Partner Spotlight: Mediae Company
Based in Nairobi, the Mediae Company produces research-based educational entertainment to promote changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices across East Africa. Our award-winning TV and radio programs have millions of followers, and are a source of information that serves to empower audiences. Over more than 20, years we have covered a vast range of social issues impacting the lives of millions.
Our flagship series Shamba Shape Up is East Africa’s leading agricultural TV program and reaches up to 3 million viewers weekly. An assessment of the most recent season of Shamba Shape Up found that 80% of viewers reported learning something new, and 43% made changes to their farming practices as a result of watching the show.
It was while filming Shamba Shape Up that our team witnessed first hand the critical conditions faced by families while cooking their daily meals. We saw a need to educate populations across Kenya about the benefits of clean cooking. The concept of a TV show centered in the kitchen was created.
With support from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, and in collaboration with the Alliance’s partners in Kenya, we developed a weekly TV and radio series based on extensive research with the target audience. Content includes information about available cleaner cooking technologies as well as covering key issues on nutrition, with an emphasis on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Working with the Alliance has been invaluable to the success of creating evidence-based media that serves as an innovative behavior change communication tool.
Shamba Chef is an entertaining reality-style TV show that takes viewers inside Kenyan homes, to watch as families learn how to prepare more nutritious meals while testing out a new stove or fuel that makes cooking “quicker, safer, cleaner and at half the cost”. The series seeks to address a critical educational gap for the 80% of the Kenyan population who use dirty, polluting fuels for cooking, and address the 35% of Kenyan children under five who are stunted, as well as the millions more who are nutrient deficient.
Shamba Chef debuted in September 2017 and is currently the number one rated show in its time slot. Episodes in Kiswahili and English have attracted a combined average of 3 million viewers per week. The show is supported by iChef an information service that offers subscribers weekly SMS tips and printed leaflets with healthy recipes, kitchen garden and nutrition tips and information on how to buy clean cookstoves. Audience are invited to SMS the call center to subscribe to this service, and in the first 10 weeks of broadcasting over 30,000 SMS were received, with over 10,000 subscribing to the service (65% of these subscribers are female).
With support from the Alliance, Mediae is working on developing a second series of Shamba Chef, to build on generating the demand for clean cooking as well as continuing to address critical issues on nutritional practices.
To learn more about Shamba Chef, please visit: www.shambachef.com
For more about Mediae’s other productions, please visit: www.mediae.org