Obama's Ghana Strategy: Use New Media Tools, But Keep the Old
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, July 7 2009
President Barack Obama's two-day trip to Ghana this Friday and Saturday -- his first trip to Africa south of the Sahara since taking office in November -- is already setting off considerable excitement on the continent. And that's the case even though the trip is a very brief pop-in to the West African country. Tacking on the trip to the end of his travels to Moscow and then to Italy for the G8 summit, Obama will be in Ghana for some part of July 10th and 11th. Only some small segment of Ghana's 23 million people (not to mention Africa's near one billion people) will be able to see Obama in person during his appearance in the capital city of Accra. And only a tiny sliver of Ghanaians will get a chance to speak to the American president, or even get within hand-shaking distance of him. But the White House new media team is making a go of extending the reach and impact of the presidential stop-in by opening up some high and low tech ways for Ghanaians and all Africans to participate in the trip. Like Obama attempted to do with the multi-lingual, multi-channel plan around his recent Cairo speech on relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world, the White House is hoping to use their tech-savvy to increase the return on the White House's investment in his engagement in Ghana.
Cell phones and SMS texting are common in Ghana, as they are in many places on the continent. But good old radio is still a reliable and tested way of sharing information far and wide to a large swath of the population. Internet access, where it exists, can be painfully slow. (Thing have improved in recent years, but I have a vivid memory of sitting in an Accra cybercafe and holding a pretty good conversation with one of the staff in the span of time between typing www.nytimes.com in the URL box and the site popping up on the screen.) So the White House is taking a sensible multi-pronged approach to reaching Ghanaians. The blend includes SMS -- for both sending messages to the President and getting speech highlights -- and radio -- of both Obama's remarks and his responses to mobile messages, fleshed out with Twitter, Facebook, and live video streaming components. White African's Erik Hersman has the details from the White House:
SMS. We’re launching an SMS platform to allow citizens to submit questions, comments and words of welcome (in English and in French) . Using a local SMS short code in Ghana (1731) , Nigeria (32969) , South Africa (31958) and Kenya (5683), as well as a long code across the rest of the world*, Africans and citizens worldwide will be encouraged to text their messages to the President. SMS participants will also be able to subscribe to speech highlights in English and French. Long numbers for mobile registration pan-Africa: 61418601934 and 45609910343.
This SMS platform is not available to US participants due to the Smith Mundt Act (The act also prohibits domestic distribution of information intended for foreign audiences).
Radio. A live audio stream of the President’s speech will be pushed to national and local radio stations during the speech. After the speech, a taped audio recording of the President’s answers to the SMS messages received will be made available to radio stations and websites. The President hopes to answer a variety of questions and comments by topic and region. The audio recording will also be made available for download on White House website and iTunes.
Video. The speech will be livestreamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live. The embed code for this video is available so you may also host the livestream on any Website.
Online chat. We will host a live web chat around the speech on Facebook (it will be at http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive). The White House will also create a Facebook “event” around the speech wherein participants from around the world can engage with one another. A Twitter hashtag (i.e. #obamaghana) will also be created and promoted to consolidate input and reaction around the event.
Hersman also notes that the White House is planning on launching an online trip hub at WhiteHouse.gov/Ghana, scheduled to go live on the 11th.
[VIDEO ABOVE] Obama invited AllAfrica.com reporters Charles Cobb, Reed Kramer and Tamela Hultman to discuss issues facing Africa in advance of the Ghana trip.