Rural Radio and the Promotion of People-Centred Development in Africa

This 14-page paper is part of the author’s ongoing research on rural radio in Southern Africa. The document was presented at the Codesria 11 General Assembly - Rethinking African Development: Beyond Impasse, Towards Alternatives. Maputo, Mozambique, December 6-10 2005. It explores the nature and levels of villagers’ participation in facilitated dialogues on local development, using radio as a rural information and communication technology (ICT). Focusing on two models of Radio Listening Clubs (RLCs) organised by the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation’s (MBC) Development Broadcasting Unit (DBU) and Dzimwe Community Radio, the discussion establishes how rural radio broadcasting shapes local discourses on local development planning, implementation and evaluation.

The paper begins by introducing two structural forms of rural educational broadcasting, centralised and decentralised, as a key to understanding how Malawi’s broadcasters and communities conceptualise and implement development e-participation through village-based radio listening clubs. According to the paper, participation focuses on empowering local people, through building their conviction that they are not “permanent victims of any situation.” The author highlights theories developed by Guy Bessette, which proposed that participation is centred on providing a conducive environment and forum through which communities are helped to understand their socio-economic challenges and act upon the debated issues.

The paper notes that MBC Radio was utilised as a communication tool in agricultural and rural development for many years. The introduction of the farmers’ forum listening group project in July 1966 proved to be a cost-effective and effective rural development communication strategy in increasing farmers’ knowledge gain and contact between farmers and agricultural service providers. The Development Broadcasting Unit (DBU) is a new structure within MBC, established in 1999 to liaise with the station’s Programmes Department to effectively engage in development programming through participatory communication activities, to promote national dialogue around development issues.

Through participatory broadcasting, DBU facilitates people’s participation in development efforts through using radio for “community mobilisation exercises in developing tools for assessing local needs.” By focusing on empowering communities to define themselves and their understanding of the world through radio, DBU is promoting a citizens’ radio, as a tool for encouraging the dialectical and dialogical challenge of civil rights and citizenship among the many rural, illiterate, and poor people who have no adequate access to telephones, electricity or internet.

Kanthu n’khamais a radio magazine programme “primarily produced” by the radio listening clubs (RLCs) whose members have acquired basic production skills. They first identify a development issue they want to tackle through a participatory process in which different groups of people are able to give input. This is then recorded and presented to a preferred service provider. The problem statement is called a village voice. The village voice outlines an analysis of the problem including the responsibilities of the community and the existing gaps the service provider is expected to fill. These are articulated through drama, traditional songs, poetry, and discussions. Upon listening to the village voice, the service provider agrees with the community for a possible dialogue, which takes place in the community itself. The dialogue is also recorded and facilitated by RLC members themselves, but sometimes the DBU facilitators assist in moderating it. At the end of the dialogue, the RLC must always ensure that an action plan has been developed and responsibilities of both the RLC and the service provider are clearly stated in the dialogue.

The RLC then sends the village voice and the dialogue to the DBU producer who then “fine-tunes and combines” the segments for broadcasting as the Kanthu n’khama programme. The producer is aided by a programme-planning sheet, which gives a guide on the key message from each of the programmes that is ready for broadcasting.

According to the paper, despite many logistical and financial challenges, this radio has contributed positively to local development in the area, with regards to facilitating interaction between service providers and communities. As a result, more boreholes have been constructed; the wildlife has culled monkeys which have been destroying crops (a development that had forced many young girls to drop from school so as to guard over field harvests); the National Park now offers long-term firewood licenses to people in their villages instead of requiring that people make long trips to the park offices; and communities are benefiting from various micro finance activities. Communities are now contributing to development dialogues through radio, and radio is providing much needed environmental education on topics like soil management. Youth are able to educate themselves through fan clubs and communities are becoming open to talking about issues like sex and reproductive health issues as well as HIV/AIDS.

The paper concludes that, in concept as well as in practice, citizens’ participation is very subversive, as it involves radical redistribution of power, especially in economically, socially, or politically marginalised communities. Citizens’ radio forums provide an opportunity for broadcast journalists to write and produce development reports with and alongside local people, a process through which collective and public memories are challenged, contested, corrected, and tested. Requests from communities for service providers’ attention has benefited them, as some communities have managed to get assistance for various grassroots projects in which radio programmes themselves become both the object and subject of further discussions and community development activities.