Radioworld: Africa’s Youth Making Waves on Radio

[radiocph]

Radio is Africa’s most accessible, influential and used information outlet, according to a recent survey by United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization. Several radio stations in Africa have more than a million listeners each. An even more interesting phenomenon that is becoming a part of editorial policy for many radio stations is to engage young people as presenters, content creators and other important aspects of programming.

Radio is a wonderful way to interact, learn and communicate. There is a need to keep radio vibrant and active. Most importantly, it is important to engage young producers, presenters and reporters.

As the world celebrates International Youth Day, Aug. 12, with calls for youth engagement for global action, it is important to look at some of the young Africans who have taken radio industry by a storm.

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https://www.radioworld.com/global/africas-youth-making-waves-on-radio

 

[davideduardo]

Radio is Africa’s most accessible, influential and used information outlet, according to a recent survey by United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization. Several radio stations in Africa have more than a million listeners each. An even more interesting phenomenon that is becoming a part of editorial policy for many radio stations is to engage young people as presenters, content creators and other important aspects of programming.

That is a rather oversimplified article. Africa is not a country, it is a continent.

There are 54 independent nations there*, and just the first two combined have more people than the USA does. The continent has 4 times the population of the US, and there are dozens of languages and hundreds of vernaculars.

It is not hard to imagine that a nation of 200 million like Nigeria and where stations do national networking that there would be many stations with a cume of over a million. In fact, some of the stations in the larger nations may have cumes far in excess of those of any US station.

Not to throw cold water on the article, which is well-intended, but most of the high rated and successful stations in Africa are very similar to successful stations in the Philippines or the US or Argentina. Different music formats, talk formats, sports, news. Same ingredients, different cultures and languages.

(Reference: for a short time I was involved with Radio Express' "World Chart Show" which had both an Swahili (the lingua franca in many nations) and a non-narrated version intended to have local announcing following an English guide sheet for each song and segment. It was sponsored by Coke and several other multi-national companies.).

* Even that is controversial, plus or minus a nation or two due to territories and separationst movements.