The project “Enhancing Access to Health Education via Audiopedia” was awarded to our partner Red Aid Nigeria as part of the EU/BMZ #SmartDevopmentHack at bridging the health and development information gap among illiterate women and girls in Nigeria through the use of smartphones to access audio messages. Its implementation comprised a pilot phase and a 2nd phase.
Pilot Stage
The pilot project, which started in April 2021 and ended in December 2021, targeted 400 women and girls living in the Ngenevu community and other slums, categorizing participants into illiterate and semi-literate groups. Twenty Community Volunteers from these communities were engaged and trained on basic Audiopedia skills, as well as data collection and participant engagement, and were assigned to different groups.
The 400 women and girls were purposively selected based on the following criteria: participants must be illiterate or semi-literate residents in the Ngenevu community or other slums and must own a smartphone or feature phone (WhatsApp-enabled or memory card-enabled). They were divided into two intervention groups of 200 each through a simple random technique. Additionally, a control group of 100 women and girls was selected from another community (Iva-Valley) with similar characteristics. The groups comprised the following:
- 200 women and girls with smartphones who received Audiopedia messages through WhatsApp (GROUP_1, Ngenevu).
- 200 women and girls whose phones were loaded with Audiopedia messages via external memory cards (GROUP_2, Aguowa).
- 100 illiterate girls and women serving as a control group (GROUP_0, Iva-Valley).
A baseline study was carried out on their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding health education and development issues—including GBV, maternal health, WASH, Covid-19, socio-economic conditions, and women’s empowerment schemes.
Intervention
Audio messages on health and development issues (such as GBV, maternal health, WASH, Covid-19, socio-economic issues, and women’s empowerment schemes) were uploaded to the selected media (WhatsApp and memory cards). These messages, originally in English, were translated and voiced into the local dialect by student volunteers from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. For GROUP_1, Community Volunteers (CVs) taught and guided participants on accessing and using WhatsApp, while GROUP_2 received messages via memory cards updated bi-monthly by the CVs. For the control group (GROUP_0), no intervention was provided.
The indirect beneficiaries of the pilot in Ngenevu included over 2,300 households (an estimated 11,500 persons). Advocacy and sensitization visits for men were also conducted in the three communities, and radio jingles on GBV and maternal health were part of the intervention.
At the end of the eight-week intervention, a post-intervention assessment showed that both media were effective for audio message dissemination, with significant increases in knowledge in both groups.
Phase II
Phase II, titled "Mainstreaming Audiopedia as a Tool to Improve Knowledge and Access to Health and Development Information in Nigeria," aims to contribute to the attainment of SDGs 3, 4, and 5 by promoting access to health information and development services among women and girls in Nigeria. Audio messages were translated and voiced into other major Nigerian languages—Hausa, Yoruba, and Pidgin—to reach a broader audience excluded by traditional print media.
The project focused on 10 NTDs-endemic states in Nigeria (Anambra, Bayelsa, Bauchi, Cross-Rivers, Delta, Ebonyi, Ogun, Ondo, Plateau, and Rivers). In each selected state, 12 Local Government Areas (LGAs) were chosen based on criteria such as endemicity of NTDs and the presence of a vibrant LGA supervisor (e.g., TB Leprosy BU Supervisor or district surveillance/notification officer). Each LGA supervisor, acting as a primary Audiopedia Ambassador, trained 20 healthcare facilities equipped with public address systems to disseminate health messages via WhatsApp or the Audiopedia app. This "train-the-trainer" model produced 2,400 secondary Audiopedia Ambassadors across the LGAs.
The project targeted 2,400 healthcare facilities at the LGA level and included an output-based reward system to encourage secondary ambassadors to reach as many illiterate women and girls as possible. A massive radio and social media campaign supported these efforts. The project concluded in November 2022.
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