Reaching audiences in Africa posed a challenge to our public diplomacy efforts, particularly in rural settings where Internet connectivity was low. Working with the Bureau of African Affairs, I proposed, designed, and delivered four training courses to empower local staff in U.S. embassies across Africa to produce audio content. I also conducted site visits to produce stories about local USAID projects and consulted with local  community groups, where in many cases bicycle riders volunteered to take compact disks with audio content to local radio stations. As a result, our public diplomacy efforts experienced a surge of positive engagement. We reached audiences who otherwise would not have access to information on U.S. policy and development efforts in places such as Djibouti, Somalia, Senegal, and Ethiopia.

I led the formation of intra-office partnerships with foreign language speakers to produce audio content in Arabic, Russian, Farsi, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, and Swahili. Working with each office that specialized in a geographic region, we integrated audio production processes with the production of eBooks, articles, and video to adapt existing content for audio distribution. Foreign language podcasting vastly expanded the number of audiences that we successfully engaged. The resulting audio content empowered local embassies to work with radio stations and other content channels to place U.S. public diplomacy messaging where it would be most accessible. Local embassies were also able to work directly with our office to construct foreign language editorial programs to produce content that appealed to specific audiences. The ultimate result was a sustained, mutually-beneficial partnership of local audiences, U.S. embassies, and content producers.