Pan Africa Radio Platform

The Pan African Radio Platform pilot project is working with 24 radio stations in the four countries. Radio programmes produced by stations involved in the network will be uploaded, along with scripts, to the Pan Africa Radio Platform web portal. Stations in other countries and regions, both those part of the network and others, will then be able to adapt and translate the programmes. The platform is working to give local communities a stronger voice in national development, by broadening the production and exchange of public interest radio content while creating ways for bigger radio stations to directly support smaller programmers.

The project activities include the following:

• Capacity Building and Training: to strengthen the thematic, editorial, technological, and managerial capacities of the selected radio stations to produce, exchange, and disseminate quality through innovative and interactive broadcast formats.
• Content Production: To ensure the production, dissemination, and exchange of quality and participatory radio programmes that amplify the voices and perspectives of underserved communities in development debates.
• Content Sharing and Dissemination: To build and promote a pilot Pan-African Radio Platform model providing quality radio content and strengthening synergies within the African radio sector, and between radio stations and organisations supporting development.

Media development, Governance

According to Panos Eastern Africa, an increasing proliferation of smaller radio stations has been a mark of growing media pluralism, emerging in the 1990s as a challenge to monopolistic state radio. Many of these stations have been crucial in opening political and other public debates on previously silent issues. However, although the concept of radio in Africa is growing steadily, the quality of media produced is in general inadequate to meet the informational demands of citizens. The radio sector has not fully succeeded in communicating critical information and news in the public interest to marginalised communities, nor to amplify citizen voices in broader public debates. Challenges include a lack of professional skills, low technical competences, and a lack of resources, business acumen, and sustainability.