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“Protect Your Life” song raising awareness about COVID-19 in Africa
The song “Protect Your Life” – released by Nigerien collective “Raised Fists” – is meant to mobilize and raise awareness against the spread of COVID-19 in Niger and across West and Central Africa.
The song is part of the #DontGoViral online campaign launched by UNESCO and the Innovation for Policy Foundation (i4Policy) which was launched on 1 April.
In Niger, UNESCO and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, partnered with “Raised Fists”, an artist collective of 7 committed singers gathered around rapper Danny Lee, to mobilize and raise awareness in Niger, one of the world’s most supportive countries towards refugees.
The result of this collaboration is the song “Protect your Life”, with lyrics in French, Djerma, Haoussa, and Tamashek. “We hope our voices and that of Fulani Bororo singers, the nomadic people of the Sahel, will reach every cultural and linguistic region of Niger and even beyond our borders; through all of West and Central Africa,” says Danny Lee.
About the #DontGoViral campaign
The campaign has developed a series of openly licensed PSAs, music videos, and songs to fit with ongoing communication campaigns of UNESCO to fight disinformation around COVID-19 and to provide basic information related to safety precautions to take to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 across the African continent, with global repercussions.
Through UNESCO’s Offices in the African continent and the i4Policy community of more than 170 innovation hubs in 45 countries across Africa, and in partnership with the BBC World Service, this campaign is empowering communities across Africa to host, mobilize, and develop information campaigns to support national and global health agencies to reach the most at-risk communities and to combat the spread of disinformation.
The campaign crowdsources creative content and addresses the urgent need for culturally relevant and openly licensed information in local African languages in order to inform communities, in their own languages, about how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and combat the infodemic and spread of disinformation and misinformation that has accompanied the pandemic.
Since its launch, the campaign has received more than 500 submissions from more than 40 countries in Africa. The campaign’s social media posts on Facebook and Twitter alone have reached more than 90 million people so far, and the videos have reached countless more through Youtube, messenger platforms and local radio stations across the World which have picked up the content.
“The success of the DontGoViral campaign underlines the resiliency and creativity of women and men on the African Continent to harness the power of cultural diversity to effectively combat the infodemic that is proving to be just as viral as the pandemic itself. Their contributions highlight that cultural actors are a much-needed part of the solution,” UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay said.
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