Traditional African Story and Song Raise AIDS Awareness
Bank to participate in innovative prevention campaign

July 11, 2000—As delegates gather at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, where the Bank has committed $500 million more to control of the disease, the Bank's Africa Region Indigenous Knowledge Program is undertaking its own innovative effort to combat HIV/AIDS.

It will be partnering with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the American NGO Dialiya Kunda (a group of traditional African storytellers and musicians) in an unprecedented use of traditional African communication tools to raise public awareness of HIV/AIDS.

The project's main vehicles are "griots," also called "jali," keepers of the region's traditional modes of storytelling, song, and ceremony. In an effort to introduce the concept and its potential for outreach, the unit is sponsoring the Manding Griot Ensemble in a performance today, 12:30 to 2:30 in J-B1-080.

The partnership has been working to galvanize the membership of the Manding Dialiya groups living in the U.S. and in Africa in order to take their education campaign into Mali, Senegal, Guinea, and The Gambia.

"Sensitivity to culture is recognized as especially important for communicating messages about HIV/AIDS," says Najib Ayachi, a member of the Indigenous Knowledge for Development team. "To be effective, information and education messages should be delivered in a format that resonates with authenticity, articulated in people's own terms. Practices that are embedded in culture and that put people at risk of HIV infection ought to be addressed within the given cultural framework, understood here as a set of beliefs, myths, rituals, customs, and social practices."

The Dialiya oral tradition system—a combination of musical artistry and oral history and the basis for social education—preserves, educates, and promotes social consciousness in many of the region's communities. The tradition is not uncommon even in West African communities living in the U.S. Within targeted communities, say the project's organizers, griots have mass appeal and provide a practical approach to education on AIDS/HIV and other sensitive social and development issues.