KAS Media Africa

Participants of the E-lection Bridge Academy 2015 in Windhoek

KAS Media Africa brought together twelve promising young political leaders from Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Angola, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Namibia to share campaigning experiences from their home countries. The programme consisted of input sessions by seasoned political strategist Heather Thuynsma, best practice case studies, group work and the initiation of an ongoing simulation game about dynamics between the political system and the electorate in a fictional state called Kasiland. The workshop marked the start of a six-month e-learning programme developed by KAS Media Africa for professional campaigning in Sub-saharan Africa. As a closing highlight the group had the honor of a visit by Prof. Norbert Lammert, President of the German Bundestag and Deputy Chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for a group discussion as well as for the certificate handover.

In his inspiring talk Prof. Lammert pointed out that a functioning democracy is often presumed to be displayed by the will and self-determination of the majority but is indicated rather by the fact of how minorities’ rights are respected. Thus democracy is a result of certain values. The workshop facilitator Heather Thuynsma also focused on these very basic values. She pointed out that a crucial premise for a convincing and long-term working communication strategy is a certain set of values, including a code of conduct. Thuynsma guided the participants to extract the core values of their respective parties and to communicate them as straight forward messages.

But how to stand out and make a difference online? All academy participants agreed on the necessity of activating people through information campaigns. Certain public issues are discussed by reiterating narratives that somehow have become hollow. To revive the public’s interest and people’s awareness about these issues they must be reframed, renamed. Focusing on that, the academy’s group work aimed at presenting common political issues in a new and more comprehensible language. This is where social media gets useful if it is used in a smart way. It makes political campaigning more dynamic and transforms political communication into a dialogue between candidates and voters. Adapting messages to the style of digital communication can allow them to reach wide audiences and shape a certain image of a politician. It is therefore an excellent tool to humanize candidates as well as to make a personal and emotional approach towards voters. As a result these strategies might also prove convenient to break the old cycles of tribal loyalty voting in favour of reasoned, more democratic voting based on political agendas.

Apart from the social media campaigning poster child Barack Obama, some successful social media appearances are maintained by African politicians as well. The participant’s best practice case studies outlined how Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda sports a very attractive facebook page and the Senegalese president Macky Sall and Dakar mayor Khalifa Sall’s twitter spaces are also worth a look. Still, there is a long way to go for African parties to implement social media strategies within campaigning. Given the vast recent growth of mobile devices and internet penetration in Africa, training and practice of these strategies might assure parties a future dominance within their countries. Because it is all still about networking but the medium is changing – or as our Senegalese delegate Fanta Diallo put it: facebook posts are the new campaign pins, political websites the new billboards and tweets are the new handshakes.