The UmNyango Project

 

ReCellular recently donated cell phones to Indiba-Africa Development Alliance for the UmNyango Project in South Africa. The project is helping rural women use mobile phones to report violations of their human and constitutional rights, including incidences of violence against women and children, as well as violations of women's right to own and control land. Fahamu, the organization behind this initiative, has already won international awards for its ground-breaking use of new media to support the pan African campaign on the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

 

Adv. Anil Naidoo, Managing Director of Indiba-Africa Development Alliance and Team Leader for the UmNyango Project says that these phones will enable the project to reach more women whose participation has so far been limited by their lack of ownership of a mobile phone. He states further that "the Lifeline for Africa initiative will be pivotal to Indiba-Africa's new concept of developing a core group of rural women journalists in South Africa which will raise awareness on human rights by using these cell phones to share stories on human rights violations in their communities. These stories are rarely made available outside rural communities and in this way impunity of perpetrators reigns supreme. We will publish these stories on our website and this will for the first time, provide an important forum for these rural women journalists to interface with the rest of the world."