[Imc-africa] Radio Campagne

[sphinx]

Hi Jan ! Hi Bah! Hi all!
I find the starting of the discussion on radio as a very important or more
precisely the most important part of the concept of indymedia practices in Africa.
1-Because the equipment for small radio-broadcasting units are so cheap that we
can get the onces build by activists with as little as 200Euros.  With this we
get a little equipment which can broadcast programmes that will be recieved on
radio-sets in and arround the neigbourhood.

2-Radio is the most popular way to get information from and to communicate with
the grassroot which is the most important point of indymedia.

3-I think it is also not that complicated for one to start a project to
raisefunds  to finance the buying of such radio equipments as well as helping
African based groups with workshops to explain how the equipments works and how
to repair, manipulate and construct them. 

The rather complicated and most important aspect of these all is to have a
functioning local group, and to have them in a contact with themselves and with
other goups in the network out of Africa and above all have them within a
structure that is intergrated in the overall empowerment of their local
community. In this case being  part of the indymedia network whose principles of
non-heirarcy, participative media production try to help the building of
self-sustaining grassroot democratic structures.
It was in this context that the Dakar conference took place. Thus it will may be
  be tactically better if in that frame we carry the discussion as follows:
a.) How many of the few existing African imcs already have a radio project.
Planned to have one or will be ready to have one.
b.)How effective the the present existing African imcs carrying their task of  
production and distribution of news in their communitees if not why and or how
can that be improved.
c.) And for local imc groups that are in the process of becoming members of the
indymedia network, at what state are they now in the process?? how much outreach
are they doing and what difficulties are they getting and how can the
difficulties be resolved. 

There after one can see how to co-ordinate things and what we can do together.
Hope the various delegates who came to Dakar will give us a little update of the
 developments in their local groups since the Dakar Conference. From there one
can try to figure-out what next. Especailly as the worldwide preparation by
activists for the UN Conference on information Society (WSIS) for Novembr next
year in Tunis-Tunisia resume new speed with the prep com II meetings this week
in Tunis. At the Conference one could meet lots of people doing  community radio
projects and other similar projects arround the world and build more networks
and exchange ideas, to the over all interest of our purpose-improve  humanity.

I'm a member of the WSIS community media list and if we actively continue this
discussion and decide we wish to participate in Tunis, I can ask from within
that list for groups which can help us with support structures. But first lets
talk on the above first. 
Regards
Sphinx    



Quoting Yacine Bah <yacinebah at yahoo.fr>:

>  
> Merci bien
> Je suis content de votre réaction. Nous avons lancé un journal , les Ondes de
> Guinée dont le but de pousser le gouvernement à libéraliser les ondes. Nous
> sommes partants pour cette campagne pour Radio dont vous parlez. Nous
> aimerions partager votre expérience. 
> A bientôt, nous comptons vous envoyer des extraits de ce journal.
> Cordialement
> 
> Jan Suchanek <janmaat at piratinnen.net> wrote:
> Hello together
> 
> (for a vage french translation see below)
> 
> this is Janmaat from Germany, one of the participants of the
> Indymedia Conference in Dakar.
> 
> One of the main outcomes of the conference was that the most appropriate
> medium for Africa in any regard is radio. Now that our friends
> from Conacry mentioned this topic again, I want to come back to
> this.
> 
> We need a continent-wide campagne to build up independent radio
> stations. This can be done by teams sent out in marginalised
> areas with technical equipement for small radio stations. The
> technology shall be based on audio tape and simple transmitters
> which are both cheap, easily availiable and facil to maintain.
> 
> At the end of the campagne, we are organising a Community Radio
> Festival on Île de Gorée, Dakar.
> 
> Please consider this campagne and what part in it you could play
> and post on this list how you see the situation of radio in
> your countries and how to improve it.
> 
> If we can bundle our efforts, we can have a real media shake up
> of the african media scene and produce a lot of content from the voiceless
> for the voiceless and the rest of the world.
> 
> Looking forward for your replys.
> 
> Janmaat
> 
> PS. Below a copy of an interesting article on radio which was posted
> on the Dakar Conference Website before.
> 
> ---- french translation ----
> 
> Salut tout le monde
> 
> c'est Janmaat de l'Allemagne qui vous parle, un des participantes
> de la Conférence Indymeda Dakar.
> 
> Un des résultats de la conférence été que le media le plus approprié
> pour l'Afrique c'est la radio en chaque regard. Comment notre ami
> de Conacry a mentionné cette sujet encore, je returne a la issue.
> 
> On a besoin de une campagne a la échelle continentale pour établir
> des stations radio independantes. Ca peut-être réalisé par des
> équipes envoyées dans des areas marginalisées avec equipement technique
> pour des stations radio pétits. La technologie doit-étre basé sur
> cassette audio et émitters simples qui sont pas chers, facil à
> conseguir et facil a maintenir.
> 
> A la fin des cette campagne, nous allons organiser un festival
> de la radio communautaire sur Île de Gorée, Dakar.
> 
> S'il vous plait, considerez cette campagne et laquelle part vous
> pouvez jouer dedans et postez sur la liste comment vous régardez
> la situation de la radio dans votre pais et comment la meillieurer.
> 
> Si nous arrivons conjoindre nos effors, nous pouvons avoir un vrai
> "shakeup" (seisme?) de la scène media africaine et produir beaucoup
> de contenu des sans voix pour ceux sans voix et pour le reste du
> monde.
> 
> Je me rejouer lire votre réponses.
> 
> Janmaat
> 
> PS. En bas, une copie de un article interessant sur la radio qui
> a été publié sur la site webb de la conference à Dakar (en anglais).
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------
> 
> Indymedia Means in Africa - Radio
> von Janmaat - 06.04.2004 16:04
> 
> first postet on http://imc-in-africa.so36.net/
> 
> 
> The Dakar Conference was aiming to bring 
> the Indymedia philosophy to Africa. African 
> and European delegates had to learn from each 
> other. Some of the results are summarised here. 
> 
> 
> IN the developed countries, use of Internet has 
> wide spread. Today, there isn't hardly anyone 
> who does not use it. What started once as an 
> information exchange tool of government use, trickeled 
> down to companies and finally into everyone's 
> daily life. Every day commercial actions 
> such as cash withdraw or payment via credit cards 
> run over IP. With PCs and other 
> IT devices becoming consumer products, the World 
> Wide Web became one of the Internet's moste common 
> applications for almost everyone. Once the Web 
> startet being deploited for entertainment, people 
> discovered its vast possibilities for multiple 
> way communication, e.g. starting to use it for 
> participation. Platforms like Indymedia that 
> allow to post almost any kind of information 
> and thereby empowering the civil society to 
> gather information across countries and are 
> important supplements to more traditionall, one-way 
> means of mass communication as are radio or tv. 
> Moreover, events like the police violence in Geneva 
> were documentated on Indymedia fast and with 
> impressions right from the spot. Social movements 
> use the Web for mobilising the civil society. 
> Today, Indymedia covers over 50 countries world 
> wide. 
> 
> Sartet in the 90's of the last millenium as a 
> Internet platform, Indymedia is more than that. 
> It is, indeed, the idea to let the people be 
> the media itself. It uses the Web as the main 
> meeting point, where independent radio, tv, 
> and text journalism have their platform. It has 
> proven its quality showing events of great 
> interest for the people from an angle that would 
> never make its way through the corporate media 
> machine. 
> 
> So while the importance of Indymedia as a tool of 
> people's empowerment becomes more and more 
> obvious in developed countries, the more curious 
> of its users started to wonder why there was so 
> little coverage of developing countries. For 
> instance, while on out of 8 people populating 
> this globe lives in the Africa, the percentage 
> of Internet content covering this beautiful continent 
> amounts to no more than 0,3 percent. It is to 
> say, the Internet, praised for fostering transparency 
> world wide, is almost blind to developing 
> countries. Why such? 
> 
> Initiatives as the Indymedia Africa Conference 
> that was held in Dakar in March 2004, showed that 
> there is great demand for Internet use in Africa. 
> But contrarily to developed countries, Internet 
> access in Africa is very rare. Estimations say 
> that there are no more than 6 million computers 
> around - in a continent hosting about 800 million 
> people. Most of these computers are not connected 
> to any kind of net - including the electricity 
> network which is also very weak. There are only 
> about 2,6 million Internet users in Africa - 
> out of which 1.8 million live in South Africa. 
> What role do you see for Indymedia to play in 
> the rural areas of the trouble stroken continent? 
> People do hardly have the dime to buy anything 
> besides bread or rice for the whole family, who 
> cannot even afford access to drinkable water, 
> not to speak of electricity, telephone lines or 
> any kind of technical equipment. In Serrekunda, 
> Gambia's second city, you can easily spend more 
> than 5 minutes waiting for a single web page to 
> be displayed. Doing average emailing costs about 
> the amount of a meal if you are fast and 
> know how to do. And that is only because Serrekunda 
> is very close to the countrie's capital. 
> 
> >From this perspective, it was to be found astonishing 
> that delegates of the Dakar conference were 
> very interested in Indymedia technology at all. 
> 
> One major outcome of the conference was this: 
> you cannnot believe Africa to be functioning 
> as Europe does. Even in the OECD countries, 
> the civil society only started using the Web 
> once it had arrived in everyones household. 
> In Africa, Indymedia has to start from medias 
> which are already there. To give a voice 
> to the voiceless can only mean to transport the 
> medias of the poor that they already posses 
> to a broader public. The Internet can thus 
> serve to teach dwellers of the developed world 
> about the poor in the south. It can also 
> serve to connect crucial information hubs 
> inside of the continent, which is to say 
> improving the information flows between 
> different states and regions of Africa. It 
> simply doesn't catch the rural poor. 
> 
> But if you understand Indymedia in the broader 
> sense, once you free youself from seeing it 
> as an Internet affair only, the Indymedia 
> concenpt starts to be futil for Africa. It 
> is only a question of technical means. 
> 
> As pointed out, Africa has a very poor infrastructure. 
> Electricity, telephone lines, even roads are 
> extremely scarce. In the information sector, 
> wireless applications are on the run: in recent 
> years, growth of mobile telephone services have even 
> bypassed growth in fixed line connections. And 
> there are more wireless technologies which find 
> their way through the ether. Radio has a very 
> good history in Africa, the number of new stations 
> are increasing. But still, you don't have to 
> go far from the main African cities to find only 
> silence and white noise coming out of your radio. 
> 
> This is the point where Indymedia can make a 
> fortune in third world countries. Small transmitters 
> are definetly cheap and easy to build and maintain. 
> Promoting this technology, bringing transmitters 
> to the villages, can bring enormous benefits 
> to the people. It would allow rural communities 
> to bypass the often state-controlled media 
> institutions, broadcast in their own languages 
> and transmitt their own music. The equipment 
> requirements are low, and the effects could be 
> outrageous. A transmitter, a microphone, 
> two tape recorders for cutting the program 
> and some weeks of instruction are only neccessary. 
> 
> And once you get them making this kind of program, 
> you can be free getting the tape down to the 
> next broadband connection, digitalising it and post 
> it on the Indymedia page for the rest of the 
> world. 
> 
> Jan Suchanek 
> 
> All numbers from: Les Technologies de l'Information 
> et de la Communication dans le développement. DISD. 
> In: Ben Hamouda, Hakim / Kassé, Moustapha: 
> Le NEPAD et les enjeux du développement en Afrique. 
> Paris, 2002.
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Imc-africa at lists.indymedia.org
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-africa
> 
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