From 5 to 9 December 2022, Mambulu Ekutsu, CAMECO's Francophone Africa Desk Officer, travelled to Marrakech, Morocco to attend the World Summit on Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC). The summit is a major event organised by a consortium of international and local partners including UNICEF and the John Hopkins Center for Communication, which was scheduled to take place in 2020 but was postponed by two years due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
Attending this summit was an opportunity for CAMECO to expand its network and observe the latest trends in social and behaviour change communication. Due to the location of the event, there was a particularly large participation of experts from Africa. New technological developments and tools that can be used for social and behaviour change communication were presented, such as the use of the American NGO Amplio’s “talking book” instrument, which uses audio recordings on a simple and cost-efficient mobile off-line device to raise health awareness in very remote rural areas.
Also, Catholic communicators presented best practices at the summit. For example, a storytelling approach animated by Garth Japhet, a South African Catholic film producer promoted good parenting (Fathers Matter).
The summit was attended by over 1800 people from around the world. The congress traditionally predominantly discusses health communication issues (women's reproductive health, early childhood development, effectiveness of vaccination campaigns, etc.). This year, however, many participants voiced the need to broaden this field of "social" issues when planning the sessions, involving actors who use SBCC in the context of climate change and public corruption policies. The conclusions of the summit can be found here.
In recent years, CAMECO has been involved in the screening and planning of various projects related to behavioural and social change. These include projects from Kindermissionswerk on fighting child malnutrition (Burkina Faso) and ritual infanticide (Benin). Participating in this type of initiatives seems to us the best way to better serve our partners.
