Representatives of fourteen stations attended the Festival, which focused on the consequences, opportunities and prospects of galloping technological developments in the acquisition and transmission of information.
Will the computer and digital mice eat away at the foundations of community radio, cutting off its access to the exchange of information, which has become so natural for the rest of the world? Or should Africans just seize the border-crossing opportunities ICT offers to them? Thus the question highlighted at the AMARC Africa Community Radio Festival.
Missing the boat
In her address Tina James, co-ordinator of the Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) project emphasized the risk that Africa misses the boat in the ICT revolution.
In the 1960s post-colonial Africa was burdened with Western-dictated communication structures. Something similar seems to evolve today, as Africa runs the risk of falling behind owing to the deepening gulf between rich and poor. The rural poor in particular have no share in the world-wide dialogue through the Internet at a time when, in the view of Tina James, it is all-important that the poor too make their voices heard in that dialogue.
Lightning
Redembta Mivololo couldn’t have been in agreement more. She told those present at the Festival how she, as Managing Director of the Kenyan Mangelete community radio station, has to travel some 240 Kilometres between her office and a cybercafé in Nairobi every time she wants to pick up, on payment of some 1,000 Kenyan shilling, the e-mail addressed to her radio station.
Thando Nxumalo, technical manager of Teemenang community radio station (Kimberley, South Africa), explained that his station’s transmitting equipment is struck by lightning so often, that the station is often off the air for several days. Its electric bills are far beyond its means.
"We have no choice but to keep using analogue studio equipment," replied Natasha Tibinyanga (Namibia) when Noma Rangana of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa asked her somewhat sternly why her Windhoek-based Katutura community radio station had not yet switched over to digital technology. "In our analogue studio there are buckets everywhere as we lack the money even to have our leaky studio roof repaired."
Against the odds
Community radio in Africa remains a story of broadcasting against the financial odds. However inexpensive radio may be as a medium, most community radio stations are hardly able, if not unable, to support themselves, said Lumko Mtimde, a consultant working for the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA).
"Yet community radio is vital to the digital future of Africa," said René Roemersma, who together with Wiebe de Wolf on behalf of NiZA showed participants around in the new opportunities presented by computers, satellites and cyberspace. Roemersma added: "At the same time it is evident that community radio stations are absolutely unable to make the great leap forward all by themselves."
This is where CATIA comes in. Its ambition is to help community radio stations and possibly also public broadcasters to connect to the Internet, which will enable them to communicate with other radio stations.
The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC – Association Mondiale des Radiodiffuseurs Communautaires) initiated CATIA, with Oneworld Radio and PANOS.
"It will take a lot of meetings the coming year to get CATIA moving indeed," said Wiebe de Wolf. "It’s just a matter of getting started," said René Roemersma. "That’s exactly what we have been doing during the Festival."
| AMARC, an international non-profit organisation initiated in 1983 as an informal ‘movement’, was formally established in 1988. Its membership has meanwhile risen to over 3,000, scattered over five continents. The international secretariat is based in Canada. AMARC Africa is based in Johannesburg. |
For more information: http://www.africa.amarc.org Peter van den Akker is a Johannesburg-based free-lance journalist. akker@icon.co.za
