How It All Fits Together: USAID Strategic Communications in Kenya

Over the last two and a half years, experts at USAID/Kenya and East Africa (KEA) have been implementing an innovative five-year communications strategy, which seeks to catalyze stronger two-way engagement with key target audiences using tools like advocacy, social and behavior change, and innovative multimedia campaigns. During this time, the Communications Team, composed of staff from the mission’s Development Outreach and Communications (DOC) office and the USAID Communication for Development (C4D) Project, built in extensive performance management and metrics tracking, yielding valuable data to learn from and inform future activities.

In spring 2023, the communications strategy, along with the mission’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS), reached its midpoint. The Communications Team took this opportunity to introduce an innovative CLA approach: an interactive, experiential multimedia Open House showcasing USAID’s communications efforts from the inception of the strategy. The Open House incorporated and showcased external collaboration with new and non-traditional partners and U.S. Government agencies and strengthened relationships and networks. By bringing together a wide range of internal and interagency stakeholders to experience the exhibit, the Communications Team helped staff understand and explore the utility of communications as a tool to help achieve CDCS targets across the mission’s technical areas.

The Open House featured six interactive exhibits of individual campaigns, complete with multimedia and visual components and staff members as guides to talk participants through the campaign’s specifics, including impacts backed by metrics. The visual timeline of results and learning generated authentic discussions about the substantive role of communications in changing perceptions and behavior. In addition to being lauded as a resounding success, the event was punctuated by “aha moments” among participants and set the stage for more targeted conversations around communications as a tool to facilitate development and opportunities to be more intentional about its integration into project design.