Report of the Sensitisation Workshop on Rural Radio for Policy and Decision Makers in East and Southern Africa

This 84-page workshop report, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), shares information from a workshop held April 26–29 2005 in Malawi to sensitise policy and decision makers on the status of rural radio and its practitioners in East and Southern Africa. The workshop included participants from Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.


The workshop was organised around the following key themes.

• Understanding Rural Radio in Africa - This theme served to initiate the process of understanding what rural radio is about. Michael Pickstock, Director of Wren Media in the United Kingdom said the main problem in setting up rural/community radio, contrary to popular belief, is not that it is expensive but that normally policy makers in governments have misplaced priorities. Lettie Longwe of World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) Africa said it is necessary from the onset to have a clear definition of rural radio, which AMARC gives as participatory, community-owned and -driven, and serves the needs of the community. Dr. Jean-Pierre Ilboudo added and emphasised that rural radio is rural-based, with rural/local content, owned by local, rural people. The radio informs, motivates, and transfers knowledge to the rural dwellers, always in a participatory way and using local languages.
• Practice in Rural Radio in Eastern and Southern Africa - Under this theme, there were country presentations designed to give a picture of what was happening on the ground. Presentations from Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia showed that there were varied radio broadcasters aiming to serve the needs of the people, but that sustainability is a challenge across the region.
• Capacity Building for Rural Radio - The report shares information presented by Dr. Jean Pierre Ilboudo who said radio is the most diffusive form of communication reaching the remotest ends of most countries. He claimed that rural radio could be used in many situations and for many reasons, such as education, conflict resolution, and decentralisation. He stressed that rural radio goes beyond agriculture, and that it must be based on methodologies of communication for development. He also said that it is always necessary to use rural radio alongside other media. Linje Manyozo of the University of Malawi presented a case study of the Dzimwe Women Community Radio station in the District of Mangoche in Malawi. He summed up the problems experienced by the station as lack of (a) a proper legal framework, (b) a strategy for sustainability, and (c) training.
• Definition of Rural Radio - The workshop agreed to come up with a clear distinction between rural radio and community radio. In discussions of community-based radios, there are 2 models: radio that is meant to facilitate local development issues, and radio that addresses democracy issues. According to the report, rural radio largely belongs to the first model - as it relies on indigenous knowledge systems and communication for development methodologies using participatory approaches.

According to the report, at the end of the workshop, participants unanimously recommended that:

• national governments should formulate national communication for development policies that recognise rural radio as an important development tool; and
• the Southern Africa Development Community Centre of Communication for Development should expand its operations and facilitate the development of an accredited and accepted rural radio curriculum, initiate a formal rural radio training centre for the region, and take a leading role in formulating training programmes at the centre.

As Part of the Lilongwe Declaration produced from the workshop, the participants recognised the need for:

• policy makers' acceptance and endorsement of the multi-sectoral approach of rural radio in national development;
• governments' and other development partners' appreciation of rural radio as an essential means for addressing the issues of food insecurity, gender imbalance, human rights, ill health, HIV/AIDS, and conflict resolution, among others;
• capacity building through the training of trainers in rural radio; and
• national communication for development policies in which rural radio is legally ensured as a rural development tool.