CAS, SAWBO SEEK MOZAMBICAN PARTNERS | Center for African Studies

CAS, SAWBO SEEK MOZAMBICAN PARTNERS

Supported by a grant from the International Strategic International Partnerships (ISIP), CAS Director Merle Bowen and Entymology Professor Barry Pittendrigh visited Mozambique in October. They held meetings with a number of potential partners about linking with Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO), a U of I project which specializes in development education. The U of I team , which also included Dr. Julia Bello-Bravo of SAWBO, visited the Informatics Center at Eduardo Mondlane University, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Ministry of Health and the Agricultural Research Institute.

Professor Pittendrigh and Dr. Bello-Bravo made a number of presentations to leading experts in the those units. The Agricultural Institute was especially responsive as one of their staff, Sostino Mocumbi, had already translated one of the SAWBO animations into Portuguese.

The uniqueness of the design of SAWBO materials is that they can be quickly modified via voice overlays to accommodate any language or dialect. The Agricultural Institute is particularly interested in educational materials on pest disease, post-harvest lost, and marketing surplus, since many farmers to not have access to markets or reliable transportation. In fact, after the visit they uploaded one of the SAWBO videos on cowpeas to their website. View it here: (Be sure to scroll down.)

http://www.iiam.gov.mz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=169&Itemid=190

The Center for African Studies and SAWBO are grateful for the funding support from ISIP and are confident that this visit will lead to an extensive range of partnerships on developing and disseminating SAWBO materials to a wide range of Mozambican communities in the near future.

For basic information on SAWBO, watch this video: