It’s not often that you see much about a remote rural, area in Sub-Saharan Africa in the mainstream media.  But an innovative web project hosted by the Guardian about an area in eastern Uganda called Katine is the exception that proves the rule. Editor Elizabeth Ford agreed to answer some questions for Context Africa. Katine is the online chronicle of the ups and downs of village life, from specials about secondary school to irrigation schemes, Katine is your one-stop-shop for understanding one particular kind of rural life.

The point of this series is to highlight projects that go above and beyond daily news to tell a story of a place in its context. I also hope create an ongoing dialogue about what it means to tell contextual stories in Africa. There’s a lot of daily news out there that is factually incorrect, slanted, or stereotyped. But, there are also a lot of projects committed to telling a different kind of story.

See Context Africa posts:

• Candace Feit captures Senegalese wrestlers in monochrome
• Mary Wiltenburg documents a year in the life of a refugee
• Sam Reinders pictures the complications of “poverty tourism”
• Paul Sika’s technicolor dreamscape
• Andrew Rice on memory, murder and Idi Amin
• Tim Hetherington on the culmination of ten years of taking pictures in Liberia
• Rob Crilly on how to write about a place as contentious as Darfur
• Nicholai Lidow on post-conflict surfing
• Jina Moore’s Q and A about forgiveness in Rwanda

Can you tell me a little bit about how the Katine project got started and why this particular village was chosen?

Katine is actually a sub-county in north-east Uganda, comprising six parishes with 66 villages, home to around 25,000 people (within the Katine sub-county is Katine parish and Katine village!). The project stretches across the whole of the sub-county.

The Katine project began in October 2007 by the Guardian and Observer in partnership with the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref), Farm-Africa and Barclays. Amref is implementing the three-year development project on the ground  in Katine, with technical support on livelihoods from Farm-Africa, and it’s being funded by reader donations and Barclays.

Katine was selected by Amref as one of the poorest regions in Uganda. It is considered an opposition area politically and has been largely neglected by central government (prosperity in Uganda seems to be centred around the south, central and western regions). Katine has also experienced civil war, incursions from the Lord’s Resistance Army (fighting in the north) and cattle raids over the past 20 years.

The reason for the project is really to highlight how development works (the successes and the failures – it’s more than giving £5 for a malaria net). The work being undertaken on the ground is being followed on the Guardian’s dedicated Katine website.

The idea was sown a few years before the project began when editors at the Guardian began to discuss how we could show aid and development in a new way. New technology meant we could harness the power of the internet to publish regular updates and tell stories using videos and galleries.

We also wanted to ensure we heard more from the beneficiaries of the project – the villagers. So often aid is discussed in terms of victims and helpers and we get a one dimensional view of people’s lives. We wanted to give villagers the opportunity to share stories about their lives and to get their opinions on the project. We haven’t always been able to do this successfully, but this aspect of the project has really taken off over the last four months, with villagers using video to share their life stories and beginning to post comments on the Katine Chronicles blog and on articles.

We have two award-winning Ugandan journalists who work on the Katine project. One, Richard M Kavuma, spends  two weeks a month in thesub-county, and Joseph Malinga, who is based there full-time.

How does the team in Katine maintain such a high rate of content turn around with the challenges of electricity and internet in a rural area?

It can be challenging. The Amref office in Katine has a generator, which provides power, although outages are not uncommon. Attached to this office is a community media resource room for villagers to use. This is equippednwith five computers, so they can browse the Katine site and the internet inngeneral, and get some IT training.

Mobile phones are important, so when power goes down, information can benrelayed this way. There are also internet “cafes” in the nearest town to Katine, Soroti, which is around 22km away. Our reporters have been known to use these to file stories and pictures to us.

How does focusing long term on one village create a bettern understanding of rural life for media consumers who may have never traveled to a village?

I think focusing on one sub-county allows people to get to know the people, the local infrastructures, the cultural sensitivities etc that exist, which should give a greater understanding of the impact the work is or can have.

What kind of reaction has the Katine site on the Guardian platform received? Do you share that reaction with the people in Katine?

The reaction from readers has been mixed – lots of positive comments but also questions about why the Guardian has got involved in development. You only need to read some discussions on the blog to see this. I think, though, a lot of people who do comment on the blog are engaged with then project – perhaps questioning or praising the way Amref is working there and how the Guardian is reporting. We have shared with people in Katine what sort of impact the project is having, and some people do look at the website and read comments.

What are some of your favorite pieces on the Katine site?

One of my favourites is our first online chat between a primary school in Katine and one in London – the questions were great (they talked about football, the taste of termites, whether their teachers were nice, as well as the more serious issues of homelessness and poverty), and the children were thrilled when they received replies from a country so far away that they had only ever been told about. I think this sort of interaction addressed a few stereotypes that existing on both sides and highlighted the similarities that exist between children in London and Katine, rather than just focusing on differences.