April 9, 2023

THIS WEEK IN HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

MwanaSayansi is the first Swahili science newspaper aimed at making knowledge accessible for communities

Sources: MwanaSayansi, Global Voices, Reuters, CIPESA

MwanaSayansi is the first science newspaper in Swahili (also known as Kiswahili). The newspaper was founded by science journalist and medical doctor Dr. Syriacus Buguzi, with the purpose of bringing science communication to Tanzanians in ‘the language they love most’. 

An article announcing the newspaper’s founding also noted that Tanzania replaced English with Swahili as the primary language in schools in 2015. The decision, as reported by Global Voices, was a ‘historic shift’ as it was ‘one of the first times that a country in Africa will teach students at all levels in an African language instead of a foreign language.’ The move was also seen as a shift against the remnants of colonialism and the impact of neo-colonialism.

Dr. Buguzi remarked in an interview with Reuters that the founding of MwanaSyansi stemmed from the Covid-19 pandemic: “During the pandemic, I realised that even though Kiswahili is the main language in our country, communities did not have access to science in that language…I launched MwanaSayansi purposely to make all the newsworthy research converted into a news story, journalistically written, well-balanced and accessible to Tanzanians.”  

Reuters noted that science communication faced challenges in Tanzania during Covid-19 partly due to messaging from the government, whereby then-President John Pombe Mugufuli declared that Tanzania had been “eliminated” from coronavirus ‘by the powers of God”. This included the government stopping data publications of case numbers, but also ‘a law that criminalised reporting.’

The new regulations, which came into effect in July 2020,  prohibited the publication of “content with information with regards to the outbreak of a deadly or contagious disease in the country or elsewhere without the approval of the respective authorities.” The regulations were later revised in 2022. 

“We are trying to empower journalists though the laws are still not good, so the level of critical reporting is low. However, there are more academic institutions training journalists and there is a growing number of new media initiatives like ours trying to make journalism better by doing unique in-depth reporting.” says Dr Buguzi.