ICTworks

Creating killer content is critical to ICT4D success. One of the major barriers to digital uptake is a lack of incentives to go online because of a lack of relevant or attractive content.

This weekend we look at resources for creating great content, drawing on lessons from the mHealth and mAgriculture sectors. If you are not an mhealth or mAgri practitioner, don’t stop reading now. While professions and sectors like to silo, in reality the ICT4D fields overlap enormously.

For example, does a programme that educates nurses for improved obstetrics practices fall under mHealth or mEducation? The details may differ, but the approaches, lessons and tech might as well be the same. From each sector there is much to learn and transfer to other m-sectors.

Let’s Get Practical and Make Some Content

Not long ago Dr. Peris Kagotho left medical practice to focus on mhealth. Since then she has successfully categorized, edited and contextualized over 10,000 health tips Kenyans.

In a four-part blog series, she highlights techniques and learnings for effective and impactful content development. Read about the prerequisites for quality mhealth content; the principles of behaviour change messaging; creating content that is fit for purpose; and scheduling content for impactful delivery.

Making Content Meaningful Without Re-inventing the Wheel

While there is apparently an abundance of openly accessible health content, this alone is insufficient to make the world healthy and happy. The Knowledge for Health (K4Health) project knows the importance of providing the content in the appropriate context and the language of the people who will use it.

K4Health and USAID have therefore created a guide to adapting existing global health content for different audiences with the goal of expanding the reach, usefulness, and use of evidence-based global health content. Fantastic. The Nutrition Knowledge Bank is an open access library of free to use nutrituion content.

Lessons on Content Placement, Format, Data and More

The Talking Book, a ruggedized audio player and recorder by Literacy Bridge, offers agricultural, health and livelihoods education to deep rural communities in four African countries. The UNESCO-Pearson case study on the project highlights key content development approaches and lessons, drawn from over ten years of experience.

For example, it’s important not to overload users with too much content; the fist few messages in a content category get played the most, so those are the best slots for the most important messages; and these rural audiences prefer content as songs and dramas over lectures. The content strategy is highly data-driven.

Content Isn’t Delivered in a Vacuum

In 2016, the Government of India launched a nation-wide mobile health programme called ‘Kilkari’ to benefit 10 million new and expecting mothers by providing audio-based maternal and child health messages on a weekly basis.

The service was designed by BBC Media Action and the GSMA case study describes its evolution, learnings and best practices, covering content and more. It is useful to zoom out and see the bigger picture of an mhealth initiative, and how content forms one part of the whole.

Image: CC by TTCMobile