The Ethiopian media is a very recent phenomenon, mainly consisting of state-controlled radio and television. Addis Ababa City Administration Community Media (FM 96.3) is one of the few community radio stations in the country. It serves 1.5 million people across a 105 km radius, providing 18 hours of daily transmission in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. However, its journalists lack professional skills.
The proposed project aims to address this gap by training volunteer journalists, reporters, editors and technicians at FM 96.3 to be able to produce high quality...
IPDC project priority: Community Media Development
The level of media development in Sierra Leone has over the years improved significantly. Media pluralism and liberalization of the media landscape in Sierra Leone has given rise to the establishment of several local news papers and radio stations nation-wide. There are about eighty registered newspapers in the Western Area even though not all are operational. In Sierra Leone there is only one public service broadcaster (SLBC) and about fifty Private/Community radio stations including Radio Bintumani. These radio stations have various types of programming and format based on their...
Namibia is preparing for general elections in 2014. The ruling Swapo Party congress takes place in November 2012 and will be the official launch pad for party (and individual) election campaigns in preparation for the 2014 ballot. Next year, 2013, is therefore a critical pre-election phase for Namibians. Thus, the quality of the national debate will depend on the capacity of Namibians including the marginalised groups such as the rural women and the youth to engage with the political process. This will be through the envisaged civic awareness campaigns and secondly through a process that...
The liberalization of the audiovisual space in 1990 witnessed an upsurge of private radios, television stations and newspapers across the national territory. Cameroon today boasts of over 300 newspapers, more than 200 private radio stations and over 50 private television channels. This dramatic growth of private ownership of media space has been supported by a modest growth in training institutions, most of which offer middle level journalism training.
This modest growth in the area of journalism training has created a vacuum in radio and television stations that require personnel...
CRST FM104 is the only radio station licensed to broadcast from Tafea Province (which includes the 5 most southern islands of Vanuatu) to the people of Tafea Province. It is the only licensed community radio station in the country. The national broadcaster, the VBTC (Radio Vanuatu and Television Blong Vanuatu), commercial FM radio stations, other national media outlets including newspapers are generally not able to be seen or heard in Tafea Province which results in its people being unable to receive updates on events taking place across the Province, as well as nationally and globally....
Although provincial radio stations exist in more than ten provinces in Cambodia, most of their main contents or programs are the relayed programs from the Radio Nationale Kampuchea (RNK) in Phnom Penh. Therefore, most of the programs do not serve the needs of the community people since the information needed by provincial people are different geographically. It is important that community people who are the target listeners of those provincial radios get the most from the local programs. Provincial radio stations generally lack professional capacities of media workers / program producers...
Maldives is a unique country with its population of just over 300,000 spread across some 1200 coral islands, some hundreds of kilometres apart. Thus, broadcast media, especially radio, plays an important role in keeping the country’s far-flung population connected and informed. Recent years have seen a significant improvement in the level of media freedom and independence in the country, with the government allowing the establishment of private newspapers, radio and television. In May 2007, the government highlighted four main pillars of the media reform process, namely confidence building...
Jamaica has a vibrant radio media sector with twenty stations offering service, the majority being nationwide offering vast selections of music, phone in programmes and news. The sector is highly competitive, but driven by the dictates of the advertisers. The specific needs of communities driving development are only catered for by three radios, including Jet FM which serves rural Jamaica. Jeffrey Town Farmers Association, (JTFA) set up and launched Jet FM in 2008, and has been recognized as one of the best in Caribbean for its efforts at community development using media and recognized by...
In this age of information, the processes of production, circulation and consumption of information, are leaving the unidirectional broadcasting logic and are radically transformed by the development of a decentralized network. In this context of disintermediation, it is essential to understand and adapt to the possibilities that new technologies bring to not continue reproducing obsolete communication models. It is a priority, then, to highlight the most favorable aspects of the adoption of ICTs and encourage uses that contribute to strengthening the fulfillment of human rights, such as...
The media panorama in Venezuela, as in the rest of Latin America, is facing major new challenges. The media reality in the Andean Region and in Latin America is in general similar. Most radio and television frequencies and the main newspapers are owned by a very few private companies. At the same time, Venezuela faces the challenge of taking responsibility for making the new information technologies (ICTs) available to all and to conveying knowledge properly to the most vulnerable, isolated population groups.
As community media arise, the problem that crops up is to train their...