The Panos Institute in the Face of New Challenges: Radio Pluralism and ICTs in West Africa

By Diana Senghor - Director of the Panos Institute of West Africa (IPAO), Dakar-Ponty, Senegal

Biography

Since January 2000, Diana Senghor has been the Director of the Panos Institute of West Africa, an independent international institution, and a member of the Panos Institute Network, based in Dakar. Previously, she was the founder and director of the West Africa Program of the Panos Institute in Paris. Diana Senghor has also been Editor-in-Chief of a number of West African magazines, such as Family and Development, and Living in Another Way, as well as an Assistant in Anthropology at the Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar. Diana Senghor holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Paris I (Pantheon - Sorbonne), and is the author of numerous articles, as well as the co-ordinator of different publications.

Abstract

During the past ten years, the Panos Institute has actively encouraged the emergence and then the reinforcement of radio pluralism in West Africa, by supporting the principal actors and forces carrying out this work, often anticipating what the stakes and challenges will be.

In 1993, the Panos Institute organised the first regional, and perhaps continental, conference on this subject in Bamako. At that point in time, there existed hardly more than a half dozen radio stations in the area which were not government-owned.

Today, more than eight years later, it is obvious that the West Africa radio landscape has undergone an enormous upheaval.

• In the first place, the number of radio stations has hugely increased, going from the forty which existed before 1993, to the 426 stations which were operating in January, 2001, corresponding to a ten-fold increase.
• Above all, however, it is the diversity of these radio stations, which characterises the radio landscape today. Whereas the number of government-owned stations has remained relatively stable, the years running from 1995 to 2000 have witnessed the extremely rapid and nearly exclusive development of commercial and religious radio stations, and/or urban radio stations, to which broadcasting frequencies were far more willingly attributed. This tendency has, however, been reversed today. The number of association radio stations has now surpassed that of the community stations, and the number of stations located outside the region's capital cities is far greater today than that of the urban stations.
• And finally, it is the local and neighbourhood character of the stations which undoubtedly characterises the new radio landscape in an even more decisive manner. Nearly all of the new stations are local stations which broadcast their programmes in FM.

There are hundreds of local radio production centres operating in West Africa today. And we are well aware of the role these radio stations are playing in laying the roots of democratic culture in the region. These stations, in point of fact:

• Provide a sounding board to certain categories of persons (young people, children, women) who have not had one before, as well as allowing them to discuss subjects which have been heretofore taboo, such as sexuality
• Allow for discussions which have not been possible before, such as between elected officials and average citizens
• Permit the flowering of skills which have been hidden, unused, or very little appreciated, by providing a radio microphone to the village nurse, or the village historian
• Create or reveal new skills
• Mobilise activities involving solidarity and new social commitments, as, for example, in the case of volunteers at certain community radios, and small local entrepreneurs who contribute to the stations' funding.

Briefly then, the new radio stations would certainly appear to be an original cultural phenomenon, one that is capable of generating social dynamics that are both new and unexpected. In addition, they appear to be a decisive factor as well as an engine for change and development.

Nevertheless, this idyllic tableau has its nuances, and the coin has its flip side:

• The relevance, utility and social impact, as well as the quality of the programme contents that are produced and broadcast by a large number of local radio stations appear to be quite mediocre
• The professional qualifications of the animators at the radio stations remain inadequate
• The geographical imbalance and the economic viability of certain radio stations raise a number of questions
• A final paradoxical effect concerns the competition among the actors in the radio sector.

How will the Panos Institute attempt to meet the different challenges that are posed by the pluralistic nature of information in the year 2001?

The Panos Institute for West Africa, through its Radio Department, would like to contribute in:

• Diversifying and socialising the programme contents that are broadcast and/or produced by the radio stations
• Reinforcing the professional capabilities at the radio stations
• Participating in rendering the radio stations more viable
• Creating the synergies needed between the actors involved in the radio communication process, and generating these synergies.

The paper continues with regard to IPAO's experience, in terms of the ICTs, and on the lessons learned from the on-line BDP programmes, and Residel.