Community Radio: A Voice for the Poor

Better local communications can boost development, democracy

By Itai Madamombe
Their transmitters may reach only a few miles, but community radio stations are enabling
isolated communities across Africa to voice their own concerns. On air, ordinary citizens
discuss issues that are central to them, such as gender relations and combatting HIV/AIDS.
They share farming tips and income generation ideas and explore ways to improve
education.
Development work at times can be like sleepwalking in fog, Ms. Denise Gray-Felder,
president of the Communication for Social Change Consortium, told Africa Renewal. You
know youre not where you are supposed to be, and you can sense motion but it is
unclear exactly where youre headed. A frequently missing guidepost in development work
is local voice. Community radios provide profound new opportunities for more inclusive
sustainable development. Her organization is an international nonprofit group that helps
poor and marginalized communities use
communications to improve their lives.

Through community radio stations, listeners in

remote rural areas can hear news, practical
information and the views of their neighbours.
Photo: AFP / Getty Images / Amr Nabil

Millions in Africa remain voiceless, despite a

multitude of new information outlets. Most
media remain largely state controlled. But the
tide of democracy sweeping the continent has
seen governments loosening their grip on the
airwaves. In 1985, notes the World Association
of Community Broadcasters (AMARC, by its
French initials), there were fewer than 10
independent radio stations on the entire
continent. Today, South Africa alone has more
than 150 community stations, and other
countries are catching up.
Information infrastructure
The idea of accelerating development by using both older media such as radio and newer
information and communication technologies has gained momentum in Africa over the past
decade. The continents development blueprint, the New Partnership for Africas

Development (NEPAD), places information technologies high among its priorities.

Governments agree that good Internet, telecommunications and broadcasting services can
foster regional trade and improve integration into the global economy. The ability of
ordinary people to communicate with each other also helps promote democracy and good
governance.
The cost of setting up communications infrastructure is steep, however, especially in rural
areas, where distances are vast and population densities are low. Most areas outside the
major towns do not have the electricity necessary for operating land telephones or
computers. Radios, by contrast, are inexpensive and can run on batteries or solar power. As
a result, radio is by far the dominant mass medium in Africa. There is one radio receiver for
every five people (compared with one telephone for every 100 people).
The content of radio programmes is also cheap to create and cheap to consume, says Ms.
Grace Githaiga, executive director of EcoNews Africa. This is especially important in
countries with high illiteracy rates and where many rural people speak primarily local,
indigenous languages. Neither the creators nor the consumers of radio content need to be
able to read or write, due to the oral nature of the radio, Ms. Githaiga adds.
Despite radios advantages, cautions Ms. Sylvia Biraahwa Nakabuku of the Uganda Media
Womens Association, the medium has some limitations. After examining the role of radio in
promoting better farming methods, she concluded that people can learn only so much
without physical demonstration. Radio, therefore, is best used to complement rather than
substitute for agricultural extension workers.
The radio has changed our lives
According to AMARC, the broadcasters association, community media should have a social
agenda, and not be driven by purely commercial motivations. They should involve
community decision-making and participation. While the impact of local radio stations
varies, they often give isolated villages many of which are not reached by public
broadcasting a means of education, self-expression and communication, while also
promoting the communitys history, music and oral traditions.
The radio has changed our lives. It makes us feel part of Mali, says a listener in
Kolondieba, a cotton-growing community in that West African country. Before, we listened
to the radios of Cte dIvoire. Now we can keep up to date with what is happening here. We
get information on cotton farming. We can put announcements on the radio to tell our
relatives about important events. We can listen to our village music. The station, Radio
Benso, has served the community since 1999 as part of the Mali-South Rural Radio Revival
Project, an initiative that gave birth to four stations, each serving about a half a million
people within a 100 kilometre radius.
Mali has one of the strongest community radio networks in Africa. After the fall of the last
one-party regime in 1991 and the end to an outright state monopoly of the means of
communications, the information media blossomed. Today, Mali has more than 110 private
radio stations; 86 of them are community radios, mostly rurally based.

A private radio station in Senegal. Independent

radio outlets help give voice to ordinary people.
Photo: Panos / Jacob Silberberg

In Zambia, a community radio project funded

by the US Agency for International
Development (USAID) is helping local
communities adopt safer reproductive health
care practices. The initiative is reaching as
many as 600,000 people through a popular
radio programme called Kumuzi Kwathu (In
Our Village).
Traditional birth attendants are taking more
precautions because they have heard on the
radio that safe practices will prevent infections
during delivery, says Mrs. Jessie Tembo, a
member of a village group trained as
attendants. People are keen on learning best
practices from other villages that radio is
connecting us to there is no more rushing to
hospitals in the dead of night. We know how to
deliver a baby safely.
Individual empowerment
Positive change is also happening at a personal level. Radio projects bring opportunities for
community members to learn new skills, thus improving prospects for employment at
commercial stations. In southern Mali, local technicians, facilitators and producers, as well
as board members, took a training course run by a rural radio centre in Burkina Faso.
Participants learned to operate equipment, produce programmes and manage a station.
International organizations such as the Agence de la Francophonie and the Panos Institute
have also conducted community media workshops.
In Niger, Ms. Marie Ekaneys daily routine was similar to that of most mothers in the village
of Ingall. But working with a solar-powered radio station has boosted the confidence and
social standing of this mother of five. Each week now, Ms. Ekaney spends four days
interviewing local women on health and family matters and gets people to share information
on income-generating activities such as traditional mat weaving. The community now holds
her in high regard.
I wanted to help develop my village, Ms. Ekaney explained to UN Works, a website which
profiles stories of people who have benefited from the organizations efforts around the
globe. My sister and mother-in-law look after the children while I prepare my programmes
and go on air.
Funding handicap

According to AMARC, community media should not entail outsiders doing something for the
community, but community members doing something for themselves. This implies owning
and controlling the means of communication. But in Africa, few community radio stations
are yet self-sustaining. When donor funding for a programme dries up, it usually spells the
end of the project.
Exceptions do exist, especially in urban areas. The Soweto Community Radio in South Africa
was set up with funding from the Communication Assistance Foundation, a Dutch
organization that supports media diversity. After the two-year funding period, the station
had become self-sufficient through income generated from advertisements.
Across the continent, most community radios are funded primarily by external donor
countries, church organizations, international development agencies and some advertising.
Stations also rely on voluntary services, leaving them perpetually struggling to develop new
talent as staff members move on. AMARC President Steve Buckley notes that state subsidies
of community media are the norm in Europe and North America, but largely absent in
Africa.
While accepting external funding can be limiting, it does not always entail relinquishing the
all critical decision-making power to the funder. The Netherlands and the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization provided funding for southern Mali stations, but local people have
been involved at all stages, including the projects initial design. The villagers themselves
constructed the stations buildings, drawing on their own resources and labour. The stations
are managed by a board of directors and a committee elected by the community. The staff
is hired locally.
A scarcity of funding does mean, however, that small community radios generally operate
with the barest of equipment. Stations are also isolated by a shortage of transport and
telephones. Cell phones are helping somewhat, but are expensive. Access to the Internet is
still a dream for many in rural areas.
Despite such constraints, these stations are helping to shift the communications balance
from a distant voice controlled from the top, to one in which the voices of marginalized and
poor populations can at last be heard.

Adapted from: Madamombe, Itai (2005). Community radio: a voice for the poor. Africa Renewal. April
2005. 19-2, page 4. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol19no2/192_pg04.htm [Accessed
26 August 2007]