What we exist to answer
The issues
Every VOAC programme answers one of these. Every story we record will be recorded against one of these. They are written in our own voice, without invented statistics — a problem statement that needs a number to be believed is not ready to publish.
Across the continent
Across the continent · Media
Africa is still mostly described by people who do not live here
The stories that reach the world about African communities are rarely told by those communities, in their own languages, on their own terms.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Across the continent · Education
Young Africans are trained for work that does not know how to find them
The continent's youngest-in-the-world population is graduating into economies that cannot yet absorb its skills, while communities go without exactly those skills.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Across the continent · Agriculture
Farmers are sold seed that was never tested in their soil
Certified inputs arrive with a stamp and a promise, and fail in the field — while the local varieties that would have worked are quietly disappearing.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Across the continent · Enterprise
Small enterprises lose more to unreliable power than to any other cost
Tailors, welders, cold stores and radio stations run on a few hours of power a day, and the credible options for changing that rarely reach them.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Across the continent · Arts
Whole communities depend on knowledge held by one person
The engineer who keeps the transmitter alive, the elder who knows the seed, the craftsperson with the technique — when they leave, nothing is written down.
The issue, and what we intend to do →In each country country
One issue per country, named by the members who live there.
Nigeria · Enterprise
Nigeria's markets rebuild themselves after every fire — except the power
Traders reorganise within days of a market fire; what does not come back is reliable electricity, and no one offers them an independent way to plan for it.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Ghana · Media
Community radio in Ghana runs on borrowed engineers
Stations that reach tens of thousands of listeners in Twi, Hausa and Ewe are kept on air by a handful of volunteers, most of them retired, with nobody trained to follow them.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Kenya · Education
Kenya trains more young professionals than it connects to real problems
A strong education system produces graduates who have rarely been placed beside a working problem in their own discipline before they leave it.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Côte d'Ivoire · Media
Côte d'Ivoire's young audio producers have skill, kit and no route to communities
Abidjan has a generation of producers who can record, cut and publish on a phone — and communities two hours away whose accounts have never been recorded properly.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Liberia · Agriculture
Liberia's young people are leaving the land that could employ them
Fertile land, a young population and almost no route between the two: agriculture is treated as what you leave, not what you build.
The issue, and what we intend to do →Benin · Agriculture
Benin's cooperatives need trials that include their own seed
Women's cooperatives across Benin's Collines and Zou grow in soils that certified seed was never tested against — and want evidence, not opinion.
The issue, and what we intend to do →An issue is not a story. It carries no named subject, no recording and no consent record, because none exists yet. When the first story is recorded against an issue, the loop begins from there.