Coming of age in Afghanistan

For Afghans, radio remains the most popular media source for entertainment, information and news. The largest educational media institution in the country is Afghan Education Projects (AEP), which is part of the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST).

After 15 years under the BBC umbrella, AEP has taken the first steps towards becoming an independent Afghan production house.

“This is cause for celebration as it marks the level of maturity that AEP has now reached and our conviction that the organisation can make a bigger contribution to the development needs of Afghanistan as an independent, non-governmental organisation using media for educational purposes,” said Caroline Nursey, Director of the BBC WST.

“Times are changing rapidly in Afghanistan, so it’s great to see the Trust’s oldest project and partnership off to an independent future.”

AEP was launched in 1993, during one of the bloodiest phases of the Afghan civil war. Research indicated that there was a need for educational programming that could reach out to a mass audience in a country convulsed by war, forced exile and the collapse of schooling, healthcare and law and order.

Success story

The flagship soap opera, New Home, New Life, has been broadcasting since 1994 and is listened to by an estimated 14 million Afghans. The initial model for the radio drama was the British soap The Archers, which has dramatised the lives of people living in the fictional English village of Ambridge for almost 60 years.

Archers actress and radio drama trainer Felicity Finch travelled out to Afghanistan to work for AEP by providing training for the staff. “In the same way that The Archers has ardent fans so too does New Home, New Life”, she said. “I recall condolence cards being sent to the AEP office for a character that had died. Characters are so fondly regarded they become real.”

New Home, New Life tells the stories of villagers returning from exile and re-building their lives back in Afghanistan. Through the storylines, Afghans receive information about health, childcare, livestock management, landmines and conflict resolution. More recently, the series addressed taboo subjects such as HIV and AIDS in a culturally sensitive way.

Last year, AEP piloted a new urban drama, Old City, New Dreams, which is aimed at the growing number of city dwellers who face problems such as unemployment, the high cost of living and lack of adequate service provision. While private radio and TV channels mushroom in urban centres, few provide public-service content for their audience.

Interim Project Manager Shafiq Hakimi maintains that AEP has always “focussed on the needs of the Afghan people” and that its “stories are reinforced by real life experiences and situations – one of the only channels providing an educational message during the Taliban years.”

He attributes AEP’s success to several factors: “the quality of the outreach work that ensures all the programmes meet audience needs in terms of plots, characters, and issues; and also that the entire team has been trained in and is committed to BBC ethics and standards. We are confident and we are on our way!"

Looking to the future

The AEP senior management team came to London in August and took part in a panel discussion to look at AEP’s successes over the past 15 years and to talk about future plans.

Felicity Finch and former BBC Kabul correspondent Kate Clark – who has also worked with AEP over the years – joined the panel and shared their perspectives of the initiative and their experiences of working in Afghanistan.

Kate Clark noted that “AEP is very much in the thread of life for many Afghans. Journalists of a certain age were most likely trained through the outreach programme. Afghanistan sorely needs an ethical foundation – this is one of the great things that AEP has done.”

For Felicity Finch, it is the dedication shown by the team that makes AEP such an achievement. “The team has such a readiness to explore and share new skills. I look forward to the future for them, as New Home, New Lives is quite literally a lifeline – it has transformed so many millions of lives.”