Youssou N’Dour recently had an Op-Ed published in the Financial Times, in which he explains how only Africans can ultimately make the difference in the fight against malaria. Check it out below. You can also find the article at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a486edbe-4ce6-11df-9977-00144feab49a.html.
Xeex on!
Adam Horowitz
Peace Corps Volunteer
Dakar, Senegal
Financial Times
Guest column: Local voices in harmony will make all the difference
By Youssou N’Dour
Published: April 22 2010 16:30 | Last updated: April 22 2010 16:30
International funders make an enormous contribution to the well-being of Africa. But they can’t create a different future for our continent on their own.
The reality is that only Africans are in a position to create the kind of transformative cultural change required to solve persistent problems such as poverty, AIDS, and malaria. In other words, encouraging a local voice – or better, many local voices in harmony – makes all the difference.
Here in West Africa, we call our traditional singers “griots.” They are our poets, praise singers and oral historians. I come from a griot family, so music was a calling for me before it was a profession. We are expected to sing for the voiceless, and I take that responsibility seriously.
Recently, I’ve used the visibility afforded by international celebrity to advocate for the eradication of poverty and preventable diseases in West Africa.
There’s nothing new about the urgency of the issues we – the griots of various cultures – bring attention to today: persistent poverty, deadly yet preventable diseases. What is new is the expectation of significant progress on a problem such as malaria, which has been with us for tens of thousands of years.
It is a disease with clear solutions and which the developed world largely eliminated from its lands decades ago. Yet, in Africa, it still kills more than 850,000 people every year and sickens over 200m more. Most of its victims are pregnant women and children below the age of 5 – who represent the future of the continent.
It costs Africa more than $12bn annually in healthcare and lost productivity. This is unacceptable when solutions are available: effective treatments, preventive mosquito nets and targeted use of insecticide spraying.
Governments, such as those of the US and UK, institutions like the Global Fund and the World Bank, and private-sector groups, including ExxonMobil and Sumitomo Chemical, working with the global health community, have, in the past few years, contributed billions of dollars toward the ambitious goal of ending deaths from malaria by 2015.
But the battle will only be won on the front lines: in Africa, by Africans. That is why, earlier this year, I took my fight against malaria from the global stage to the local one.
Together with the non-profit organisation Malaria No More, we began Surround Sound, an education and advocacy project in Senegal. We aim to “surround” the malaria problem by mobilising all sectors of society – local musicians, sports figures, business and religious leaders and, of course, the government. Our goal: to urge every family to sleep under a mosquito net and to seek timely, effective treatment when needed.
I’m proud to report that with the leadership of the government and help of international partners, Senegal has reached an important milestone this year: every child below the age of 5 in my country now has an insecticide-treated mosquito net to sleep under. Now the country has set its sights on covering every man, woman, and child by the end of 2010.
There’s still a lot of work to do, and that’s where I can play a personal role, bringing the message of prevention and treatment to people throughout Senegal.
Xeex Sibbiru (Wolof for “Fight Malaria”), is the name of the cultural movement we’ve started in Senegal. It is a new approach: one that began with a song recorded by six of the top artists in Senegal and which urges practical action and personal responsibility in the fight against malaria.
This past June we hosted the Xeex Sibbiru concert to publicise the distribution of two million mosquito nets by the Senegalese government. The concert was broadcast live nationally from a stadium in one of the poorest neighbourhoods, an area that experiences seasonal, chest-high flooding and the mosquito-borne diseases that inevitably arrive with the rains.
A capacity crowd of 15,000 people – plus several thousand who stood outside the stadium and millions more who listened on radio – heard Senegal’s homegrown talent tell personal, often emotional stories about how malaria has touched their lives. Everyone had a story, though most had never told them before.
Now we’re putting the microphone in the hand of all the people of Senegal, giving voice to their stories about malaria through a national Pop Idol-style song contest. Working with the government and partners, we’ve managed to use every health clinic in the country as an educational outlet and recruiting station for the next generation of malaria griots.
I’m impressed and inspired to see thousands of young people becoming advocates for the cause in their home communities.
The Xeex Sibbiru campaign is having an enormous impact. Millions of people have nets and are using them, where they didn’t before. The director of Senegal’s National Malaria Control Programme, Dr. Pape Moussa Thior, recently told me that he can’t walk down the street anymore without people asking him for mosquito nets. The same thing has begun happening to me. It’s music to our ears.
In addition to being Africa’s best-selling pop musician, Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour is one of the continent’s most vocal advocates in the fight against malaria. He serves as a Unicef and Roll Back Malaria ambassador and a board member for Malaria No More. Time Magazine named Youssou N’Dour one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People” in 2007.
