Ms. Rosa Malango United Nations Resident Coordinator/ UNDP Resident Representative Uganda
Remarks at Two Way Talk: How radio content can support the monitoring and achievement of the Global Goals
Ms. Rosa Malango United Nations Resident Coordinator/ UNDP Resident Representative Uganda
Pulse Lab Kampala, Mackenzie Close, Kololo, 15th April 2016
The Guest of Honour, Mr. Martin Owor, Commissioner
for Disaster Response and ManagementOffice of the Prime Minister,
Ms. Susan Spets, Head of Development, Embassy of Sweden,
Private Sector representatives,
Civil Society representatives,
Academia,
UN Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the United Nations System in Uganda, I would like to welcome you all to this Two Way Talk on How radio content can support the monitoring and achievement of the Global Goals.
In a special way, I would like to thank the Government of Uganda for hosting us and theGovernment of Sweden for leading in support to innovations, such as the radio tool we are introducing today. Sweden is a leader worldwide promoting innovations to achieve the Global Goals and Uganda leadership made the Global Goals a reality.
As you aware, Pulse Lab Kampala is a data innovation lab under the umbrella of the United Nations Global Pulse initiative. Pulse Lab Kampala is the third lab of the UN Global Pulse network. As a regional hub, it leverages new sources of digital data 'Big Data', real-time analysis techniques and other types of data innovation.It supports the Government of Uganda and the UN Country Team to achieve the Global Goals for sustainable development.
One of the key guiding principles of the 2030 Agenda and the Global Goals is leaving no one behind. In Uganda, radio is listened to by the majority of the population including the most vulnerable.
Almost 90% of the population in Uganda lives in rural areas, where radio serves as a vital platform for public discussion, information sharing and news. Radio broadcasts have the advantage of being capable of easily conveying information in local languages, strengthening community values and sense of belonging. Local and community radios in particular are often open to content contributed by listeners and used for a variety of purposes such as knowledge sharing, social mobilisation and capacity-building.
Pulse Lab Kampala estimates that 7.5 million words are spoken on 250 radio stations every day in Uganda. This tool enables us all to part of monitoring and achieving the Global Goals. It also allows us to access the impact of programmes at the community level.
Pulse Lab Kampala, along with partners, Makerere University, Stellenbosch University of South Africa and the Embassy of Sweden in Uganda, is developing a prototype that is unique and a worldwide innovation, involving the development of speech technology for English and two African languages; Luganda and Acholi. Be enabling people’s voices from public radio broadcasts to advance the Global Goals Uganda places itself at the forefront of innovative approaches to advance the Global Goals. The objective of the tool is to facilitate incorporation of people’s voices in development processes.
The tool is a software platform that uses speech-to-text technology to convert recordings of public radio content into big text data and automatically analyses its content. The topics of interest related to the Global Goals are automatically found by the tool. These “digital voices” can be used to inform the monitoring and achievement of the Global Goals particularly in areas of Service Delivery and Disaster Response.
Here are some examples on how the tool can be useful:
•Real time reporting of natural disasters such as local floods that can support faster response to local communities;
•Analysis of cultural factors and trends in opinions on issues related to social policy such as early marriage and the wellbeing of adolescent girls.
•Real time monitoring of programmes designed to improve public service delivery with analysis of insights about priorities at community level;
•Tracking of implementation of programmes based on radio campaigns in real time
Radio stations host popular phone-in shows where listeners call in and talk about for example Malaria, Floods, violence against women, adolescence pregnancy, teachers absenteeism, price fluctuations, or cholera. This data can be analyzed and used to design or improve development programmes aimed at addressing these issues.
The Radio Mining project in Uganda is unique because tool it is a worldwide innovation from Kampala with local talent. It is the first time that automatic speech-to-text technology is being developed for English and two African languages from radio broadcasts and in combination with data mining. Youth talent from Uganda and South Africa are making it a reality for the world to use.
A project involving analysis of people’s concerns expressed on the radio naturally requires high levels of privacy considerations and protection. Even though radio is a public forum, Pulse Lab Kampala already takes extra measures to protect the people behind the data and applies strict privacy principles to ensure that individuals are not exposed in a way that is to their disadvantage.
Today the PLK technical team and partners willshare a glimpse of how this complex innovation was developed and there will be a panel discussion on data privacy and protection
You will have a chance to listen to audio clips related to the Global Goals and provide input on how youmight use this new tool in your own programmes.
Thisconversations aims to validate the tool with potential users and help us to understand better how analysis of public radio content can support the Global Goals.
I wish you all a fruitful engagement.
Thank you for interest and support.
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