Evaluation of UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centres

This report evaluates UNESCO's Community Multimedia Centres (CMC) initiative, which integrates community radio broadcasting with telecentre services (Internet and ICTs) to support community development. The evaluation, conducted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in 2005, examines 39 pilot CMCs across Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean. It concludes that the hybrid model is an outstanding success in promoting social inclusion and cultural resilience, though it identifies challenges regarding financial sustainability, volunteer management, and internal UNESCO coordination.

• The hybrid CMC model, combining community radio and telecentre services, is highly effective in promoting social inclusion and community development. It has successfully broken social isolation for marginalized groups and strengthened cultural resilience, which is defined as the "capacity of a community to retain critical knowledge and at the same time adapt to external influences and pressures".
• CMCs have delivered tangible development results, including increased school enrollment for girls in Benin, improved immunization rates in Tanzania, and the breakdown of traditional caste barriers in Nepal, where lower-caste youth provide training to upper-caste individuals.
• Financial sustainability is a significant challenge; CMCs cannot be sustained solely by user fees for services. Many centres recover between 40% and 75% of costs through income-generating activities, but often rely on hosting agencies or donors for manager salaries and capital upgrades.
• The initiative's reliance on volunteers creates a contradiction between poverty alleviation goals and the expectation of unpaid labour. Centres struggle with volunteer turnover and conflicts where families prioritize immediate income over volunteering.
• UNESCO's 'rapid results' approach—treating each CMC as a small-scale, results-oriented mini-project—was commended for its flexibility and ability to learn from failure, although it lacked a formal strategic timeframe and benchmarks for UNESCO's own long-term interests.
• There is a lack of internal coordination within UNESCO; different sectors have developed various community centre models (e.g., cultural centres, community learning centres) without sharing management lessons or integrating into a single coherent unit.
• National policy environments often hinder CMC success. Key barriers include restrictive broadcast licensing in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and unstable telecommunications tariffs in Burkina Faso, which contributed to the failure of some pilots.
• The scale-up phase in Mali, Mozambique, and Senegal risks failure if it adopts a 'turnkey' approach (installing full setups where no prior facilities existed) rather than the pilot phase's 'staging' approach of adding technology to existing community roots.
• CMCs have successfully fostered microcredit and self-help groups, particularly through 'listeners clubs' that use small membership fees to fund community projects, directly linking information access to poverty alleviation.

APA

Creech, H., Berthe, O., Assubuji, A. P., Mansingh, I., & Anjelkovic, M. (n.d.). Evaluation of UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centres. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cmc_evaluation_2006.pdf

Chicago

Creech, Heather, Ousmane Berthe, Ana Paula Assubuji, Indira Mansingh, and Maja Anjelkovic. Evaluation of UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centres. International Institute for Sustainable Development, n.d. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cmc_evaluation_2006.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Creech |first1=Heather |last2=Berthe |first2=Ousmane |last3=Assubuji |first3=Ana Paula |last4=Mansingh |first4=Indira |last5=Anjelkovic |first5=Maja |title=Evaluation of UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centres |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cmc_evaluation_2006.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{creechndevaluation, author = {Creech, Heather and Berthe, Ousmane and Assubuji, Ana Paula and Mansingh, Indira and Anjelkovic, Maja}, title = {{Evaluation of UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centres}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cmc_evaluation_2006.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }