Strategic Communication for Narrative Shaping, Prospects for GoE and UN Collaboration

(Paraphrased and updated version of a speech made at UN Regional Directors Retreat in Asmara on August 2025)

• Strategic Communication is a timely and very important agenda for the Government as a whole; and especially for the Ministry of Information. I often describe the situation – in perhaps somewhat hyperbolic formulation – as the Achilles Heel of the Ministry; if only to emphasize that our performance remains far below the targets we have and should set.
• This description requires some vital caveats and qualifications. As we all agree; Strategic Communication is a binary concept.  It has two distinct, mutually exclusive, dimensions or facets – the External and Domestic components, or dualities.
• In its external dimension, Strategic Communication is a potent tool and manifestation of a country’s soft power. It is, and must be, employed to nurture bilateral and multilateral ties of cooperation to attract foreign investment; to build consensus on global issues of vital importance; to foster a culture of peace; and, to project a good image of the country conducive for a better regional and global understanding.
• But vital as the External Component remains, the Domestic Component is also of paramount importance, especially in our case. Indeed, Strategic Communication is indispensable for cultivating broad consensus on the Social Contract; to further consolidate national cohesion, tolerance and unity within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious setting; to instill grassroots ownership of the country’s development agenda; as well as to create a platform of vibrant communication for continuous consultation between the government and all segments of society on all issues of national importance.
• So while the Ministry is doing perhaps a mediocre job in the External Component, its performance in the Domestic Component is more than satisfactory.
• The Ministry has operational mandates on publicly owned media outlets – TV Channels, Radio Stations, Newspapers etc. It reaches all the Eritrean Diaspora in all the Continents through Arab Sat and Nile Sat Platforms as well as Live Internet Streaming and YouTube through the contractual services with Independent IT outlets.
• In terms of content, all our media outlets focus on, and allocate ample and judicious airtime and space for the four pillars – Informative, Educational, Entertainment and Interactive programmes.
• The Ministry regularly undertakes rigorous and effective monitoring and evaluation tasks.
• It undertakes bottom-up and Ministry-wide Programme Audits – using 14 metrics – every three years to gauge scope and breadth of content; relevance of its programmes to targeted segments; objectivity, reliability and credibility of its media products; and, the artistic and linguistic packaging of all its audio, video and printed materials.
• The Ministry also undertakes – every ten years or so – a comprehensive nation-wide Audience Audit to gauge public sentiment and feedback on its programmes from its audiences.
• The verdict from all these tools is that our TV and Radio Programmes have dominant market share within a deregulated TV and Radio ecosystem. The latest (2017) Audience Audit established that 91% of TV households have access to satellite dishes and can watch around 600 global and regional TV Channels. But this vast access has not made any indent into our huge and dominant market share.
• The Ministry has also cultivated excellent ties with many stakeholders. Our entertainment and Children’s TV programmes are outsourced from private producers on the basis of commercial contracts.  We have joint production arrangements with key Ministries and other stakeholders on development agendas.
• I have gone into all these details to demonstrate that the Ministry is quite satisfied on its overall approach of Strategic Communication in as far its domestic/Diaspora Audiences are concerned.

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• The huge challenge: the biggest problem that the Ministry continues to face; its Achilles Heel as I intimated earlier, remains the negative, ugly, narrative that has been out there for almost two decades now.
• In literal and crude terms, we are outnumbered – if not fully eclipsed – by negative media campaigns with huge resources and networks.  These networks have organic connections with certain powers that harbour adversarial political agendas against Eritrea.
• In view of these facts, the challenge is not one of Narrative Shaping; it is a challenge of Narrative Rectification; a challenge of debunking the relentless defamation and demonization campaigns.
• The campaign has its ebbs and flows. It is particularly toxic during certain months of the year of historical significance to Eritrea. These are: i) September, that coincides with the beginning of the Armed Struggle for Liberation; ii) May, our Independence Anniversaries; and, iii) June, the month when we commemorate our Martyrs.
• The predictable and repetitive patterns of Eritrea-bashing & defamation, has impelled some of us active in Social Media to designate these periods as Eri-Influenza Months.
• The unremitting campaign has deleterious impacts on the image of the country; and more importantly, in investment, tourism and other developmental aspirations and objectives of the country.
• In the event, cooperation with our development partners in the UN system is both timely and highly imperative.
• As you are familiar with all the facets of this campaign, I will not waste your time by going into unnecessary details. I will limit my remarks to skeletal focus on three issues; i) Substance and Content of the Manufactured Narrative; ii) Key institutional proponents and vehicles of this Narrative; and iii) Counter measures we have taken to mitigate its negative impacts.
• On the First Dimension; the pejorative labels that define Eritrea are many.
• Eritrea is dubbed as the North Korea of Africa (first coined by President Obama in 2009 when he stated that Washington was partnering with relevant human rights organizations to help children and women flee from Eritrea and North Korea). The real aim was to conceal and justify the policy of “strategic depopulation” that his Administration was embarking on at the time to wean off young members of the National Service to degrade Eritrea’s defensive capabilities and developmental agendas.
• It has been wrongly labeled as a country of Religious Concern liable for sanctions: this refers to Eritrea’s legitimate regulatory measures that do not allow external funding of new religious groups;
• Eritrea is routinely accused of Exhortation of Diaspora by compelling them to pay tax: this distorts the 2% Rehabilitation and Recovery tax enacted in 1994 to encourage Diaspora participation in the development of the country. This tool has its roots in the liberation struggle where members of mass associations were paying, out of their volition, up to 20% of their income.
• And these days, preposterous accusations alluding to perpetration of transnational crime is being floated by some quarters! …The list is long.

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Let me address now the 2^nd Pillar – the Institutional Proponents

• Unfortunately, the worst offenders in this category include some of the politicized agencies in the UN system.
• Most of the accusations above – and many more – were recycled in the UNHCR’s Eligibility Guidelines issued in 2009 and 2011 respectively.  The GOE had no clue about the report and was kept in the dark for five years.
• Geneva-based UNHRC’s annual reports are other tools employed by mass media to perpetuate the Manufactured Narrative on Eritrea. The Resolution against Eritrea was adopted in 2012, sponsored by Nigeria – which has no diplomatic presence in Eritrea; Djibouti, which was in conflict on a putative border dispute agenda; and Somalia arm-twisted by the US to do so.  This was a US/European agenda cloaked in an African mantle.  Special Rapporteurs compiled their reports from Ethiopian and Djiboutian sources and so-called opposition elements in the Diaspora.  Commission of Inquiry received over 200,000 petitions from Eritreans abroad but ignored all the testimonies to issue a report of 250 or so, so-called dissidents.
• In all these cases, the UN agencies in the country were not properly consulted; at least most of the times.
• US Annual Human Rights Reports; CIA periodic reports etc., remain the other authoritative sources and reference frames for the media’s Manufactured narrative.
• Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Reports complete the institutional backbone of these campaigns.
• Certain European governments also create and fund, from time to time, some outwardly prestigious “Commissions” to further corroborate the Manufactured Narrative.
• The defamatory narrative on Eritrea, often cloaked in demeaning and pejorative labels, is widely recycled by pliant and complicit mainstream media outlets as well as the closed loop of hired lobbyists and Intel Operatives masquerading as experts and pundits on the Horn of Africa region – that we aptly call እፍሊ ሓንጨመንጪ.
• In a nutshell, this is the subtle and toxic ecosystem behind the manufactured negative narrative on Eritrea that continues to be recycled with fervent pitch and unremitting frequency.

All these instances illustrate the complexity of the challenges and the urgency of intensifying the countermeasures that I mentioned earlier to set the record straight; to accomplish the task of Narrative Rectification.  In this respect and without going into greater details, let me underline that the Ministry of Information is working with other stakeholders and Diaspora communities to debunk the fabricated narrative maintained for over two decades now with the singular aim of tarnishing Eritrea’s image and demonizing its Government; essentially to advance sinister geopolitical and other narrow external and regional agendas.