IPNews-Monrovia:President George M. Weah has granted UNESCO permission to use his recently released awareness song against Coronavirus. The song, “Let’s Stand Togther to Fight Corona”, will be a part of the second phase of Unesco’s #DontGoViral campaign, which they say is aimed at informing and sensitizing communities across Africa about the dangers of the disease.

The organizers say the music will be subtitled in French and Arabic, and is expected to be featured on various platforms during the campaign – including the BBC and France 24. The Liberian leader was also asked to be the public ambassador of the campaign in order to mobilize innovators and artists across Africa, similar to what was done by Ugandan opposition politician and activist, Bobi Wine, who launched the first phase of the #DontGoViral campaign.

In a letter to the Liberian government, through its delegation to UNESCO¸ the UN body said “given President Weah’s leadership in mobilizing communities to be part of the solution to mitigate COVID-19”, he was being invited to help mobilize participants to produce messages of solidarity underlining why “we must co-create our response and recovery to COVID-19”.

This is all intended to combat the so-called infodemic – the spread of misinformation and disinformation – which has accompanied the pandemic, according to the organizers. The campaign, they say, will address the need to ensure access to “culturally relevant and openly licensed information in local African languages”.

In a related development, Radio Deutsche Welle has also been granted the nonexclusive right to broadcast the President’s anti-coronavirus song on their network. Information Minister Eugene Nagbe gave the authorization following a solicitation by the German media group.

The song, which has already
grown popular in Liberia and other parts of the continent, is part of a larger drive to convey easy-to-understand messages about how the virus is spread.