Artistes join the condom campaign

For UNFPA, harnessing this power, and working with the country's leading musicians to pass on positive messages on condom use seemed like a winning strategy. Working with partner Uganda Health Marketing Group (UHMG), UNFPA linked up with Reach a Hand Uganda (RAHU), a youth organisation, to work with Ugandan artistes and produce a music video on condom use. The song is part of an ongoing multimedia campaign ‘If it's not on, it's not safe', promoting male and female condom use, implemented since 2012. Besides music the campaign uses billboards, TV adverts and social media to reach out to young people.

Reach a Hand Uganda convinced popular Ugandan pop artists including GNL Zamba, Jody Phibi, Jazmine Lydia, Ray Signature and Big Trill to appear in a music video called ‘If it is not on, it is not safe', named after the tagline of the campaign. To appeal to the largest possible group, a sample of different tribes such as Baganda, Karimojong and Banyankore are portrayed in the video. There is also a representation of various people from all facets of society for example a factory worker in gumboots, an elderly man, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab, urban youth and a middle aged Rastafarian. The song switches from English to Luganda (one of the widely spoken local languages in Uganda).

"As a musician who aims to inspire society through my music it's my duty to create awareness about HIV/AIDS and having the opportunity to do it through this song was a win, because music reaches so many different people in society" said Jazmine Lydia, one of the artistes on the song, and a popular musician in Uganda. Her colleague GNL Zamba agrees. "As a role model to these young people I have to use the tool best known to me to empower these young people and educate them that using condoms is cool and protects our lives," he adds.

The song has been promoted on 30 radio stations and 8 TV stations. So far, the music video has been viewed more than 3,700 times on Youtube. The artists have performed the song at several flash-mobs, concerts and events including World Contraception Day and World AIDS day 2014 reaching more than 100,000 people.

But UNFPA did not stop there! To give the campaign extra mileage, the song and video together with the TV adverts and popular music videos were burned on CD's and distributed across UNFPA's 8 focus districts in the country. Over 4,000 CDs were handed out at video halls, bars, salons, garages, long distance buses, prisons and police barracks; reaching an estimated 600,000 individuals. The business owners also received condoms and information on sexual and reproductive health from the distribution team.

To track the distribution, the team used mobile phones equipped with the Android-based application TaroWorks to collect GPS coordinates and a photo of each business where the CDs were distributed. The result was a detailed mapping of the campaign's reach (see picture attached).

Two thousand fifteen will be the final year of the campaign and an evaluation of the reach and impact are planned.

The music video If it's not on it's not safe on youtube