Study trip to Kenya, authentic stories in the (social) media, roundtables and travelling exhibition

Study trip to Kenya

By the end of January winners of photo and article competitions in Lithuania - Akvilė Norkute and Vaida Blažytė - as well as journalist Lauryna Vireliūnaitė and project’s media specialist Giedrė Biržytė went on a study trip to Kenya. The aim of the trip was to collect authentic, first-hand stories of local Kenyan communities. Thus, the programme of the trip included a number of visits to distant villages and slums of the capital city Nairobi, meetings with Kenyan NGOs and local people. The delegation visited Ol Pejeta nature reserve, Huruma slum, met women of Samburu tribe, members of self-help groups in Nairobi.

Stories collected throughout the study trip are being publicized in the national media and presented in public discussions.

A meeting with Samburu Women, January 2016

Roundtables with journalists

Three roundtable discussions were organised to foster more in-depth discussions by journalists visiting developing countries with the public.

By the end of January a roundtable on albino situation in Tanzania was held. Vaida Blažytė, the winner of the article competition, shared her insights about the social marginalisation of the local albino community in East Africa and presented her experience while shooting a documentary on the topic. Issues of prejudice and health care were highlighted. Possibilities for Lithuanians to contribute while overcoming these difficulties were addressed as well.

A Roundtable with Journalists, 21 January 2016.

At the end of February the second roundtable took place where participants of the aforementioned  study trip to Kenya presented their experiences there.  The audience was introduced to the socio-political situation of the country as well as stories about HIV-support community and self-help initiatives in Nairobi slums.

A Roundtable with Journalists, 26 February 2016.

In March, the third roundtable was held where Lithuanian journalists and lecturer at Vilnius University Džina Donauskaitė and radio journalist Živilė Kropaitė shared their stories from their recent trip to Nepal organised by the Minority Rights Group. The journalists covered not only the diverse ethnic constitution of the country’s population, but also discussed the reasons behind the ineffectiveness of humanitarian aid provided by the international community after the earthquakes that hit Nepal in 2015.

A Roundtable with Journalists, 23 March 2016.

Additionally, in February another roundtable was organized in order to bring together participants  (professionals and amateurs) of photo and article competitions on development organized in 2015. Prospects for future cooperation and developmental journalism in general as well as the code of conduct for development journalism were discussed there.

Photo exhibition

The photo exhibition The World As You See It continues to be displayed in different venues: Šiauliai Stasio Šalkauskio gymnasium, Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University as well as in Education Development Centre. The exhibition will further be displayed in the Lithuanian Parliament and it will travel around the country reaching inhabitants of smaller Lithuanian towns.

Photo Exhibition at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius, March 2016.

Article section

In January a new section was introduced in the national daily Lietuvos žinios in order to reach a wider public and familiarize it with current development issues. Every Saturday the stories of Lithuanian journalists that visited developing countries as well as selected articles from the article competition organised in Lithuania last year are published there. Each article is accompanied by an introduction into a certain aspect of development cooperation disclosed in the publication. 12 articles have been published so far, including those selected by project partners.   

“People of the Ocean” by Berta Tilmantaitė in “Lietuvos Žinios”, February 2016.

Appearances on TV

On the National TV morning programme “Labas rytas, Lietuva” project writer Vaida Blažytė and media specialist Giedre Birzyte appeared respectively on 19 January and 21 March with stories from the Kenya trip.

Social media

Facebook continues to be a priority channel social media communication. The trips and round tables with journalist provide attractive content and the audience steadily increases.  Since March boosting of the stories published in the media enabled to reach wider audience from approx. 4000 to 16 000 users. For example:

Example of Facebook post boost

Currently, the Facebook account has almost 2000 followers. Since January 46 posts with hashtag #M4Dproject appeared on the site.

Since January Twitter was also used as a social media communication channel. The profile has already reached 49 followers and 20 tweets using hashtag #M4Dproject were posted. Twitter is not very popular in Lithuania, however, it is on the rise, especially among policy makers, experts and opinion leaders. So it is these particular groups that are targeted through this channel.

Social media campaign targeting the most common development myths is underway. It will be conducted with the help of videos of a well-known Lithuanian stand-up comedian and special photo series.

Media outputs by Jana Fedakova

Jana Fedakova, one of the VIKES training participants was granted the first grant from the project budget to visit Zanzibar and Kenya in December 2015. She was finding out there what influence the boom of tourism focused on rich foreign tourists has on inhabitants of Zanzibar, how Kenya manages to mobilize domestic resources and what is the business environment like in this country. 

Truth about tourism in Zanzibar

The island on the East coast of Africa has become a holiday destination for a rising number of people and the government is proud of the number of tourists that already reached 200.000. But there is poverty behind the walls of luxury resorts. Not only the inhabitants of Zanzibar do not benefit from the tourism but the West tourists bring to this Muslim island the behaviour not acceptable by local culture.

Photo: J. Fedakova, Zanzibar beaches attract tourists

Kenya offers 10 year tax holidays, investments increased twice

Have you decided to start your own business? Try it in Kenya. If you invest a million of USD you are not obliged to pay the income tax until your profit reaches one and half millions of USD. Dr. Moses Ikiara the Managing Director of the Kenya Investment Authority (KenInvest) sees this a good way how to attract foreign investments in the country. Despite warnings of non-profitable organizations that thanks to transactions within own corporations, the multinational companies manage to declare profits close to zero.

African countries overtake each other in tax incentives, says expert

According to Alvin Mosioma, the founding Executive Director of Tax Justice Network - Africa, a lot of African countries face the challenge to collect income taxes from their inhabitants. They are paid only by a small group of inhabitants and the grey economy dominates. In his view, it is not good that countries depend on the consumption tax like VAT because if people do not have enough money for purchasing then the states do not gather enough this way. He does not find this tax fair as the poor and the rich pay the same tax rate.

In Kenya, all employees pay income tax at the rate that depends on how much they earn. Small businessmen like taxi drivers and farmers do not pay income tax because it is difficult to define their income. They pay VAT that is connecting to their business activities. The big companies apply the rule of double taxation - if they operate in two countries they pay taxes in only one. Kenya has got an agreement on double taxation with Mauritius. If a company registers there to pay taxes there, it does not pay taxes in Kenya. But it pays taxes neither on Mauritius because of high tax benefits.

Photo: Archive: Alvin Mosioma