Media is a critical pillar in development. Over time, it has shifted from its traditional role of just being a platform through which information is passed to now being a critical stakeholder in development processes. For rural development, one medium that remains a force to be reckoned with is community radio (CR).
“CR signifies a two-way process, which entails the exchange of views from various sources and is the adaptation of media for use by communities. In an ideal world community radio allows members of a community to gain access to information, education and entertainment. In its purest sense, it is media in which the communities participate as planners, producers and performers and it is the means of expression of the community, rather than for the community,” said Mtimde. Community radio is all about participatory production and broadcast, with the people’s needs and aspirations being at the core of its programming content. Unlike commercial radio stations and televisions which are mainly driven by profit, CRs focus on empowering their audience by giving them voice express their untold challenges and work together in addressing those needs. This citizen journalism model of broadcast, sometimes referred to as participatory media, makes community radio relevant in development communication discourse.
Carrier of the unheard voices
Given the geographical distance of the rural regions, their voices are usually left out by the mainstream media on burning national issues. Travelling to the rural communities to sound the opinions and concerns of the people there can be costly for commercial radio stations, who are bent on cutting cost and making profit. In fact, since they are mostly owned by private individuals and the state, most of them have their economic or political agenda which dictates the editorial policy of their current affairs programmes. CRs present an alternative for rural people to control the narrative the way they want it without it being censored for political reasons. Producers and presenters, who usually work as volunteers with true sense of ownership, work with the community to design programmes, produce content and present it. In short, it’s the community speaking on air!
Anne and Niamh noted: “Community radio responds to an agenda that is unique and fundamentally different to that of either public service broadcasting or commercial radio. By emphasizing participation and representation, community media sets an alternative bar for media output and engagement.”
Bringing the classroom on air
Education is a crucial pillar in community radio broadcasting. CR reaffirms its centrality in rural development when Covid 19 struck in 2019. As schools close down and physical gatherings discouraged, community radios not only provided health guidelines to the audience but also hosted education lessons for primary, junior and secondary schools. In The Gambia, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, with funding from the World Bank, partnered with community radio stations to broadcast lessons. Students sat in the comfort of their homes taking lessons from their teachers on air. Agriculture is a familiar theme in community media. Farmers rely on weekly agriculture talk shows for new knowledge on best agronomic practices and vital information from the Ministry of Agriculture, NGOs and even reflections from their fellow farmers as means of shared learning from experience. With this, rural farmers are empowered with information necessary to enhance production and comply with quality standards.
Education, social and agriculture programmes on radio increased the number of student enrolment, addressed school dropout of young girls and improved agriculture. This has been corroborated by Dery and Kwode whose study noted that Farmers’ Time, a programme on Simli Community Radio in Ghana, improved the resilience of farmers by raising their awareness on new technologies for climate smart agriculture, thereby enhancing food self-sufficiency and quality of life.
It’s the community speaking, no barrier
The radio speaks the languages of the community. Since it’s owned and run by the community, CR uses local languages to communicate to the people. It’s not just speaking the language they understand, but also, those speaking on air are people they know, interact with and trust. This gives the radio a great sense of community ownership and credibility. At the heart of CR programming is phone-in segments where the listenership call the studio line on air and take part in the discussions – make a point, ask a question or just send greetings and wishes to family and friends during entertainment shows.
“Community radio also acts as hubs for civic involvement and social mobilization. They encourage conversations about crucial topics like community development, gender equality, environmental sustainability, and health. Listeners are invited to contribute, offer their opinions, and suggest solutions to common problems through interactive programs. A sense of ownership and shared responsibility is fostered by this active participation, which promotes the growth and cohesion of the community,” posited.
Community radios are crucial resources for rural development, to sum up. The roles of community radio in rural empowerment cannot be overstated. They promote democratisation of national and regional politics, decentralisation and access to public information and also serve as advocates and spokespersons for the communities they serve.
Why is community radio still popular?
Isn’t this answer obvious? But let’s make sense of it using a few theories. The Uses and Gratifications Theory, for example, explains how people intentionally choose which media content to consume based on their own wishes. Katz said, “U&G theory came into existence in 1944, and it is popularly used to find the reasons behind users’ choice of a certain type of media.” In the case of community radios, they become the people’s favourite frequency modulations because they satisfy their content needs. Unlike commercial media whose content usually marginalise the voices of the rural people – and mostly characterised by advertisements and inappropriate songs, CR’s content is by the community, for the community.
Furthermore, community radio thrives on the two-way model of communication. Listener phone-ins are prioritised and catered for in almost every programme, whether current affairs, social or entertainment shows. This breeds feedback and interaction between the radio and the audience. When they feel themselves in the broadcast, they take ownership and make it theirs. Besides, the boards which provide oversight function on CRs are members of the community themselves.
While radio and television media in urban settlements continue to face drastic reduction of its audience due to the emergence of social media sites, the need for community radio remains sacrosanct. Internet penetration in rural settlements is low, and even areas that are lucky enough to have access, they grapple with low internet speed and high cost of data. For community radio, the people’s radio sets are already tuned to frequency modulation of their community radios, all they need to do is press that ‘switch on’ button.
And so?
Moving forward, rural development is taking a twist. Development practitioners have now come to the realisation that no sustainable development can take place without involving the beneficiaries in the process, not just as bystanders and ends to the means. For Tucker, “Participation and information are two crucial aspects of development projects. A lack of participation on the part of the beneficiaries of a development project can break the project. Also, when possible, beneficiaries of a development project are not informed about the project, or are not informed about its benefits, the project may also fail. So, development projects must have a communications strategy.”
This has given rise to the concept of communication for development, breaking from the past where government and NGOs assume to know the problems and needs of the rural people too well that they do not need to consult and involve them. CR presents itself as an ideal conduit for this transformative journey. It is participatory, empowering and uses the language of the people. Development practitioners can now actively engage project stakeholders and beneficiaries through radio listener groups, talk shows and phone-in programmes. This way, CR drives C4D both as a media for gathering and dissemination of key project messages from and to – the audience and the government and NGOs – and also as platform where the audience can be engaged in the community needs identification, designing of solutions, planning and implementation of development initiatives aimed at addressing their needs.
The author works as communications expert. He is pursuing his second MSc In Communication For Development at the University of Reading in the UK, under the Chevening Scholarship.