Background and Context
When it comes to media in Africa, radio is still king. Other forms of media continue to evolve dramatically, but there is little disagreement on the fact that radio is still the dominant mass medium in Africa. In a concept paper produced for the IDRC (Radio and Development in Africa) Dr. Mary Myers outlined how mobile phone penetration in Africa is dramatically increasing, ushering in a significant change in interpersonal communications and potentially a change in the conventional broadcast medium of radio.
Fixed line access, and by implication the availability of the Internet, remains low. While less than 3 per cent of the population on the continent had access to a fixed line telephone in 2001, the number of mobile subscribers as of 2004, had grown to 80.7 million. This penetration and democratization of the means of communication has had a dramatic but as yet largely un-researched effect on radio content and radio interplay with audiences; and by extension, it has had an impact on social, economic and political development in Africa. The domain of knowledge that this call for research will cover is the cross section, confluence and even convergence of information and communication technologies in relation to radio broadcasting.
Radio, the oldest of the traditional electronic media, has continued to grow in the last couple of decades with changes in the policy and regulatory environments, a dramatic increase in the number of independent stations, coinciding with increased investment from all quarters. This has resulted in new forms of diversity in the airwaves through the proliferation of community radio licenses, as well as commercial radio. Some of the struggles for freedom of the airwaves were more intense in some African countries than others. But the upshot is that while Africa a decade or less ago was mostly dominated by state broadcasters, now there is a variety of radio stations and formats serving community and commercial interests, alongside the continued presence of the national state radio.
All the while, radio has held its ground against the other major mass medium - television - for a myriad of reasons, such as the affordability of FM radio sets, the lack of electrical power, the power of the spoken word and strong oral cultures, especially where low levels of literacy prevail. As a result, radio penetration remains the most pertinent vis-à-vis other ICTs. And there is already evidence that new media, such as the Internet and handheld devices such as mobile phones, rather than posing a threat to radio, tend to complement the medium. This convergence of different ICTs in the domain of radio and development - be it through radio phone-in shows, listening groups or field interviews - is growing at a rapid pace and remains under-researched.
Radio, like any ICT, is a tool that responds to and is shaped by its environment. That includes the policy and regulatory environments, the environment created by advances in technology and the social environment within which it is couched. As such, radio in Africa can be used for informing and responding to - for example - local disease outbreaks but can also fall prey to abuse and be utilized to incite hatred or violence - as was the case leading up to and during the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. In light of the obvious power of radio - an affordable medium for delivering the spoken word - there is a need for baseline data and critical research that examines radio-related outcomes and impacts on social and economic indicators.
It is valuable to understand what is happening in radio broadcasting so as to get a better fix on how this traditional medium can be enhanced through the use of ICTs and so that we can gain a greater understanding of the current impact and potential of radio as a development tool. It is this gap in the research that presents an opportunity to create knowledge about the intersection of all these forms of communication.