Walking around Monrovia, Liberia it’s hard to escape Hipco music. From supermarkets and dress shops to small, battered radios attached to motorcycle taxis, the music floats all over the city. The genre combines Liberian Pidgin-English, called kolokwa, with high-BPM dance rhythms and also touches of reggae, hip hop and RnB. Dating back to the Liberian Civil War, it’s also a genre that tackles socio-political issues in the country, and is a means for young people to express themselves in a relatable, viral way. As a campaign tool, Hipco has proven to be a powerful vehicle for change.
Arguably one of the first issues to bring Hipco to an international audience was the country’s Ebola outbreak in 2014 that ultimately claimed 5,000 lives. The disease called for the urgent distribution of health messages to counter misinformation and teach people how to keep themselves safe. As volunteers led many of the lasting community mobilization efforts, it was critical to reach communities directly. A number of Hipco songs from that period went viral, receiving massive radio airplay and wide reach as a result. Artists like Takun J have evolved the genre even further, solidifying it as a powerful, socially-conscious art form.
Rap2Rep was launched by Accountability Lab (AL) in Liberia in 2015. Previous campaigns have centred on women’s inclusion in election processes, gender violence, and anti-corruption. But like Ebola, the Coronavirus era has brought about particular challenges for Liberia in terms of misinformation and misunderstandings and so it made sense to focus the campaign for 2020 on Covid-19. We need to weed out damaging rumors about the disease that have been doing the rounds. These include ineffective natural remedies and misinformation about the impact of the country’s warm climate and young population. Accountability Lab Liberia wanted to align the Rap2Rep campaign with the challenge of keeping people reliably informed about the pandemic and debunking harmful myths about its source, symptoms and potential long-term effects, in keeping with our Coronavirus Civic Action Campaign.
This blog is part of CDA’s From Where I Stand series, designed to listen to people most affected by aid as they explore and amplify their leadership experiences, stories, and lessons for the aid sector.
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