FRI Cameroon Link Strategic Partnership Takes off

By FRI Cameroon
Farm Radio International (FRI) Canada and Cameroon Link have signed a strategic partnership that took effect from the 1st April 2010. Executive Director Kevin Perkins endorsed the partnership document on behalf of FRI and the Director of Publications, James Achanyi-Fontem signed on behalf of Cameroon Link.
Within the frame work of its Partnership Policy, Farm Radio International Canada enters into Strategic Partnership Agreements with organizations that share a commitment to serving the communication needs of smallholder farmers through effective radio services, and that have values and goals that are consistent with or complementary to those of Farm Radio International.
The agreement endorsed outlines the shared goals of both organizations and describes how they will work together to achieve the goals notably, the objectives to be achieved through collaboration; the expectations, roles and responsibilities of the organizations in achieving the goals; the mechanisms that will be used for ensuring regular, open and transparent communication amongst others.

Farm Radio International
Farm Radio International is a Canadian-based, not-for-profit organization working in direct partnership with over 325 radio broadcasters in 39 African countries to fight poverty and food insecurity. Its mission is to support broadcasters in developing countries to strengthen small-scale farming and rural communities. It was established 30 years ago in response to the fact that farm radio broadcasts in the global south did not, for the most part, serve small-scale farmers. Rather, they were geared toward large-scale commercial farmers – an audience with very different needs from the largely subsistence farmers that make up the large majority of the populations of these regions. By producing and sharing radio scripts, a weekly news and information service, and other valuable resources with radio broadcasters, Farm Radio International improves the relevance and quality and increases the quantity of farm radio programming of partner stations that, collectively, serve some 220 million small-scale farmers in Africa.
Cameroon Link
Cameroon Link is a registered charity, not-for-profit organisation created on the 9th September 1991 with head office in Douala, Cameroon. Its objectives include the promotion of food security through interaction with small scale peasant farmers and breeders with media practitioners, especially those involved in community radio action. Media action focuses on poverty alleviation through the promotion of food and nutrition, community health development, women’s empowerment, human assistance, advocacy, education and communication on the rights to adequate food for all.
Cameroon Link was certified on the 23rd November, 1992 as a national umbrella NGO of professional dialogue groups of communication specialists, journalists, agriculture, health and social welfare workers, following a crucial lack of good circulation of information on self-help development policies, social welfare, infant and young child nutrition and food-self sufficiency in Cameroon. Cameroon Link coordinates activities of some 23 Community Based Organisations (CBO) interacting with farmers and breeders in six (6) of Cameroon’s ten (10) regions with community radio linkages.
Cameroon’s estimated target audience through community radio is 20.000.000 listeners, 65% of who are peasant farmers and breeders with very low income sources. Cameroon Link was broadcasting partner with Developing Countries Farm Radio Network Canada for over 20 years.
To achieve its goals, Cameroon Link organises media advocacy and social mobilisation activities, networking exchanges, capacity building trainings, conferences, symposia, seminars, and information and communication campaigns in collaboration with community radio stations. In 1996, Cameroon Link won the George Atkins Rural Communication Award and on the 30th March 2004, Cameroon Link Youth for Development Association (Camlink Y4DA) was created to address gender and youth empowerment issues due to the vulnerability of the girl child at puberty age.
The Shared or complementary goals, values, and strategies with the frame work of the current agreement include:
* Serve rural communities.
* Encourage journalistic activity that is characterized by accuracy, fairness and balance.
* Support the use of radio to ensure that knowledge is shared with the widest appropriate audience and that farmers have an opportunity for effective involvement in decision-making processes which affect them.
* Support practices, policies and technologies that promote sustainable and equitable development.
* Encourage community self-reliance and control of local development.
* Respect local cultures and the voices and decisions of farmers and their communities.
* Encourage social and economic change that is beneficial to small-scale farmers and farming families and that is gender inclusive and respectful of cultural diversity.
* Support building broadcaster capacity in production, technical, journalistic, and other skills.
The ultimate objective of the partnership is to increase the extent to which farmers in Cameroon are able to benefit from the information and communication services that are made available to them by radio. This ultimate objective is pursued by enabling Cameroon radio broadcasters to provide listeners with more and better programming for farmers and rural communities. To this end, the partnership will:
* Increase the number of radio broadcasters that receive Farm Radio International’s information services, including script packages and Farm Radio Weekly
* Increase the extent to which broadcasters use the resources of Farm Radio International
* Strengthen the input and feedback that comes to Farm Radio International from broadcasters related to its services, enabling FRI to improve the quality and relevance of its services
* Gather more information about how broadcasters use FRI resources and how listeners respond to the radio programs that are based on them.

FRI Up dates Partnership With Cameroon Radios

Canadian Managing Editor of Farm Radio International (FRI), Douglas Bruce (Vijay Cuddeford) started a marathon round of community radio stations in Cameroon on the 20th November 2009. The Canadian visitor is undertaking a 3-week long working visit aimed at strengthening partnership with local community radio stations involved in the promotion of farming and livestock rearing through broadcasting.
It all started at Nostalgie FM Radio at the heart of Douala City in Cameroon with Carole Leuwe, who took notes on the possibility of working closely with FRI. Vijay Cuddford had the opportunity to watch a live broadcast operated with an interview of his Cameroon Link host, James Achanyi-Fontem on the recent trainer of trainers workshop sponsored by IBFAN Africa on the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi) in Cameroon.WBTi is an evaluation tool conceived by IBFAN Asia.
During the exchange with Carole Leuwe, the FRI managing editor exposed the different categories of partnership and handed over an endorsement form to be filled and returned to Canada for inclusion on the mailing list of beneficiaries of broadcast materials conceived and channelled to African community radio stations.
Apart from visiting radio stations, Vijay Cuddford discussed collaborative training for radio organisations and broadcasters on a variety of issues with knowledge organisations in Cameroon. At Cameroon Link, he said, it was time for the Human Assistance Programme to become an entry port for a strategic partnership following a long standing relationship between both organisations.
The strategic partnership memorandum between Farm Radio International and Cameron Link was discussed during a working session with staff in Grand Hangar-Bonaberi and the director of publications, James Achanyi-Fontem. It was agreed that on the return to Canada, Vijay Cuddford would present the content of the memorandum for further discussion with FRI administration and specific activities to be carried out within the strategic partnership frame work will be approved before take off in the new direction of collaboration.
At the Centre for the Environment and Rural Transformation, CERUT, in Limbe, Vijay Cuddford was presented an NGO which houses a media group that operates Eden Community Radio and Eden Newspaper. The target audience of Eden Radio are rural and urban poor, women, children, youths and retrenched retired workers.
Interventions of the organisation are through sensitisation, animation, workshops, study visits, exchange visits, fellowship visits, radio campaigns, production of videos and so on. Eden Radio delivers its programmes in two official languages and 10 local languages. The station covers fours regions of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
The chief Executive Officer of the Eden Media Group, Zachee Nzoh-Ngandembou, expressed gratitude for the expansion of collaboration with the radio arm of his group, which was affiliated to Farm Radio International three years ago. Vijay Cuddford, who was accompanied during the Limbe trip was taken on air after a briefing and exchange with the radio staff.
The crucial problem facing community radio stations in Cameroon is the lack of transport facilities for collection of materials for programmes and the lack of modern studio equipment. The staff launched an appeal to developed country radio stations in Europe and America to assist where possible with second hand unused packed studio equipment to expand and reach wider audiences. Before December 13, when Vijay Cuddford would leave Cameroon back for Canada, he would have made contacts with over 30 community radio stations in Cameroon. He observed that Cameroon is strategic in the Central Africa region and that is what motivated Farm Radio International to settle extensively and assist the farmers through broadcasting.
According to Vijay Cuddford, Cameroon has enormous human and material resources, which just need to be well exploited for a great lift of the survival possibilities of its inhabitants. He is visiting community radio stations in the Littoral, South west, West, North West, Centre and South regions of Cameroon to collect information on their training needs and possibilities of exchanging broadcast programme packs and scripts.
Farm Radio International started as Developing Countries Farm Radio Network in 1979. It is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of collaboration with Community Radio stations throughout Africa this year. FRI is continuing its role of helping millions of African farmers through the airwaves from Ottawa, Canada.
Farm Radio International is supported by the Canadian government through the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA. FRI is based in Ottawa with a staff of 10. Farm Radio International produces scripts about farming and rural development for more than 300 stations in Africa. The scripts are relevant, simple and easy to adapt to local languages and settings. Text messages from listeners indicate overwhelming support. A script on food/grains storage using pepper instead of chemical pesticides is reported to have been particularly helpful.
Thanks to continuing support from the Canadian government and donors, Farm Radio International has been able to expand its programs through a weekly e-newsletter, and it is now conducting a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded African Farm Radio Research Initiative in five countries to discover the best ways to use radio to support smallholder farmers. For more information, send an email to the following address:
James Achanyi-Fontem
Director of Publication
Cameroon Link
Tel: 00237 77 75 88 40
Email: camlink99@gmail.com

Farm Radio International

Managing Editor Visits Cameroon
Canadian Managing Editor of Farm Radio International, Douglas Bruce (Vijay Cuddeford) undertakes a 3-week long working visit in Cameroon from November 19. The visit aims at strengthening partnership with local community radio stations involved in the promotion of farming and livestock rearing through broadcasting.
Apart from visiting radio stations, Douglas Bruce will discuss collaborative training for radio organisations and broadcasters on a variety of issues with knowledge organisations in Cameroon. He will be visiting community radio stations in the Littoral, South west, West, North West, Centre and South regions of Cameroon took collect information on their training needs and possibilities of exchanging broadcast programme packs and scripts.
Farm Radio International started as Developing Countries Farm Radio Network in 1979. It is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of collaboration with Community Radio stations throughout Africa this year. FRI is continuing its role of helping millions of African farmers through the airwaves from Ottawa, Canada.
Farm radio International is supported by the Canadian government through the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA. When Canadian journalist, George Atkins, first visited Africa in the 1970s, he found that Africa’s farmers weren’t short of good ideas appropriate to their circumstances, but distance, language and limited literacy often prevented them from sharing these ideas with each other.
The ideas being shared at the time were those from the developed economies — the result of farm extension efforts aimed at Africa which tended to focus on using inappropriate or unaffordable machinery, chemicals or fertilizer.
Atkins, a farm broadcaster at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, Toronto, had been part of the success in delivering practical extension information to farmers in post-war Canada. When he returned from his visit to Africa, he resolved to launch a second career doing the same for farmers in Africa in a way that would solve the idea-sharing problem. The Developing Countries Farm Radio Network was born in a small office in Toronto.
On May 1, 1979 the first script package was sent. In 2009, approximately 900 radio scripts have been circulated under the organisation’s new name “Farm Radio International”. Atkins’s brainchild celebrates its 30th anniversary of successfully reaching farmers through the radio, which remains the cheapest and most reliable medium in the developing.
Now based in Ottawa with a staff of 10, Farm Radio International produces scripts about farming and rural development for more than 300 stations in Africa. The scripts are relevant, simple and easy to adapt to local languages and settings. Text messages from listeners indicate overwhelming support. A script on food/grains storage using pepper instead of chemical pesticides is reported to have been particularly helpful.
Thanks to continuing support from Canadian donors, Farm Radio has been able to expand its programs through a weekly e-newsletter, and it is now conducting a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded African Farm Radio Research Initiative in five countries to discover the best ways to use radio to support smallholder farmers.
George Atkins is 91years old. He stepped down from the Farm Radio board only two years ago. He observed that “at this time, millions of the poorest of the poor farmers of the world are hearing this information to help them increase their food supplies and have better nutrition and health. If that isn’t what’s helping people in developing countries, I don’t know what it is. I have to pinch myself when I think of the people who are helped by this service that is available to them by just turning on their radio.”
Atkins said he hopes Canadians will continue their generous donations to support the low-cost but effective approach he started 30 years ago, noting that the world food shortages of the past year have reinforced the importance of supporting smallholder farmers around the world.
James Achanyi-Fontem
Director of Publications
Cameroon Link
Tel: 00237 77 75 88 40
Email:camlink99@gmail.com