Great leaders inspire action
Dr Enole Ditsheko | Monday June 8, 2026 06:00
Still, such moments were shared, and I have cherished each of them. Where it mattered most, Rra Nametso served as the chair of the National AIDS Council during my stint as the public relations officer at the then-National AIDS Coordinating Agency. Our quarterly interactions focused on the serious picture of a pandemic that threatened survival, and how a national response was mooted. There were senior government officials and representatives of international NGOs in the fight against HIV for him to have noticed me in the room. But it was here that a graduate from the Oxbridge institution left a lasting impact on the scholar I became. Before joining NACA in 2005, I spent my youthful exuberance in the news trenches, gathering and reporting facts about this epidemic, firstly, at the defunct Okavango Observer, and later at Mmegi.
Botswana of the mid-1990s and early 2000s was besieged. The HIV national prevalence ranged between the 25th and 30th percentiles. Every household lost a member to AIDS, every family cared for at least one full-blown AIDS patient, and in every direction, everyone knew relatives, close friends, workmates, schoolmates, churchmates and neighbours living with HIV. Building the public relations unit of such an agency from nothing was a challenge, as much as it was rewarding to design communication platforms for HIV prevention information. To secure our lives, people should be informed.
That meant raising awareness through different dissemination strategies, as the saying goes: “Knowledge is power.” I named the quarterly newsletter that was distributed freely “E Bolotse,” taken from Rra Nametso’s public declaration of “Ntwa e bolotse” (the war is raging), which was his vantage point for seeing the destruction AIDS caused. Either we put on the armour of warfare to fight to the last drop of blood or perish. Rre Mogae, when appealing to the world community for support and assistance, used the following graphic descriptions: “We are threatened with extinction. People are dying in chillingly high numbers. It is a crisis of the first magnitude.” (Reuters, 2000) Rra Nametso was not just a politician who fought to improve his chances of being re-elected in 2004 or to secure a win for his successor, President Ian Khama, in 2008. By carefully selecting HIV prevention methods, highly recommended by those sponsoring Botswana’s fight against the crisis, he was sensitive to the prevalent beliefs of Batswana regarding the disease.
We had such global health partnerships, including the Geneva-based Global Fund, UNAIDS, and US PEPFAR, among key players. They doled out millions of dollars in American aid and technical support, including scientists and medical experts dispatched to the desert country to roll back the tide. The assistance did not come without expectations, of course! However, global media advertising strategies rooted in Western-centric lifestyles did not resonate with Batswana's dominant cultural and religious customs and needed to be adjusted. It was the donors’ expectations of what Botswana ought to do on its prevention front that did not always impress the outspoken president. He would bite his tongue and make his feelings known: if money had strings attached, it was better kept in its place of origin, because assistance should be given out of compassion and a shared understanding that human life was threatened.
Beneath his critical voice, the communication specialist in me was awakened. I became suspicious that academic investigation might uncover empirical evidence of homegrown methods that could yield desirable outcomes in our HIV prevention efforts. By 2008, the national prevalence was reduced to 18.1%. It took Rre Mogae’s goodwill and the commitment of resources to behavioural change communication and public education interventions to roll back the numbers. We were challenged to think outside the box of the Western-conceptualised messaging approaches and adjust pre-designed advertising campaigns before launching them. That exhortation resonated with me as a communication expert, journalist, creative writer and public relations practitioner. After a decade, I finally put together a research abstract and applied to four American universities. Southern Illinois University offered a fully funded PhD scholarship in mass communications and media arts.
It was borne of a research proposal assessing mass media channels where HIV prevention information was available, the interpretation of such messages, and their application in daily transactions that fueled the spread of HIV. What were the common mass-mediated messages, where were they placed, how accessible were the channels, were there ambiguities in the slogans, and who was targeted in those messages? My research study, therefore, zeroed in on teenagers, adolescents, and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24, the population that is hit the hardest, with noticeable yearly high rates of new infections (incidence rates), according to the Botswana AIDS Impact Survey results from three studies. There ought to be something wrong in the way HIV prevention is communicated for our children’s generation to miss the serious realities that emerge out of a disease that has no cure. The information gaps need to be closed based on empirical evidence. Hence, “Decoding the Public Service Announcements of HIV/AIDS: Evaluating Botswana’s HIV/AIDS Messages and Their Impact on Ages 15 to 24” forced me to retrace my steps to the motherland to conduct a study among 20 pilot sites in urban, peri-urban, and rural Botswana. These sites are a partnership between the US PEPFAR and the Botswana Government to pilot the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prevention strategy.
The youth involved in the trials were familiar with other prevention campaigns launched in partnerships with the global HIV NGOs in Botswana. These major prevention campaigns included PrEP, Abstain, Be Faithful, and use a Condom (ABC), Undetectable equals Untransmissible (U = U), Safe Male Circumcision (SMC), and Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), respectively. The content analysis of these global HIV prevention advertising campaigns used an intercultural communication theoretical framework to determine their lasting impact on Botswana’s youth population.
It was a mixed-methods research design that employed a quantitative approach to data collection, using an online survey platform called Qualtrics to export raw data to a statistical analysis tool known as SPSS, then charting and graphing the information. The interpretation of the data resulted in a qualitative descriptive narrative approach to depict the HIV situation among Botswana youth. The impact of the campaigns on the actions that can reduce risky behaviours of the participants was tested using several hypotheses to prove whether the target populations made sense of these prevention taglines, given their peculiar identities, dominant beliefs, and customs.
The comparative study between the AIDS situation in the Global North, concentrated significantly within the key populations or members of the LGBTQ community, on one hand, and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa among heterosexual couples, on the other, bore findings that these social contexts were indispensable. It is crucial for many reasons to put in place strategies that can effectively respond to the epidemic; therefore, the first stage of any communication campaign is to analyse the behavioural aspects of the health problem itself from a social lens, and “Start where the people are” (Dorothy Bird Nyswander: 1956).
Suffice it to state that it is necessary to study the pattern of the disease in relation to the prevalent culture in a particular region – that way, individuality rather than universality in coining prevention messages is the focus. The conclusion, therefore, is that the communication strategies should go to the heart of the matter by recognising the cultural contexts of Botswana and other sub-Saharan African peoples as occupying the centre stage in co-creating slogans and taglines.
Campaigns must resonate with native beliefs, practices, nuances, and behavioural communication strategies to target homogeneous audiences with specific messages, rather than using a general tone that targets heterogeneous groups. Only campaigns that apply cultural theories can influence positive behaviour and significantly reduce new infections; the evidence from the study tells the story in clear terms.
Thus, when I defended my research study several years ago, Rra Nametso might not have been in the room to witness how impressive an African scholar convinced a panel of five American professors that this academic enquiry was a necessity for biotech companies in designing marketing approaches of their products to address the HIV burden. His protégé, Prof Sheila Dinotshe Tlou, was in attendance and witnessed me pass with flying colours. As I rightfully place the “Dr” in front of my name or the “PhD” behind it, I do so with pride, knowing that the four years at the AIDS agency exposed me to a critical thinker who was my president and chair.
This academic qualification does not just bolster my resume, but is an accomplishment earned with a sense of duty to my country to solve the crisis of HIV/AIDS. Touched by a selfless servant in Rra Nametso’s crusade against the epidemic, and acknowledging his hard work to preserve the lives of thousands who tell their ordinary stories, journeying with the disease that once eclipsed the ever-shining sun, I am eternally grateful.
I contributed to the body of knowledge in HIV prevention communication strategies. Hence, I signed a memorandum of understanding with the agency that later became the National AIDS and Promotions Agency to fund the study in part. I deposited the entire study in their safe hands. What they are doing with the findings to craft approaches in the national response to the disease is beyond me. I played my role as a responsible citizen in search of practical solutions to HIV/AIDS. Thank you, Rra Nametso, for inspiring me into action. Rest in eternal peace, Motalaote!
(*Author is a mass communications and media studies scholar, specialising in health communication campaigns. His study is available at academia.edu or proquest.com and he can be contacted at editsheko@gmail.com)