The Millennium Development Goals and communication for development: a study of Malawi and Zambia
Date
2016
Authors
Gomo, Tapiwa
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Abstract
The year 2000 witnessed a significant convergence of global policy positions. These positions range from
the neoliberal regime which gained traction in the mid-1990s, participatory development models of the
1980s, and the technocratic approach to development of the late 1990s. Despite their ideological
differences, these policy positions found co-existence in the (MDGs) and have framed how poverty is
globally understood and how it should be addressed, including the use of communication especially the
media to promote or fast track poverty reduction projects.
This thesis is a critical analysis of the extent to which the United Nations (UN) Communication for
Development strategy of 2007 has been used in Kamaila Village in Zambia and Mwandama Village in
Malawi to implement MDG-related projects. The two villages were chosen because they have been exposed
to different models of poverty reduction activities. The Mwandama Village project is part of the Millennium
Village Project where a holistic approach is applied to address poverty, while the Kamaila Village is a
beneficiary of a water project which is considered to be important to kick-start village-driven poverty
reduction activities.
Even though the two villages have been used as units of analysis, the main goal of this study was to examine
the two policy documents as texts – the MDG and the UN Communication for strategy – how the discourse
and narratives that inform them and their relationship with power, shape social practices and behaviour at
national and village level. The study also sought to establish how language operates within the context of
power relations by applying theories of global governance, knowledge and power, hegemony, participatory
and media communication. The methodology used to gather data consists of a critical discourse analysis on
the policy documents and qualitative interviews with different respondents from the villagers, the UN
system, NGOs, media and governments. Through a combination of these theoretical frameworks and
methodologies, this study has shown that the narratives and discourses that inform the MDGs are influenced
by western actors who use the power of money to pursue their neoliberal interests under the guise of
reducing poverty. The link between political power, the poverty reduction ideas and interests of elite actors
saturates and remotely controls available policy spaces for participation with external knowledge and rules,
starting from the UN system down to the villages thereby enabling neoliberal ideas to control the flow of
knowledge and the construction of discourses.
Despite attempts to harness local modes of social communication to transmit the neoliberal notions of
poverty in the villages, individual villagers have discursively devised ways of maintaining their own
‘traditional’ ways of life. This highlights that poverty reduction discussions must not be too obsessed with
controlling or changing people’s minds and behaviour but seek to understand the grassroots’ lifestyles as a
baseline for informed intervention. Ignoring this baseline knowledge is one of the many reasons
development has failed dismally since the 1950s because it is driven by capital interests from the top to
bottom with less or no intentions to address poverty.
In addition, the ability of media messages to influence practices and behaviour remains a contested arena.
But as this study established, the strength of messages to alter social practices has its limitations because
behaviour is a manifestation of several factors such as environment, context, biology, genealogy and
culture, some of which are not linked to communication. However, communication within the context of
the villagers is part of their way of exchanging or transmitting ideas and knowledge in producing and
reproducing their culture and not to eliminate it. This thesis makes scholarly contribution through the use
of a critical approach to international policy formulation, and participation within a globalised world. While
several studies have analysed the link between communication and poverty reduction privileging the
neoliberal construction of these themes, this study has demonstrated that the grassroots are not unthinking;
they have a well-being, cultural context and communication ecology which needs to be understood first and
respected. These findings expose the tensions between the neoliberal interests-driven elite view of poverty
and the local way of viewing well-being.
Description
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Media Studies
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg
September 2015
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Citation
Gomo, Tapiwa, (2016) The Millennium Development Goals and communication for development: a study of Malawi and Zambia, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,< http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/20767>