Our Story
Beginnings
UkaniManje co-founders Ephraim Mutalange and Katy Weinberg met in 2006 at the outset of Katy’s work with the US Peace Corps in Zambia and before Ephraim’s rise to fame as one of the most popular and influential gospel singers in southern Africa. Their collaboration began when Katy recruited Ephraim to use his rapidly growing stardom to help open an HIV Youth Center in the village where she was living. His presence drew more than a thousand people from the surrounding rural villages, many of whom were tested for HIV on the spot. It was here that the seed of the idea — to use popular musicians to make public health messaging approachable for youth — took root.
Over the following decade, on return visits to the village, Katy noticed her young neighbors engaging in behavior that put them at risk of becoming HIV positive. Youth in the village, and as she later confirmed, across Zambia, were struggling to access important information about HIV. Efforts to reach youth with HIV prevention messages have been met with limited success, and often miss vulnerable out-of-school youth. Many of the conversations about HIV have stagnated and youth are disproportionately still at risk.
In 2017, Ephraim and Katy were both positioned to address this. Katy had done a deep dive into the study of health behavior change and “Super Peer” theory at Harvard’s T.H. Chan’s School of Public Health, and Ephraim was now a top gospel artist and perfectly positioned to be a Zambian “Super Peer.” They joined with the goal of creating UkaniManje: a structured and disciplined process using music as a catalyst for youth behavior change related to HIV in Zambia.
Pilot Song
WATCH “Worth More”
Worth More
Katy partnered with Emmanuel Banda (at the time, a University of Zambia MPH candidate who now works for the United Nations Development Program) and secured IRB approval from Boston Children’s Hospital and a letter of support from the Zambia National HIV/AIDS Council to conduct focus groups with more than 100 Zambian youth in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas.
Drawing on information from these youth groups, and with mentorship from public and behavioral health specialists from the Center for Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital, the Zambian Ministry of Health, and the Zambia Medical Association (ZMA), the team created a song embedded with a precise public health message to address the pressures on youth to have transactional sex in exchange for "material things." Ephraim, in collaboration with two other Zambian artists, Chileshe Bwalya and Magg 44, wrote and performed the song and accompanying pilot video, “Worth More.”
“I understand that these luxuries and expensive stuff are nothing compared to someone’s life. Girls need to keep their bodies safe. HIV/AIDS is real.”
To assess impact, the team completed a follow-up survey geographically linked to the earlier focus groups. The result: 100% of respondents were able to correctly articulate the video’s message “HIV is real. You are worth more than material things.”
The team was ready to design and implement a national HIV awareness campaign. Ephraim recruited other popular singers to join the effort. Eventually, the group grew to 10 artists representing diverse music styles with a fan base of more than a million people extending across the entire country. All volunteered their time and considerable effort.
First Peer Influencer Workshop
WATCH First Peer Influencer Workshop
In 2019, following the success of "Worth More," the team registered as a Zambian NGO with a goal of becoming a lead source of relevant health information by engaging musicians to inspire healthy behaviors, with a focus on HIV. To start this process, the artists were invited to join public health experts for a “Peer Influencer Workshop.” This two-day workshop was designed to give the artists a grounding in public health messaging theory as well as up-to-date information on HIV and AIDS.
During and after the workshop, the artists were given the time, space, and resources to create and produce a series of songs to support the UkaniManje HIV-focused campaign. Additionally, the artists wrote and recorded a flagship group song, also titled “UkaniManje” which is embedded with the public health messaging techniques at the core of the UkaniManje campaign.
With the release of the song, the team became established as a trusted and recognizable brand that will serve as a base UkaniManje's future work. Public health officials across Zambia widely praised the song and the group behind it. In November 2019, the UkaniManje team was ready to launch in earnest, not as a one-off, but as a brand and an NGO and a planned campaign— with a cohort of artists, a bank of songs and a mission —
To educate and engage Zambia’s youth by using music to provide accurate, relatable, and easily accessible information on HIV.
UkaniManje Video
Upon release in 2019, the video quickly amassed more more than 700,000 views across social media.
The team is presented with the award for “Best Contribution to Public Health by an Artist/Artists” at the 2019 Zambian Medical Association awards ceremony.