and “young" in its appealing, innovative format. The news will be discussed as much through sketches and rap-style magazines as through more traditional forms, stories and accounts, so as to get in step with listeners as much as possible. These varied entertaining forms will facilitate the tackling of any topic, even a sensitive issue, by giving them the light tone needed to capture a young audience's attention.

Training session for the programme's journalists at the start of July 2019, in Ouagadougou
@crédit UNALFA

Key figures will come and present their initiatives or their success stories in the “Profile" section of the programme, to share their experience and offer useful tips. Other sequences on personal development are planned, with questions collected on social media, by phone or on the programme's website.
Personal development coaches will answer them on air.

This programme will act as a vector for gender equality by regularly tackling subjects concerning young women, but also by keeping an equal balance in the selection of guests and presenting profiles of successful women.
On the production side, at least 30% of the team will be women.

This weekly magazine show is broadcast from Ouagadougou and will be relayed to the rest of the country via a network of around twenty local partner radio stations. It will be presented in French for three weeks and then, on the fourth week, in the local languages of the regions to which it is being broadcast (Mooré, Dioula, Fulfuldé and Gourmantché). These radio stations may also broadcast debates in the local language for their listeners.

Interview training in Ouagadougou, early July 2019
@crédit UNALFA

The editorial team, based in Ouagadougou, will be supported by ten or so regional correspondents, all playing a part in compiling programmes that are closely in tune with the local population. The programme will also have a social media presence, to extend the debate to the internet and thus reach the “connected" younger generation.

The journalists attended a training course at the start of July in which they tested out the various formats envisaged, received training in mobile video editing techniques, and produced pilot magazines.
The programme will be going out as from the end of July 2019.