During a special session on community broadcasting, Jummai Umar, Citizenship Program Manager for Microsoft Nigeria and Anglophone West Africa, presented a paper Amplifying the People’s Voices: Community Broadcasting in a Digital Era. Jummai has kindly allowed us to publish her paper here.

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Vox populi, vox dei, “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God”, as stated in a letter in 798 from the scholar Alcuin of York in present day UK to Charlemagne also known as Charles the Great, whose empire included much of present day Western and Central Europe. Through time People’s voices have been and remain a critical instrument in the development and sustenance of any society. This is more so in this era of the ascent of the Information Society, Democracy (government of the people, by the people and for the people) and the rule of law, assertion of human rights, empowerment and development of the people at the grass-roots.

In order to communicate government policies to the people as well as elicit and encourage the people to give voice to their own ideas, which they will own thus ensuring sustainability, on issues such as nation building, government at different levels had always used various media prominent among which is mass media, town hall meetings etc.  Today, though not utilized, the media of choice for our environment is Community Radio (CR). Arguably, CR is the “poor man’s GSM. As Charles Akolo Katsibi in his 08 October 2008 article in the Daily Trust titled Community radio in Nigeria’s democracy! succinctly asserts “The proliferation of media houses (print and broadcast) with diversity to ownership-private, group and or government is a clear definition of what is known as media pluralism.”? However, a closer look at this development indicates that all of these media are concentrated in the urban centres of the society. Except, of course, for the wider coverage and accessibility of radio, village dwellers do not have the presence of a media outfit.This is a gap that only CR can address.

Bruce Girard in a paper presented at the first International Workshop on Farm Radio Broadcasting titled The Challenges of ICTs and Rural Radio posited that “more than ninety years after the world’s first station was founded, radio is still the most pervasive, accessible, affordable, and flexible mass medium available. In rural areas, it is often the only mass medium available. You can corroborate this by taking the time to chat with the typical Nigerian night watchman colloquially called the Maigadi. You will be surprised to be updated on current situations related to the US Election, Chechnya, Palestine, China trade surpluses, global economics and world politics. Predawn Hausa broadcasts from BBC (UK), Deutsche Welle (Germany) and VOA (USA) educate and empower these people with information. We must ask ourselves, why do these nations invest in foreign language radio services?

Low production and distribution costs have made it possible for radio to interpret the world from local perspectives, and to respond to local needs for information.  More than any other mass communication medium, radio speaks in the language, and with the accent, of its community.  Its programming reflects local interests and it can make important contributions to both the heritage and the development of the cultures, economies and communities that surround it.  Again we must ask ourselves, if radio and other mass media give the average person living in the rural areas a voice and how amplified are such voices?

Community Broadcasting:
Community broadcasting as a precursor of present day online social networking is unique in its focus and structure.  Think of community broadcasting as pre-Internet YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace.  According to Liora Salter in an article in the Canadian Encyclopaedia titled, ‘Broadcasting, Community’; “Community broadcasting is designed to fulfil social and cultural needs by allowing members of the audience to participate in decisions about programming and, in the case of radio, in the ownership of stations.  It serves local communities, reflecting the diversity of their views and needs, and provides access to volunteer participants.  It is public broadcasting, but it is not operated by a government or a government agency.”

Sadly, Nigeria has been, and continues to be, left behind and according to Prof. Umaru Pate from University of Maiduguri in an interview with Daily Trust Newspaper of August 23, 2008 said concerning community radio in Nigeria “One thing I must tell you is that in the whole of West Africa today, it is only Nigeria – which is incidentally the biggest of all and the richest, too – that does not have a policy on community radio stations.  All the other West African countries have policies and not only policies; they have existing, robust and very well functioning community radio regimes.  Here in Nigeria, there have been attempts by individuals and groups to convince the government to initiate and promulgate a policy on community radio, there are some impressions being given particularly in some government cycles that we have a policy on that but if you take your time to go through the NBC policy, they cannot be described as community radio per se considering the cost and other prohibitive requirements”.

When broadly allowed, in Nigeria, CR will positively empower our people and crystallize our fledgling democracy.  However there are several challenges as Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, in his 18 September 2008 Daily Trust article observes that “Community broadcasting opens up access which might be very difficult to understand for those who have lived within the dictatorial ambience which unfortunately has operated for a long time in Nigeria’s broadcasting policy.  The bureaucratic argument that the radio spectrum must be tightly regulated had been the ruling mantra in the Nigerian tradition for a very long time.  But that has also gone hand-in-hand with the deformed nature of Nigeria’s democratisation.  So up there, within the ruling elite, the bureaucrats controlling the processes of regulation of broadcasting, and the commercial broadcasters, there is an alliance, which has not been particularly disposed to the opening up of the access to community broadcasting in Nigeria.  Of course, it has been very easy to manipulate the red herring of security, amongst many reasons to slow movement on that track.”

Community broadcasting in the digital era:
Media convergence around digital based Internet Protocols (IP) is a reality.  According to Jennifer Makunike-Sibanda – Regional Director, Federation of African Media Women, Southern African Development Community (FAMW-SADC), in a paper titled ‘Improving Access to Rural Radio by ‘Hard-to-Reach’ Women Audiences’, said: “First and foremost, I wish to underscore the point that the convergence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has to date brought to the fore the emergence of the phenomenon of creative divergence – this positions knowledge as the new prime resource in the world economy.  Secondly, there has been a noted tendency by countries in transition to a knowledge economy (k-economy) to forestall development which is identifiable with the satisfaction of human needs – namely, a needs-oriented development or people-centred development which should be a necessary condition for development”.

To buttress this notion we note Stella Hughes – Senior Programme Specialist, UNESCO, Paris, France, in a paper titled ‘Community Multimedia Centres: Integrating Modern and Traditional Information and Communication Technologies for Community Development.’  Where she declares that “In the era of the knowledge society and the knowledge economy, access to the infrastructure to share information and knowledge is paramount for social and economic development.  It is evident that the traditional forms of knowledge acquisition are insufficient to foster an inclusive knowledge society.  People and communities in the developing world need access to the mechanisms that provide multiple sources of rapid information – and information exchange – which traditional ways of accumulating and exchanging knowledge cannot deliver.”

She further said “only when the Internet and other ‘new’ ICTs are combined with ‘traditional’ community radio, can all members of a community – irrespective of languages spoken or level of learning – be fully included in the process of accessing, identifying, producing and exchanging information relevant to their needs.”

Amplifying the People’s Voices:
There is no doubt that the past decade has witnessed an unprecedented achievement in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) to the extent that even the developing economies like Nigeria now have access to ICT equipment that have great potentials of amplifying the people’s voices.  With many mobile phones being equipped with cameras, and video cameras, internet outlet for posting broadcasts, sites such as You Tube, FaceBook, MySpace, personal online sites and blogs, accessing and uploading information has become easy.  Many media houses now rely on information and live pictures and videos captured by private individuals (i-report) to report on events as they happen.  GSM operators in Nigeria have equipped the rural dwellers with similar opportunity to contribute to information and knowledge sharing, except for the absence of community radios where such generated voices of the people could be amplified.  The digital era has opened up a huge space for often marginalized persons to have a voice.  It was once believed that mobile phones were not for all, or that they might in some manner jeopardise the security of the society.  This has been found NOT to be that case, as I am also confident that CR will enhance the security of the society if allowed to flourish.

We are witnessing digital migration as analogue broadcasting technology gradually gives way to digital broadcasting technology with more sophisticated technological and information transmitting backbone.  The main benefit of digital broadcasting is the efficient use of the radio (broadcasting) frequency spectrum, thereby freeing that frequency spectrum.

However, in line with the adage “use it or lose it” the inability or unwillingness of Federal Government to licence CR stations will be undermined by advances in technology which are providing alternatives.  If Nigeria does not put in place structures to licence and control CR Stations then they will develop via other means in an increasingly globalised environment which the Nigeria state will not be able to control.  For example, a few years ago a prominent Nigerian journalist made unsuccessful efforts to secure a domestic FM Broadcasting licence.  Today, he operates an AM Radio station out of Spain that broadcasts to all of West Africa.

Internet Radio is arguably an advanced form of a digitally converged Community Radio station.  We are not talking about radio stations that stream their media across the Internet like the BBC in the UK, but Radio stations that exist exclusively on the Internet.  Firms like Com One, Revo, Roku, Terratec and Tivoli have each developed and market their own brand of tabletop or bookshelf radios that use Wireless Ethernet/ Wireless Fidelity and commonly known as Wi-Fi which is the most common wireless IP networking standard.  These Internet radio receivers cost from under N10,000.  Users can tune these radios in the same manner that most of us use our existing radio sets.  The reception is digitally crystal clear with no static with the current choice of up to 10,000, and rising, existing Internet radio stations from all over the world.  It is a matter of when, not if, Nigerians will use this media.

Twenty years ago a group of El-Salvadorans and Canadians combined radio broadcasting and new ICTs to help bring about social and political change, democracy and development in Central America in a way that could now be referred to as Radio2.0.  In 2003, a book titled ‘The One to Watch: Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity’ Edited by Bruce Girard asserted that “The Internet and other new ICTs are changing radio in the developing world.  But far from making it less relevant, they are opening up hitherto unimagined possibilities:

• Broadcasters, who used to have to travel for hours or even days to find a public library to research a programme, now have instant access to the Internet;
• National, regional and global radio news agencies are making world news and alternative perspectives available to even the most remote communities;
• The radio/ telecommunications combination is helping to keep communities together, despite the distances imposed by migration.

The cases presented in this book are among the first examples of the convergence of radio and new ICTs for development, and the book underscores the significant potential of the combination.  In this convergence, radio promises to take on even greater significance and value.  For this reason, we believe that radio is the one to watch.”  As many of us are aware Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and Africa Independent Television (AIT) are watched, while Voice of Nigeria (VON) is listened to, overseas and especially by Nigerians in the Diaspora.

Some aspects of Internet Radio are challenging, especially those areas dealing with international jurisdictions and the limits of national sovereignty.  For example, as Nigeria through the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) facilitates the roll out of last mile IP access how will the Nigeria state control anyone from setting up a Nigeria centric Internet radio station on a web server based in another country.  How will the Nigerian state exercise jurisdictional control over a foreign based “VIRTUAL” Internet radio station that “apparently” broadcasts “from Katsina,” about Katsina, and in a Katsina dialect?

China among other nations have developed sophisticated, expensive and as some have argued in the long-run futile initiatives to comprehensively filter all Internet traffic.  Furthermore, our current IP infrastructure makes this problematic as Nigeria has found in dealing with the relatively less sophisticated problems of “Internet 419” and “Yahoo Yahoo boys.”  As the first in a series of steps, we humbly advice government to open up the CR window, so that there is a framework that it can develop and adapt, which will eventually encompass Internet radio as that sector opens up.

It must be noted no CR station has even been involved in any subversive or anti-people activities anywhere in the world.  As noted earlier, security has been used as a red herring to side track the opening of a CR policy window.  However, in the case of the Genocide of Rwanda, it was found that Government owned Radio stations were culpable of instigating the genocide.

As noted in Spore Vol. No. 109 published by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, in Feb. 2004 “The next generation of rural radio is already with us.  Once prized for their ‘proximity’ to local news as well as local listeners, progressive rural stations have added on several news layers of quality, thanks to the Internet.  Research by local stations can now easily have a global spread, and programmes can be shared all over the world, as happens between diaspora migrant communities and their home villages.”

In January 2005, LG Electronics released the World’s First Digital Broadcast-Enabled Mobile Phone. Today any of us with minimal exposure can upload, store and broadcast video streams from our mobile phones by leveraging on initiatives from firms like Qik, World TV and Cybersoc.com.  This has been the direction of Community Broadcasting and it is happening around the world without us.  Two years ago CNN asked its views to submit “iReports” and to date CNN has received more than 175,000 videos and photos.  According to the Max Digital Media Newswire article titled ‘CNN Celebrates Second Anniversary of iReport’ of Thu, 21 August 2008 “CNN’s user-generated content initiative now generates an average of nearly 15,000 iReports each month.”  These technology enabled services are empowering other people that we are expected to compete with, and we are not yet empowering ourselves as a nation to even try and successfully bridge this growing divide.  Clearly as a Nation we have not used our opportunities advantageously, and sadly we are all losing.

IP broadcasting and IP radio in particular, leverages on the Internet.  Globally the Internet like radio is pervasive and becoming increasingly so in Nigeria.  The Internet like radio is simultaneously global in scope while being local in nature.  Recent Internet services are making it an oral medium like radio.  Oral media are coming closer to our inherent African comfort zone as a people with our rich oral traditions.  The Internet like radio involves people in an interactive medium.  According to Bruce Girard in his paper ‘The Challenges of ICTs and Rural Radio’ he postulates that “It has been said that the Internet is a window to the world – offering a view that includes a wealth of knowledge and information.  Local radio is a mirror that reflects a community’s own knowledge and experience back at it.  The convergence of the two just might offer us the most powerful tool we have yet known to combine research and reflection to harness knowledge for development.”  Such convergence cannot happen in Nigeria until a critical mass of functional CR stations exist.

CR can pass on knowledge useful to the daily lives of the people much more effectively than GSM phones or the use of cyber-cafes.  Health and wellbeing, agriculture and food security, justice and accountability, national security and democratic stability, business and the economy have all been shown to improve through the knowledge gained and empowerment achieved through CR.
To date (Oct. 2008), Nigeria has issued only ten CR licences and only the station at the University of Lagos is operating.  As of July 2005, Mozambique had 45; Senegal 14, Malawi 10, Ghana 8, Namibia 6, Republic of Benin 5, Sierra Leone 4 and Sudan had 4 functional CR stations.

Way forward:
The Chinese philosopher Lao -Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC) in his book The Way of Lao-tzu stated that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” We thus request that government through the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) consider issuing CR frequencies/ licences as a first step/ pilot to at least 1 qualified rural cooperative, as guided by NBC rules, in each of the 6 Geopolitical zones.  We understand that the NBC is ready to oblige once they secure the requisite clearance from Mr. President.  Thus, our prayer is that Mr. President, with all deliberate speed and due diligence, approve at least six CR frequencies as pilots so as to open the way for a broader implementation, and full opening up of the CR window.

Nigeria is a signatory to the African Charter on Broadcasting, which is a legally binding multilateral document.  This defines Community Broadcasting as the third tier of broadcasting.  CR that is owned and operated by and for a community and broadcasts in its dialects is in the truest sense the “poor” persons’ ICT.  It should be noted that the basic low-end equipment for CR Stations with a range of 15 to 30 km costs from N700,000 to N2,000,000.  This is exclusive of power, accommodation and overheads.

An excellent draft policy was developed in 2006 by a 17 member committee chaired by the pre-eminent communicator, Prof. Alfred Opubor.  This was deliberated on, by the 37th National Council on Information in Enugu in January/ February 2007.  To the best of our knowledge, all that remains is to present the policy draft to the FEC for deliberation and approval.  We unequivocally add our recommendation for approval by the FEC.

The way forward for Nigeria thus begins when the Federal Executive Council (FEC) considers and approves, in line with due process and the rule of law, the existing draft COMMUNITY RADIO (CR) POLICY which we aver is in line with the National Vision and the laudable development strategies of your administration.

Knowledge is the key to our survival, advancement and salvation. Technology, infrastructure and finance are extremely important.  But human experience demonstrates that it is thinking based on true knowledge that positively develops individuals, societies and mankind as a whole.  Economies grow as a part of this. We humbly pray that this administration considers, endorses and adopts the above suggestions.  A “servant leader” will be considered successful if the people can be empowered with knowledge to sustainably improve themselves, those around them, their own material circumstances and prepare better for the future of those yet unborn and the environment they will live within.

DIGITUS Vox populi, vox dei – The digital voice of the people [is] the voice of God.

The ostensible subject of this publication is community media. The real focus of the text is on democratic and sustainable development. It reflects the main interest of those who support or are active in community radio, an interest that does not centre on technology, equipment, infrastructure or spectrum. Their interest focuses on participation.

The publication and additional audio and video material can be downloaded from AMARC’s website or you can order a print copy from here.

Table of Contents

• - Communication for Development in the 21st Century: ICT-enhanced Empowerment of Poor and Marginalised People. A Foreword by Walter Fust, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
• - Preface by Marcelo Solervicens, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC)
• - Introduction by James Deane, Communication for Social Change Consortium
• - The Rescuing of Democracy: The Contribution of Community Radio in Nepal by Kunda Dixit, Nepali Times
• - The Role of Community Radio in the Nepali Crisis: An Interview with Raghu Mainali by James Deane, Communication for Social Change Consortium
• - Perspectives on Community Radio in Latin America by Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron, Communication for Social Change Consortium
• - Community Radio at a Crossroads: A Perspective from Francophone Africa by Fatoumata Sow
• - Perspectives and Experiences from Eastern and Southern Africa by Grace Githaiga, Econews
• - Community Radio, New Technologies and Policy: Enough Watching, It’s Time for Doing by Bruce Girard
• - What is Community Radio in the 21st Century? A Perspective from UNESCO by Wijayananda Jayaweera
• - WCCD Statement on community Media
• - Notes on Contributors

Download from the National Endowment for Democracy’s Center for International Media Assistance.

The only technology that compares to the mobile phone in terms of pervasiveness and accessibility in the developing world is the radio. Indeed, considered together, radios and mobile phones can serve as a broad-distribution, participatory media network with some of the same citizen-media dynamics of the Internet, but accessible to a much wider, and non-literate audience.

Among the examples he cites are Interactive Radio for Justice / Radio Interactive Pour la Justice, a radio programme in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that answers listeners’ questions about justice issues sent by SMS. (The Christian Science Monitor also wrote about IRFJ here). Zuckerman points out that sending questions via SMS allows for anonymity, an important point when your question is: “Are soldiers allowed to stay at my house and eat my food without paying for it?”

He offers another anecdote about the use of mobiles and radio stations to monitor elections in Ghana:

A dispersed group with mobile phones — especially mobile phones equipped with cameras — becomes a powerful force for “sousveillance.” Coined by Dr. Steve Mann, “sousveillance” refers to the monitoring of authority figures by grassroots groups, using the technologies and techniques of surveillance. The use of mobile phones to monitor the 2000 presidential election in Ghana is a good example of sousveillance — voters who were prevented from voting used mobile phones to report their experience to call-in shows on local radio stations. The stations broadcast the reports, prompting police to respond to the accusations of voter intimidation. Had voters called the police directly, it’s possible that authorities might not have responded — by making reports public through the radio, voters eliminated the possibility of police announcing that there had been no reports of voter intimidation. Similar techniques have been used in Sierra Leone, Senegal, and even in the United States — American voters used mobile phone cameras and Websites to record reports of voting irregularities during the 2006 congressional elections.

The distinction between “new” and “old” technology is no longer significant in the current state of technology convergence. People from community radios and telecentres are working together for more democratic and participatory access to communication, specifically in rural and poor urban areas. This paper by Carlos Rivadeneyra provides conceptual tools to re-think, from this perspective, what we understand by information society.

The comparative advantages of the Internet look good on paper. However, the challenges in making the Internet a useful tool in places where safe water, let alone electricity, are unavailable are many. Wireless technology and the convergence with community radio and video, are already signalling the way. But technology alone may not be the answer if culture and identity are not at the heart of the discussion. When a new technology is introduced to a different social setting, what is transferred is not only the technology itself, but also the social use of it: a set of assumptions and practices that have emerged from another context and other needs. Therefore, support for capacity building and training which goes beyond access and basic applications and addresses personal, institutional and systemic barriers, as well as content development, is important.

Read the article Community radio & ICTs: Can the poor benefit?

They also note that:

Over the next several years, mobile companies such as Nokia and Motorola will be rolling out millions of digital audio enabled phones allowing owners to listen to a whole variety of content. In addition, emerging standards such as WiMax5 will continue to facilitate increasing use of broadband Internet that could provide greater access to broadband over the next several years.

This has yet to happen, but with mobile phones becoming as common as radio receivers (one writer estimates that there were 2.7 billion mobile phones in use at the beginning of 2007, and somewhere between 3.2 and 3.8 billion radios receivers, with phones catching up quickly) it is conceivable that the phone will replace the radio as the main device for receiving audio.

Download the concept paper – Podcasting: Knowledge sharing for development through dialogue

In Mali broadcasters search the internet to find answers to listeners’ questions, translate them to local languages, and encourage discussion and learning around issues of public interest. Without the internet Mali’s rural radio stations used a handful of old books and last week’s newspaper as main sources of information, but with access and training they are able to find information on the internet and help discover solutions to community problems. They are only able to do this because visionary policies and programmes enabled community radio and provided them with internet access and training.

Technological developments have often been favourable to community radio. In the 1940s the introduction of FM technology in the United States made community radio possible because it allowed for more stations at a time when the AM dial was already filling up in urban areas. A few decades later, in the 1980s and 1990s, a new generation of community broadcasters was able to get on the air thanks to technological advances that dramatically reduced the cost of transmitters and production equipment.

But it would be a mistake to think that these developments, and many others, were solely technology-driven.

In the case of FM radio in the United States, community broadcasters starting up in the latter part of the century were only be able to make use of FM because a visionary policy adopted in 1945 reserved 20 percent of the new FM frequencies for non-commercial and educational broadcasting. Without this policy commercial broadcasting would have quickly monopolized FM and the left of the dial (the reserved frequencies are from 87.9 MHz – 92 MHz) would have sounded pretty much like the right.

Similarly the low-cost equipment introduced later only became a factor after policies adopted at the national level in many countries recognised the importance of local and community broadcasting, established licensing frameworks to allow it and policy mechanisms to support communities in their efforts to get on the air.(1)

A few key actors in the development community also played a role in this by supporting the research and advocacy efforts of community media associations struggling to establish their place on national policy agendas and helping new stations acquire equipment and training.

Over the past fifteen years government and donor policies have supported the emergence of thousands of community radio stations worldwide. There are now 150 community radio stations in South Africa, 150 in Peru, 850 in Colombia, 120 in Mali, twenty in Nepal (with another 45 due to start broadcasting in 2007), to name just a few countries where community radio is flourishing.

The technological developments that have had the most impact on community radio in more recent years have not used broadcast technology but rather other ICTs, especially the internet, digital audio formats that can travel across it(2), and mobile telephony. These technologies have seen tremendous advances in both their accessibility and usability.

In 1996 when we started the Púlsar(3) news agency in Latin America only the most technologically advanced community radio stations in the region had access to the internet, and they mostly used it to exchange emails with donors in Europe or North America. Despite the scepticism of donors and traditional media, broadcasters scrambled to find a way to access the new service and before long Púlsar had 1,000 subscribers. Today the internet and mobile telephones are part of the basic toolkit for many community radio stations.

Mobile telephones are community radio’s remote broadcasting units. For a community radio news team they are as useful as television’s ENG(4) trucks, but they cost less than $100 and are so simple to use that community members with phones can become empowered correspondents, commentators, and critics.

A connection to the internet can be used in multiple ways by a station to provide a better service to its community. In the book The One to Watch(5) we identified a number of ways that community radio and the internet converge to exploit synergies and address the needs and problems of their communities in new and powerful ways.

In Indonesia an internet-based radio news and programme exchange network put the concerns of poor and remote communities on the national agenda and helped create a democratic culture after years of authoritarian rule and censorship.

A community radio station in Sri Lanka became a community multimedia centre when it decided to build an internet café to share its internet connection with the community.

In Ecuador and Spain community radio stations use the internet to co-produce programmes that keep Ecuadorian migrants in contact with their communities and expose money transfer companies charging excessive commission to transfer remittances.

Over the past decade the international community and national governments have invested tremendous effort and expense in ICT for development projects. There have been countless seminars, studies and statements; national ICT policies have been drafted, discarded and redrafted; bilateral cooperation agencies, UN agencies, the G8, and the World Bank and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) have spent many millions developing and implementing ICT4D policies and programmes.

Yet, despite the boom in community radio and the interest in ICTs, initiatives to link the two have been limited to the pilot projects of the type that have characterized ICT4D when what is needed are visionary policies and initiatives of the type that led to the emergence of community radio. These might include:

1) Support the growth of the community radio sector. A community radio station can be built and equipped for less than the cost of a single tower of a single mobile telephone network but it enables a dimension of public communication that telephony and the internet cannot.

2) Include community radio in universal service policies. In poor and remote communities radio is often the only medium available and it serves multiple purposes as a mass medium, a public forum, an emergency warning system, a school, a community telephone, and a primary point of contact with the rest of the country and the world. The action plan agreed at WSIS calls for all communities to have access to radio by 2015. To meet this target community radio will need to be included in universal service policies and be given access to the universal service funds usually reserved for telecom infrastructure development.

3) Community radio stations in poor and remote communities must have affordable and effective access to the internet. Achieving maximum impact with limited internet connectivity within such communities can best be accomplished by situating connections within the local community radio station, since the multiplier effect that the station can provide ensures that the benefits are felt in each household in the community.

4) Support the development of community triple play in under-served rural communities. Community-driven solutions are emerging in many parts of the world designed to extend networks to communities bypassed by traditional telecommunication networks and provide ICT services that meet the specific needs of poor and rural communities. In conjunction with community radio these networks and service providers can offer community triple play, locally-owned and managed operations providing radio, internet access, and voice over IP telephony. Evidence shows that when regulatory and other hurdles are removed, business models emerge that provide sustainable modern communication capabilities to poor and remote communities.

In The One to Watch I wrote:

It has been said that the internet is a window to the world — offering a view that encompasses a wealth of knowledge and information. Local radio is a mirror that reflects a community’s own knowledge and experience back at it. The convergence of the two just might offer us the most effective avenue we have yet known to combine research and reflection in order to harness knowledge for democratic and sustainable development.(6)

Four years have passed and we have yet to move much beyond anecdotes and the pilot projects. Only with vision and with policies such as the ones mentioned above will we be able to realise the potential offered by community radio and ICTs. It is time to move beyond watching the marvels of new ICTs and the potential they offer to people living in poverty when combined with community radio. It is time to get serious by becoming more strategic about putting in place policies and measures that genuinely release the energy of an ICT enabled community media sector.

Notes

(1) Government support takes many forms including making public funds available, but also simplifying the process of getting a licence. As long as frequencies are available, rural communities in Mali, for example, can get a community radio station licence by filling out a simple form.
(2) E.g. MP3, Realaudio, and the open source Ogg format.
(3) The Agencia Informativa P?lsar was the first major international initiative use the internet as a platform for a daily radio news service. www.agenciapulsar.org.
(4) Electronic News Gathering units, a crew and an equipped truck, send sound live sound and images back to the main studio for rebroadcast.
(5) The One to Watch: Radio, new ICTs and interactivity, Bruce Girard (ed), FAO, Rome 2003. Available online at www.comunica.org/1-2-watch.
(6) Ibid. p. 23

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