Chapter 5
Community Radio in Niger
By Kadi Souley B. Kohler
Niger is the largest country in Western Africa and the sixth largest on the continent after Sudan, Algeria, Congo, Libya and Chad. A landlocked state of Sahelian Africa, it borders Algeria and Libya to the north, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso to the southwest, and Mali to the west. The population is estimated to be approximately 12 million inhabitants, with 80 per cent being rural. Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world.
With the arrival of democracy in the 1990s, the monopoly of public radio stations ended. The media landscape broadened very quickly with the first private stations with a commercial vocation coming on air beginning in 1994, followed progressively by the installation of community radio stations nine years later.
The contribution of community radio to the implanting of democracy and good governance
The first community radio station was set up in 1999 to the west of Niamey, in the village of Bankilaré, one of the poorest villages in the country, with approximately 2,000 inhabitants live precariously, without electricity, telephone service or potable water, often at more than an hour’s walk away.
The Bankilaré radio station was set up following a very simple process since different funding agencies wanted to make sure the population got involved. A village association was created to support the initiative and to get things going, bringing the conditions together for self-management of the station by mobilizing human leadership, animation and popular control of resources. The choice of solar energy seemed the most appropriate because of the tropical climactic conditions.
In Niger, more than 80 per cent of the population is illiterate. Channels of communication remain insufficient, but radio is an effective means for bridging the technological gap and reducing persistent inequalities between the unschooled and the educated.
Thus, based on different reports tabled by United Nations experts, some in 2007, it is possible to demonstrate the contribution of community radio toward reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), especially through the support of certain funding agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and SNV (a Dutch cooperation and development NGO), the latter for the training of radio hosts, and through the permanent broadcasting of production on sensitive themes: HIV/AIDS, sustaining and preserving the environment, decentralization, girls’ education, citizenship, access to quality training. All these themes contribute to the struggle against precarious conditions and have a direct impact on the socio-economic and cultural life of rural populations.
In a strongly Islamic country such as Niger, speaking of women’s liberation even on the air can present a challenge and even lead to the closing down of a radio station. Radio stations that give women positions of responsibility are rare. While women are more and more visible in management and animation committees and participate in discussions, they are still considered subordinate.
This perpetuates discrimination against women in all areas of life. The media must help find solutions to women’s real concerns, such as access to land, inheritance, real marriage, repudiation and child custody, but instead these issues remain unresolved, while customary rights often fly in the face of civil judgments.
Some one hundred community radio stations regularly broadcast their programs today, notwithstanding some serious management and production difficulties affecting their viability.
The funding agencies and the government lack regular information on the actual situation of radio stations because means of communication are almost inexistent between the stations themselves, Internet connections being inexistent or exorbitantly priced. Community radio stations are often the target of local elected officials, which makes it possible to inform the population “for free.”
A coordination platform to prevent these kinds of exclusion must be created, for the dream of thousands is in danger of going up in smoke if nothing is done to reestablish communication, to continue the program of setting up information centres and maintaining established radio stations, to give the community radio network the necessary means to truly ensure continuing education of its staff, to establish annual reporting and to compensate for the lack of unpaid personnel. The Niger government financially supports the media. Why can it not do the same for community radio?
AMARC could consider extending its work to all the community radio stations of Niger, in order to support, as outlined by the UNESCO experts, local CR in:
• Promoting, for example, an exchange of productions with other community radio stations linked to production networks
• Evaluating the training needs of personnel
• Supporting and reinforcing/or creating a local production unit
• Reinforcing the accomplishments of RIF AMARC Niger, which already has a production and distribution structure for radio programs
• Evaluating on the ground the impacts of the programs broadcast by community radio stations
• Developing e-learning
In the framework program to combat poverty in place since 2002, which includes sub-points such as decentralization, the Niger government must clearly define its strategies in order to contribute financial support as an equitable complement (50/50) to the contribution of funding agencies. Letting people speak, exchange and dialogue are among the true values that Africa embodies.
Whatever the case may be, the Niger authorities must reiterate their firm compromise to continue accompanying the financial and logistical investment process, which is needed more than ever for sustainable peace and development. This is a necessary condition for receiving the support of development partners.