At the eighth annual conference of the Society of Midwives of South Africa (SOMSA), discussions around sexual and reproductive health and rights and safe abortion care were broadcast out to millions of Africans across the continent.

Ipas had a strong presence at the conference, which took place on December 2 – 5 in Polokwane, South Africa. In addition to Africa Alliance staff, Alliance Program Director Mosotho Gabriel facilitated the participation of midwives from eight other African countries.

To ensure that these important discussions extended beyond the 1,000 conference participants, Ipas worked with media from the local to the continental level to cover the conference. Polokwane is the capital of a mostly rural province called Limpopo, more than 200 miles (330 km) north of regional media center Johannesburg. The distance from Johannesburg, as well as what broadcasters believed to be a controversial topic, made engaging the media challenging.

Popular commercial radio station Capricorn FM, with 1.5 million listeners, was one of the first stations to broadcast news of the conference. The bulk of Capricorn's listeners are between 16 and 34 years old and live primarily in Limpopo's small towns, villages and rural areas. "It took some convincing to make the radio's news team believe that their listeners would be interested in the issues like those that Ipas raised at the conference," says Gabriel. But in the end, Capricorn FM interviewed Gabriel twice on issues including women's right to make decisions about their bodies, abortion policies, how stigma prevents women from accessing safe abortion services (where available) and political leadership.

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), South Africa's public broadcasting company, interviewed Gabriel for the news programs on SABC's 18 radio stations. These stations broadcast in the 11 official South-African languages and reach 20 million people (Gabriel was interviewed in both English and Setswana). The SABC's international radio station Channel Africa also covered the conference during its lunch-hour news show. Channel Africa reaches audiences all over Africa, can be picked up as far as London and is available globally via the Internet.

SABC radio station SAfm also covered the conference during its daily women's program, “Otherwise,” broadcasting a live discussion with Ipas Nigeria representatives Rose Agbi and Princess Nina Emele and Ethiopian midwife Azeb Admasu, along with Gabriel.

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For more information, contact media@ipas.org