First-ever Multi-year Pan-African HIV/AIDS Broadcast Media Campaign Launched as part of Broader HIV Public Education Effort by African Broadcast Companies

Coca Cola Africa Foundation Provides Major Funding for Television and Radio Messaging

Johannesburg, South Africa – Thirty seven major broadcast companies across 24 African countries working together as the African Broadcast Media Partnership Against HIV/AIDS (ABMP) today unveiled plans for the first-ever multi-year pan-African HIV/AIDS public education campaign. To be launched simultaneously across the participating companies on World AIDS Day (December 1) 2006, the campaign is part of a broader five-year effort to substantially increase the amount of HIV/AIDS-related programming by African broadcasters, including the targeted public service ads (PSAs) announced today as well as expanded HIV-themed content across genres, including news, public affairs and entertainment programming. The goals of the campaign are to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS, encourage behaviour change, and reduce stigma.

The PSAs will be distributed across ABMP partner companies, which have committed an unprecedented target of 5% airtime (approx. one hour) across a daily (06h00-24h00) schedule on television and radio for the campaign and other components of the initiative. The messages will target young people (15 to 25 years old) and will promote the idea of an HIV-free generation, employing the tagline: “imagine the possibility: it begins with YOU.”

ABMP chair, SABC Chief Operating Officer, Solly Mokoetle, said “Surveys show that there is a high level of awareness of HIV/AIDS across Africa. The main sticking point is turning this awareness into the kind of sustained behaviour change that could reduce the rate of HIV infection.”

The ABMP’s main funding partner in the YOU campaign will be the Coca Cola Africa Foundation contributing $1.5 million over the next three years. The campaign will anchor a multi-year broadcast content development effort by the ABMP, which was forged at an October 2005 summit of African broadcasters organized by the broadcasters, the US-based Kaiser Family Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Foundation in an effort to reinvigorate the role of African broadcasters in combating HIV/AIDS.

“The African broadcasters participating in this campaign are not only mobilizing media to do more on an unprecedented scale, but they are mobilizing new and important leadership to fight HIV/AIDS in the form of broadcast executives themselves,” said Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew E. Altman, Ph.D.

Coca Cola Africa Foundation President, Dr. Carole Wainaina, said “We are delighted to join the ABMP in this historic effort to intensify HIV-prevention efforts across African broadcasters. Our support of this effort is one part of a new strategic and more comprehensive continent-wide approach being developed by the Foundation to HIV-prevention targeting young people specifically and reducing stigma.”

The ABMP is promoting a business-centered approach to HIV/AIDS programming with the goal of mainstreaming HIV/AIDS related messaging across all programme genres and platforms.

“The impact of the ad hoc approach to HIV communication we have all pursued in the past has hit a ceiling,” said Mokoetle. “To be able to re-engage with audiences for whom the AIDS-issue has become just another part of life, we are encouraging young people to take charge of their futures, and for the first time we are promoting a consistent framework built around key HIV-prevention goals to guide HIV/AIDS-related programming across Africa.”

Additional support for the ABMP is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD)*. The ABMP was launched in response to the Global Media AIDS Initiative (GMAI), which was conceived of and organized by the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS following a call by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan for broadcast companies worldwide to make a greater commitment to the global fight against HIV/AIDS.

It was also announced that SABC Chief Executive, Dali Mpofu, will in October take over as international chair of the GMAI from MTV International Chairman, Bill Roedy. Confirming his nomination to this position, Mpofu said, “This is a real opportunity to demonstrate African leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS. African broadcasters have more experience than most in promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and the ABMP is setting a real example to the world in pushing for intensified commitment and a more effective approach to HIV/AIDS communication.”

*a subsidiary of Merck&Co.(US)