INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT TO DEVELOP COMESA SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

INTRODUCTION

 

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA is a regional economic body comprising 21 Member Countries. COMESA’s current strategy can be summed up in the phrase “economic prosperity through regional integration”. With a population of over 540 million and global trade in goods worth more than US$ 235 billion, COMESA forms a major marketplace for both internal and external trading.

  1. BACKGROUND

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa seeks to develop and maintain its reputation as the Regional Economic Community with the greatest reach and impact in the Africa Continent. In doing so, COMESA is constantly adapting to an ever-changing global environment and recognizing the strategic function communications play in meeting its objectives. To advance towards excellence, COMESA is constantly engaged with stakeholders, within Member States and without using both traditional and contemporary methods. The goal is to create a fully integrated and internationally competitive and unified region in which goods, services, capital and persons move freely.

  • In the wake of enhanced internet penetration and ownership of electronic communication devices such as mobile phones, social media has increasingly become a versatile outreach tool. Social media refers to applications that are designed to allow people to develop and share content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time. They are primarily Internet-based and widely applied for sharing opinions insights, experiences, and perspectives and information. They are based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram among others. As an organization, it is important to have a consistent voice on the social media while avoiding posting potentially harmful statements or information.
  • It is acknowledged that most employees in an organization are likely to use one or more social platforms. With guiding principles and ground rules, the employees can contribute towards wider outreach of the organization communication by sharing such information with their networks. On the other hand, it is acknowledged that what they post on their personal accounts can be a potential risk for the organization such as sharing of sensitive information. And, more importantly, using social media at work can affect productivity and focus. Hence guidelines on what employees can post and limitations on social media use inside the workplace are necessary.
  • In its communication and outreach strategy, COMESA undertakes to utilize these online tools to promote regional integration by providing updates on the progress of implementation of programmes, engaging with its stakeholders and much more. In essence, COMESA seeks to be ‘digital by default’ in all its communications.
  • In this respect, COMESA intends to develop a Social Media Policy that stipulates proper guidelines to support its optimization of Social Media tools by staff when participating personally, as well as when acting on behalf of the organization. The Social Media Policy will provide guidelines that ensure the principles of integrity, professionalism, privacy and impartiality are applied.
  • Drawing from this goal, COMESA intends to engage a consultant to develop a Social media Policy on the use and operation of social media applications.
  1. Objective of the Policy

The objectives of Social Media Policy are to guide employee use of social media, which should be broadly understood for purposes of this policy to include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, electronic newsletters, podcasts, online forums, social networking sites, and other sites and services that permit users to share information with others in a contemporaneous manner.

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