Tufte, Thomas, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmes, and Winnie Mitullah (Eds.). Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media, Empowerment among East and Southern African Youth.

McAnany, Emile

Tufte, Thomas, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmes, and Winnie Mitullah (Eds.). Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media, Empowerment among East and Southern African Youth. University of Gothenburg: NORDICOM, 2013. Pp. 302 ISBN 978-91-86532-55-8 (paper) SEK200.00.

This book brings together a variety of recent research in East and Southern Africa among youth. In Arica youth is a constituency that is the largest in history, but one that faces hurdles of education, jobs, and a changing culture from rural and traditional lives in villages to often urban slums and street life. The focus of these studies is from a communication theoretical perspective of participation and empowerment that stems from Freire and has been updated since the late 1990s by numerous authors. This approach promotes the principle of people being responsible for their own development through a participatory process that relies on community knowledge to identify their challenges and consequent call to action. The contents of this book explicates this theory in almost every chapter along with the consequences of its application.

Part One (first three chapters) deals with theory, past research and present contexts, and an African theory of development and social change. Tufte and Wildermuth lay out the major themes of the book in this introduction. Tufte in the second chapter analyses the changing nature of communication for development, emphasizing the more dynamic interconnected world of today's communication and the increasing role of citizen activism (as in the post-Arab Spring uprisings). In the third chapter Linje Monyozo speaks about the changes in thinking about communication for development and social change within the African context specifically. He traces the three waves of colonial or Orientalist approach, post-liberation or extensionist approach, and what he calls the NGOification approach. Still he sees all three approaches still present in some forms of communication for development.

Part Two, "ICT, Empowerment, and Policies," begins reporting cases of application primarily in Kenya. Wildermuth's initial chapter outlines the political economy of Kenya's thriving digital economy in promoting citizenship, democracy, and empowerment. Although Kenya leads much of Africa in digital development, the author cautions about the current benefits and the commercial structure of digital development. The remaining four chapters consist of reports on the use of ICTs for various groups. Mitullah provides a general description of the funded project on Media, Empowerment, Democracy in East Africa that cautions that the progress of ICTs for women and other constituencies is still slow because of various barriers, including a limited access to the Internet. Mbure's chapter overviews youth and political inclusion in the digital age in Kenya. The author concludes that many youth have become politically engaged through digital platforms, especially after the political turmoil of the 2007 election, but that this has not resulted in significant on-the-ground political participation. Kiskeni and Petuchaite do an analysis of the Ushabidi digital platform that arose during the political turmoil of 2007-2008 and served well in the aftermath, but the authors also comment on the difficulty of transition to other online functions later. Still, they argue that the platform provides a model and a platform that can empower civil society in the future. Finally, Githaiga provides a review of the scholarship on young women and ICT in Africa that summarizes the current situation.

Part Three, "Health and Social Change," contains five chapters dealing with the issues of sexual practice and discourse concerning HIV/AIDS. Chapters in this part are diverse in geography including studies in South Africa, and Tanzania. Govender reviews the different disagreements about HIV/AIDS treatment from behavior vs. social communication practices, media vs. participatory communication, faith vs. secular, social science vs. biomedical, and all of these different approaches in need of contexts in each approach. Nielsion and Schutten report on a 2003 study in central Uganda where peer education ran into hierarchy and power barriers to real participation by youth in a transit town. Kiprop and Tomaselli argue that the point often missed by HIV/AIDS campaigns for youth is that sexual beliefs are based on discourses that are formed over time and in different youth contexts. A useful approach is to pay attention to the discourses that create the meanings that youth have concerning their sexuality. Rweyemanmu critiques the practices of some Civil Society Organizations in Tanzania to involve youth in matters that involve their sexuality because results indicate a lack of engagement. Strand outlines the human rights issue of anti-homosexual laws that were inaugurated in 2009 and had not come to a conclusion by the time the chapter was written (the law has now been passed). The author analyzes the role of the media in fomenting the discriminatory bill in the parliament and recommends four strategies for fighting this trend.

Part Four, "Culture and Social Change," contains the final five chapters focusing on some of the older media like radio. Junggade did interviews with members of culture clubs in Burundi where civil war had created exclusion and suspicion, and the clubs offered a chance to reconcile through participation in cultural activities. Braskov explored crime prevention in a Nairobi slum and concluded that the government-sponsored efforts were not as effective as they could be with a better engagement of self-help youth groups. Gustafsson did a qualitative study of a community radio station in a Nairobi slum and notes the benefits to youth as they served as interns who were trained to do programs that reached other youth. She reminds readers that radio remains the most popular medium in Africa and is a powerful tool for change. Hansen-Skovnoes and Roijen describe the use of a film festival in Zanzibar for youth and Yarde returns to youth radio in Tanzania in a limited experiment of youth making their own programs, both with promising but limited results.

The volume is varied in focus and the short formats prevent more in-depth treatments of topics; nevertheless, it provides an understanding of the wide spectrum of work on engagement of youth and women in African participatory communication. The book has no general index but notes and bibliography after each chapter.

Emile McAnany

Santa Clara University