Africa

 DW has new partnerships in The Gambia with the state television and radio station Gambia Radio and Television service (GRTS). The DW programs included are Africa on the Move, Eco@Africa, In Good Shape und Kick off! Also in Gambia, DW is now radio partners with Paradise FM Radio, BIZ FM Radio and Capital FM, which will be broadcasting DW’s radio shows AfricaLink, Crime Fighters and Learning by Ear.

Asia

One of Indonesia’s leading video websites, vidio.com, is including DW’s Indonesian-language technology show Inovator along with selected programs from DW English with Indonesian subtitles.

DW and DW (Deutsch) are now available in Thailand on the TrueVisions Anywhere app for iOS and Android, developed by the country’s largest cable provider.

Digital

DW content is available on Google Home – Google’s new speech-assisted, interactive speaker system operating on Google Assistant software. The voice-activated system can answer questions, control smartphones and play music. Audio news reports from DW in English and German, as well as slowly spoken news reports in German for learners. DW content will also be rolled out in the future on Google Assistant software for Android

 

What drives some people to push themselves to the edge and keep coming back to the world’s most rugged and treacherous mountains? DW sports journalist Stefan Nestler tells these stories and makes it clear that mountaineering is more than a sport, it’s a lifestyle.

Nestler’s mountaineering blog Adventure Sports takes a special look at people who live for reaching the next peak. The blog also places a special emphasis on life in the Himalayas – both for locals and the cadres of mountain adventurers whom descend on the region each year.

The blog recently won a Sport Media Pearl Award in the Journalistic Weblog category. The contest, organized by the International Sports Press Association (AIPS), is considered one of the most important international sports media awards and recognizes outstanding storytellers in sports.

Nestler dedicated the award to “climbers from all over the world who live their passion and to the mountain people who must work so hard.” But Nestler isn’t the only DW journalist being honored with awards.

Jaafar Abdul Karim, the host of DW’s Shabab Talk and other productions covering the Arab world ranked third place as Medium Magazine‘s “journalist of the year” in the category nationwide reporting. Medium said that that Karim was a “perfect mediator” between Germany and the Arab world. Karim uses a unique approach to storytelling that helps contextualize and clarify issues facing young Arabs. He also produces a video blog that keeps up with the latest issues and controversies.

Another distinction was presented by Kosovo’s public broadcaster, RTK, which honored DW’s Bahri Cani with a “Journalist of the Year” award. The journalist with DW’s Albanian department was recognized for live news reports in Albanian and Serbian, which provide a valuable service to speaker’s of both languages in Kosovo. Cani’s work also distinguishes DW as an objective and reliable source of information in the region.

Live reports from DW have been included in RTK’s morning broadcasts for more than three years. RTK also carries the Albanian edition of DW’s, Focus on Europe, along with Euromaxx, Drive it! and Tomorrow Today.

Two DW Portuguese for Africa correspondents were also recognized for their outstanding journalistic achievements and commitment to human rights. Braima Daramehat won a “Journalism and Human Rights” prize from the Observatório dos Direitos Humanos based in Guinea-Bissau. His work as director of the local youth broadcaster Rádio Jovem earned him the distinction. The station’s programming emphasizes human rights, freedom and democracy. DW’s radio dramas Learning by Ear and Crime Fighters are broadcast in Portuguese by Rádio Jovem.

Luciano Nagel, a DW correspondent in south Brazil won a Prêmio CNT de Jornalismo for his report on the working conditions for Brazilian truck drivers. Nagel has also produced stories for DW covering African refugees in Brazil.

Work on Learning by Ear’s new dramatic radio series in Kenya, Crime Fighters, had already begun in early April when militants attacked Garissa University in the northern part of the country killing 147. A few weeks before the attack, DW Hausa‘s Pinado Abdu finished writing a section of the series titled The Radical Journey, which focused on what would make a young person turn to terror. Even before its first broadcast, Crime Fighters was already touching on an unfortunate reality – but the series also provides many positive lessons.

Crime Fighters is aimed primarily at young Africans and encourages them to understand their problems in a more conscious and courageous light. The stories center on young investigators who solve challenging cases that affect young Africans like terrorism, property theft, poaching and counterfeit drugs. The stories were written by a team of African authors. In total, Crime Fighters is made up of 32 ten-minute episodes that are divided in to four fictional criminal cases taking place all over Africa.

DW’s Head of Programming for Africa, Claus Stäcker, said that the crime series allowed the Learning by Ear tradition to continue highlighting current conflicts across Africa in a more “exciting and entertaining” manner. “We provoke the listeners into taking a position on issues and provide food for thought without coming across like a school teacher.”

Recording for the series was completed in May at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development in Nairobi. Crime Fighters is now being broadcast in English, Kiswahili, Hausa, French and Portuguese in 30 African countries.

Crime Fighters is part of the educational radio series produced by Learning by Ear,  which has been a big hit in Africa. Like the successful series Crossroads Generation , Crime Fighters is broadcast by over 250 partner stations across the continent. It is also available by podcast on AfricaLink and will be heavily featured on social media.

 

Latin America

Euromaxx has a new broadcasting partner in South America.  The Colombian TV channel Cablenoticias will be broadcasting DW’s popular culture and lifestyle program in Spanish five days a week. The channel is carried by over 800 TV providers with a potential combined audience of 7.48 million households on two continents. Cablenoticias is available via broadcasting partners throughout Central America, the USA, Mexico and 8 South American countries.

Asia

Learning by Ear has a new broadcasting partner in Afghanistan. Radio Azad is now broadcasting the educational radio program in Dari and Pashto. The station, located in the northern province of Balkh, is Learning by Ear’s 16th partner in Afghanistan.

DW has a new broadcasting partner in Pakistan’s largest metropolis, Karachi. Star Cable Network is now broadcasting DW’s English TV channel to around 50,000 households.

Online

The DW Smart TV app is now available via the Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) on all Sony smart TV models produced after 2013. With Sony’s 15 percent market share in connected TVs, the partnership will deliver multilingual DW content live and on-demand to an expanded global audience. The DW Smart TV app is also set to be implemented on Android TV platforms in the future.

DW’s Crossroads Generation has found another great partner with Mxit. The South African social media app goes beyond providing easy access to online social networks by actively aiming to improve lives through information and education. Aside from technology, they accomplish this through social activism.

Mxit Reach is an NGO run by the company, which seeks to improve lives by providing innovative mobile solutions. An estimated 1 million users access educational, counseling and health services through Mxit Reach. And with Crossroads Generation, DW has created a radio soap that tackles tough social issues with the help of a love story. It covers issues that are important for African youth like drug use, pregnancy and domestic violence – and does this in a fun and entertaining way to keep listeners coming back for more. Mxit can help the program do its job even better.

One of the Mxit app’s core strengths is “tailoring features for original localized content targeted at emerging market youth”. Crossroads Generation, the educational radio soap, is targeted to this market – African youth who will greatly benefit from having the program on such an accessible platform. Mixt enables users to gather around the content to react, discuss and develop their own ideas and this will surely expand Crossroads Generation’s effectiveness.

DW’s educational content for Africa is produced to enlighten and educate young Africans and is an ideal complement to the Mxit mission. With DW doing a lot of other work in media education and social awareness, it would be a positive development to see this partnership develop in the future.

Find out more about DW’s partnership with Mxit here.