TLDR: DMI is looking for $1,269,000 to scale our child survival projects nationally in Uganda ($765,000) and Mozambique ($504,000), to save over 4,500 under-five lives annually.

DMI Overview

Hi everyone, I’m Alex. I’m a Project Development Officer writing on behalf of Development Media International (DMI). This marginal funding week, DMI is looking to close the funding gap for our national-scale, cost-effective child survival campaigns in Uganda and Mozambique.

DMI runs large-scale mass media campaigns to create informative and engaging programming that focuses on shifting health behaviours to reduce maternal and childhood mortality. DMI develops and delivers live-saving campaigns at scale, reaching over 70 million people in the last quarter. Our messages primarily focus on prevention and treatment-seeking for the three most common preventable causes of death of children under the age of five: malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea. Treatments for these diseases are readily available, effective and usually free at point of need, so children who are taken for prompt treatment have a high chance of survival. We measure our impact using modelled lives saved of children under the age of five.

DMI has conducted two large-scale randomised control trials that have provided gold-standard evidence for our campaigns’ effectiveness (see child survival RCT results here and cost-effectiveness analysis here, published in the BMJ).

Across DMI’s 4 active child survival projects in FY24/25, our cost per person reached was $0.06 ($3.4M budget ÷ 56.6M daily listeners). The average cost per under-five life saved across those same projects was $675/life saved, using the Lives Saved Tool (LiST) for modelling estimates ($3.4M budget ÷ 5,000 U5 lives saved).

Modelling Impact to Inform Investments 

We recently updated the modelling that informs the design of child survival projects, which are funded through unrestricted funding and individual donations. This is the third exercise of its kind, following similar iterations in 2021 and 2023. As a first step, we conducted an initial triage of all African countries against a set of four criteria:

1.         Security assessment: DMI will not begin operations in active conflict zones (e.g. Sudan). There are also some countries where the political environment is a barrier to operating (e.g. DRC).

2.         Economic assessment: More economically developed countries (e.g. Morocco, South Africa) were disregarded as there is greater need elsewhere.

3.         Geography/population: Populations under 3 million (e.g. Cabo Verde, eSwatini) were omitted as they were considered too small to be cost-effective at national scale.

4.         Media landscape: We considered several factors here, including radio listenership, TV penetration, and airtime costs. Some countries (e.g. Kenya) are also too expensive, and others (e.g. Nigeria) have many other organisations working in the same field, so were discounted.

Following this triage, we costed national child survival campaigns and conducted modelling using LiST to determine the potential lifesaving impact of a DMI campaign in the shortlisted countries. Based on this modelling, DMI has committed its available unrestricted funds to scaling up child survival campaigns in seven countries, including five national scale campaigns in Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar, Zambia, and Malawi, and two subnational campaigns in Uganda and Mozambique.

DMI’s Funding Gap for 2026

Our aim for marginal funding week is to secure funding to scale-up our child survival campaigns nationally in Uganda and Mozambique in 2026, to maximise impact and opportunities for cost-sharing.

Our priority is scaling nationally in Uganda, followed by Mozambique, due to relative cost-effectiveness differences relating to child health indicators and in-country costs. However, in both cases, local staffing costs, monitoring and evaluation, research and production costs have already been covered by the unrestricted allocations for the subnational campaigns. Therefore, marginal funding increases would be directly funding translation into additional languages and airtime on additional radio stations across all regions, maximising cost-effectiveness and economies of scale.

Marginal Funding Increases:

 In order to achieve this, we need an additional:

• $765,000 to scale up nationally in Uganda in 2026, reaching an additional 22.2 million people via radio.
  • At national scale, this campaign will reach a total of 28 million listeners and save at least 2,500* under-five lives annually.
• $504,000 to scale up nationally in Mozambique in 2026, reaching an additional 5.7 million people via radio.
  • At national scale, this campaign will reach a total of 7.7 million listeners and save approximately 2,000 under-five lives annually.

 *Note that we have maintained a very conservative estimate of this modelling due to lack of recent DHS data in Uganda. Using the most recent DHS data available from 2016, modelling suggests 3,500 lives would be saved in one year of national programming. However, due to changes in the media landscape and improvements in health indicators since the survey was done, we assume a more modest approximation of at least 2,500 lives saved.

To read more about our work and to help us achieve this funding goal, we invite you to visit our website or donate here.