Communication – by whom and for what? (from Danida - Communication and Development Euro-American Donor Seminar)

Presentation by Birgitte Markussen, Technical Adviser, Danida.

As yet, communication has mainly lived its life outside any overall strategy or policy. In the Danish context, the 1994 Free Press Policy of Danida is a press policy per se, which focuses on support to free press through training and capacity building. The 1994 policy defines the press within the area of human rights and good governance.

This said, the prevailing strategy for Danish development cooperation, ‘Partnership 2000', lays the basis for a forthcoming revision of the 1994 press policy. The overall strategy for Danish development cooperation relates the press with communication initiatives and places both areas in a much broader context than the 1994 press policy. The Danish strategy states that communication (including the press) is a means of supporting public participation among poor people. Thus, the Danish strategy entails poor people's right to be involved in development programmes and in society and governance more generally.

At the operational level, Danida works along two core models for media/communication support:

1. Programme and project support, where media is supported as a sector in its own right, and
2. Communication components and strategies within and across sector programme support.

An example of model 1 is the case of Zambia where Danida supports the media as a sector. Here support to public/private media is combined with support to legislation, alternative media and journalistic skills development.

An example of model 2 is the Danida sector programme support related to Lake Chilwa in Malawi. In Malawi a specific communications strategy has been developed to support a principle of community based natural resource management. The strategy has put strong focus on identifying: i) what community based natural resource management really means, (ii) what resources the community based principle is focusing on managing – and why, (iii) where these resources are, (iv) how natural resources were managed in the past and the problems associated with this, (v) what the legal and policy changes made in Malawi to support the principle are, and (vi) the different and central role communities are asked to play.

In response to some of the other presentations at the seminar, Ms Markussen emphasised that a participatory approach is useful, as one out of many approaches in a communication strategy. The lessons learnt from the Danish development assistance are that donors must strive for a much more professional approach towards their communication endeavours.

Birgitte Markussen additionally put forward the argument that there is an expressed need for co-ordination of activities within the field of communication. Small and dispersed projects without connections to larger programmes should in other words be avoided.