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This video discussing Anna Radio, features Dr. I. Arul Aram, Professor and Head, Dept. of Media Sciences, and Dr. R. Lavanya, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Media Sciences, at Anna University, Chennai, India.

Anna Community Radio 

Anna Community Radio was launched on 1 February 2004, following the freeing up of the Indian airwaves, becoming the country’s first community radio station. 

The station focuses on serving poor communities, particularly women, who live around the campus in low-income localities. The station was initially designed as a campus radio station serving Anna University, but soon changed direction to include communication for development under the leadership of R. Sreedher. 

The station was initially based on AIR’s (All India Radio) local radio experiments and on narrowcasting audio initiatives run by civil society organisations such as Voices and Drishti Media. However, the establishment of Anna Community Radio finally provided a more consistent and powerful advocate for its audience of underrepresented listeners. 

Unlike more populist stations broadcasting in the area, Anna Community Radio doesn’t broadcasting film-based songs, but takes the time to produce and broadcast original folk songs. 

Over the years, Anna Community Radio has grown from strength to strength, serving as both a trusted media outlet, and as a training facility for students and community members to gain valuable broadcasting experience. Alongside its radio transmissions, the station’s content is simultaneously delivered through the internet as well. Like many community stations, Anna Community Radio undertakes a range of offline activities too, and frequently conducts training workshops for members of its community and the wider radio fraternity. The station has adopted eight communities in its coverage zone, particularly poor households, and slum clearance tenements, with the primary target group being poor women in those communities. 

Disaster Relief

During the 2004 tsunami, Anna Community Radio provided relief and rehabilitation activities as well as broadcasting relevant disaster relief content. The station also held a pioneering international conference on community radio supported by the Commonwealth of Learning and the UNESCO in December 2004. The government of India was very appreciative of the station’s efforts and replicated the experiment in remote places in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Anna Community Radio also served the community during the 2015 floods that devastated Chennai. Then, during the 2020–2021 Covid-19 lockdown period, when educational institutions were shut, Anna Community Radio broadcast educational content, particularly spoken English, so children isolated at home could benefit and feel a sense of connection. 

Recognition 

In 2022 the station was recognised by the Indian government as one of the leading examples of the community radio movement. Anna Community Radio has also received several national awards for best community radio practices. At the National Community Radio Awards function, held in New Delhi on the 16th of March 2015, Jamila, the first radio jockey from the community, was a special invitee. When the then Information and Broadcasting Minister asked her what difference community radio made to the lives of its listeners, she replied: ‘Before I joined as a volunteer in the community radio, I used to be ill-treated by my drunken husband who often disrupted the children’s education too. Now I am an empowered woman, and come what may, I shall not allow any force to disrupt the education of my children and other children in my community.’ The station continues to this day – providing a valuable service to both the student population and surrounding areas.

Visit the station on Facebook

Liberia FlagDouglas Farngalo, a graduate student from Birmingham City University and a previous contributor to RD4 , talks about the use of radio in his homeland of Liberia.

Topics of discussion include; Douglas’s personal story as a radio journalist/presenter/producer, along with his thoughts on the democratic ability of radio, religious stations in Liberia, how radio manages to reach remote regions of Africa – and how radio promotes the popularity UK’s Premiere Football League in Africa.

Last year R4D received an email from Godspower Oboido, who’d visited the website and wanted to get in touch regarding an exciting new initiative he had started in Nigeria. Godspower is, in his own words, “on a mission to get rural communities across Africa listening to radio” – and he founded the “Listen Africa” project “to radically encourage radio for change”. Luckily Godspower was visiting the UK long enough for a meeting at Birmingham City University, where the clip below was recorded.

 

In the video he discusses the plans of “Listen Africa” to create various educational radio programmes which reflect the curriculum of the Nigerian Ministry of Education. In 2013, Listen Africa intends to set up listeners clubs in Nigeria, Malawi and Ethiopia  – “giving listeners the opportunity to voice their opinions in the broadcasting of issues that has a direct impact on them”.

 

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R4D returns to Bush Radio – believed to be Africa’s oldest community radio station project – which is based in Cape Town, South Africa on 89.5 MHz FM. This audio slideshow follows up on comments made in an earlier post regarding “Hate Radio”; 20th of Nov. 2010.

The idea of Bush Radio started in the 1980’s when community activists and alternative media producers began to explore ways of using grassroots media for social change – and as an alternative voice to the media available under apartheid.

For more information visit; www.bushradio.co.za

Or check out this excellent link…

In this clip – the head of news at Radio Nigeria, based at the Lagos Head Office, discusses their service – the station’s history, and introduces you to the News Dept.

Radio Nigeria is a member of the FRCN’s mediumwave service, and has 25 stations located throughout the country. Together with Voice of Nigeria, it’s one of the largest radio networks in Africa.

This is an interview with Papa Mbongo, publicity specialist at the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Recorded: Auckland Park, Johannesburg,

July, 2010.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the state-owned broadcaster in South Africa and provides 18 radio stations (AM/FM) as well as 3 television broadcasts to the general public.

The SABC was established by an Act of Parliament in 1936 taking over from the African Broadcasting Company which had been responsible for some of the first radio broadcasts in South Africa in the 1920s. The SABC established services in what were then the country’s official languages, English and Afrikaans, with ethnic languages such as Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho and Tswana following later.


Well, R4D got a bit of a shock to see the Youtube clip about Joshua Arap Sang (Sept. 26 post) receiving over 8,000 views overnight.

No doubt in response to the International Criminal Court allegations that Sang, along with William Samoei Ruto and Henry Kiprono Kosgey, bears;

“Criminal responsibility under Article 25 of the Rome Statute for murder, torture, deportation or forcible transfer, and persecution based on political affiliation as crimes against humanity.”

It’s hard to reconcile the guy in the video with the crimes he’s supposed to have committed. My first reaction was – where is the evidence? As Julius Lamaon, the CEO of Kass said (Nov. 2 post) where is the “scientific data”?

I’m not for a second discounting the seriousness of the allegations – “hate radio” is of course a very dangerous thing – and it will be good to have the issue given public discussion via the impending Hague trial. It will be very interesting to see what eventuates. Click “View Full Article” below to see sections taken from the official charges relating to Sang;

(For the full article visit; Mashada)

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The University of Dar Es Salaam is the oldest and biggest public university in Tanzania. One of its schools is the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) which offers Bachelor degree programs in Journalism and Mass Communication. In this audio slideshow Maria Alphonce, a student at the school, discusses the school’s community radio station “Mlimani Radio, 106.5 FM – which provides a valuable “hands-on” experience for media students to practice what they’ve learnt in the classroom.

For more info visit their website here…


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In this entry, Brenda Leonard, Managing Director of Bush Radio in Cape Town, talks about “Hate Radio”, the importance of community radio, and how South Africa uses strict regulations to try an curb offensive broadcasting. This posting follows on from an earlier blog about “Hate Radio” (Nov. 2nd) featuring Julius Lamaon, CEO KASS FM Kenya.

Bush Radio is Africa’s oldest community radio station project based in Cape Town, South Africa. It broadcasts on 89.5 MHz FM. For more information visit them online, here… (An audio slideshow about Bush Radio will be posted here shortly. )

This post and slideshow is a follow-up to an earlier article about the partnership between Birmingham City University and the Press Union of Liberia.

Peter Quaqua, the President of the Press Union, visited the University and met with myself and Liberian radio student Douglas Farngalo – and we had the chance to talk about the state of radio in Liberia and the media in general…

Douglas also discussed a scheme to send the University’s decommissioned portable audio recorders – along with new microphones / cables / batteries / training manuals etc. – to the Press Union in Liberia so they could be distributed to Community Radio Stations.

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