On the job for Radio Ndeke Luka, in the Central African Republic.
A debate on the radio’s mission, live from Radio Ndeke Luka’s main studio.
In Central Africa, independent radio lags ten years behind the western part of the
continent.
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Côte
d’Ivoire and Togo: going their own way
Unlike neighbouring
countries in West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo have followed the same itinerary
as the nations of Central Africa: a bumpy transition to democracy, a venomous social
climate and the lack of political will to liberalize broadcasting or to apply existing
laws.
In 1993, Côte d’Ivoire allocated FM frequencies to just five radio stations,
of which four were foreign (RFI, BBC, Africa N°1 and Nostalgie) and one was close
to the government. Since then, only diocesan radio stations have been allowed to
operate. Licenses have been granted only since 1998 (52 at last count), and under
very strict conditions.
They are only allowed to broadcast within a 10-kilometre radius and cannot air political
programmes. Advertising can only come from local companies. With regulations like
these, it is no wonder that private radio is developing extremely slowly.
In Togo, the law on broadcasting liberalization was ratified on November 30, 1990,
but the regulatory body has not granted a single definitive license. This means that
existing private radio stations are broadcasting illegally. Initiatives such as Kanal
FM, founded in August 1997, and Nana FM, launched at the big Lomé market in
August 1999, are trying to develop without daring to venture into the area of political
information.
Legal vagueness allows Togo’s government to boast about so-called radio pluralism
while keeping a tight grip on private stations, to the dismay of the Togolese Organization
of Independent Radio and Television, which is campaigning for a clarification of
the status of private radio stations in Lomé.
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As
soon as a radio station strays from the official line, it is suspected of inciting
rebellion or tribal hatred |
Radio,
the most widely used medium in Africa, can only flourish on democratic soil, which
helps to explain why private stations are thriving in the west and not in the centre
of the continent
Chad has only six private
radio stations, while Mali boasts 100… What explains this tremendous disparity? The
two countries are similar on several counts. They are the same size (a little over
1,200,000 square kilometres), and neither has access to the sea. Both were French
colonies and lived through long years of military dictatorship after achieving independence
in 1960. And last year, they ranked among the world’s poorest countries, with a per
capita income of $261 for Mali and $240 for Chad.
“An unfavourable political environment and socio-cultural factors” slow down the
development of radio pluralism, says Gilbert Maoundodji, director of FM Liberté,
Chad’s second independent radio station, launched last year. “The people who govern
here have not yet completely assimilated the values of collective action, freedom,
tolerance and democracy. That sets up a roadblock to initiative.”
A country’s political context rubs off on its airwaves. Mali, which held free elections
in 1992 and has set up democratic institutions that function reasonably well, launched
its first private radio station in March 1991. Radio Bamakan paved the way for a
host of others, including Radio Liberté, Radio Kayira and Klédu FM.
In early 1993, Chad settled for a parody of a “national conference,” generally intended
as a broad policy consultation. Yet it only strengthened the power of President Idriss
Déby, who took the reins through armed force. As a result, even religious
stations found it difficult to make a breakthrough. The first Catholic station, La
Voix du Paysan (“Voice of the peasants”), started broadcasting in 1996. The lay station
Dja FM followed suit only three years later. Other stations, including FM Liberté,
Radio Brakos, and the brand new Duji Lokar FM (“Morning Star”) came later. And plans
for a private weekly radio station, L’Observateur, are on the verge of fruition.
Confiscating
equipment “needing repair”
Chad’s
example is emblematic of Central Africa as a whole, which seemed to have a lead over
its western neighbours when Africa N°1, the first and only French-language pan-African
radio station, began broadcasting in Gabon in 1980. But since African states began
turning to democracy in the early 1990s, West Africa has witnessed an explosion of
independent radio stations: their number has soared to over 400. In Central Africa,
however, private investment in broadcasting remains minimal. Chronic instability
has set the region ten years back. Most countries there, including the Central African
Republic and the Republic of the Congo, are beleaguered by simmering armed conflicts,
if not all-out war, as in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC).
In the eastern part of the DRC, for example, rebels have confiscated the few private
radio stations that existed before the August 1998 war. Radio Muungano’s transmitter
was taken to Uganda in October 2000 on the pretext that it needed repairs, and to
date has not been returned. When they don’t control programme content, insurgent
groups simply do away with the equipment. The government’s methods are just as drastic.
In September 2000, Radio Télévision Kin Malébo (RTKM) was nationalized
outright and three private television networks closed down. Only religious radio
stations are allowed to broadcast, as long as they steer clear of politics.
In countries at peace, such as Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Cameroon, the brakes
on pluralism are often intitutional. Since 1990, when a law on broadcasting freedom
was passed, the Cameroon government has used all kinds of subterfuge to prevent the
emergence of private radio, with the exception of rural and community stations launched
by Unesco or the Intergovernmental Francophone Agency.
For example, Radio France Internationale (RFI), which broadcasts throughout Africa,
could not be received on FM in Yaoundé until February this year. “We had been
in contact with Cameroon since 1992, as part of a cooperation agreement to include
RFI in the national radio station’s technical structure,” says Hugues Salord, RFI’s
director for international affairs. “But we were unable to clinch the deal until
the decree of April 3, 2000, which benefited not only RFI, but Africa N°1, the
BBC, and other local private radio stations.”
It took ten years for the decree to be signed, but the obstacles remain. Officials
have increased administrative complications, imposed very short application deadlines
(four months) and demanded exorbitant fees for operating licenses–$15,400 in a country
where a civil servant’s average monthly salary is $120. Most of the proposed projects
were therefore eliminated, and one of the stations that had operated until then on
an experimental basis, Radio Soleil, had to stop broadcasting in June 2000.
The
art of bureaucratic subversion
As
a free medium which reaches a wider population than print, partly because of broadcasting
in local dialects, partly because of high illiteracy rates, radio arouses the mistrust
and hostility of political leaders. Hence their inclination to maintain a government
monopoly on broadcasting to foil an independent media that is often virulent and
close to the opposition. The airwaves are strategically important for politicians,
who will go to great lengths to control them by any means. For example, on February
22, 1994, Gabonese army tanks destroyed the facilities of Radio Liberté. The
government later claimed it was because the opposition was using the station as a
propaganda mouthpiece!
“Radio Liberté? It was the devil’s radio… The army and security services…
destroyed their facilities. We’ve returned to the normal game of democracy since,”
wrote Gabon’s president, Omar Bongo, in his recently published book, Blanc comme
Nègre.
Bongo’s comments illustrate the demonization of free radio in Central Africa. The
ghost of Rwanda’s Radio Télévision des Mille Collines (RTLM), which
played a key role in mobilizing the killers who perpetrated the 1994 genocide, still
haunts the region. Today, political leaders disinclined to accept broadcasting freedom
point to it as an example, conveniently forgetting that RTLM was initially close
to the Kigali government. The result: as soon as a radio station strays from the
official line, it is suspected of inciting rebellion or tribal hatred. Equatorial
Guinea has taken drastic steps to avoid that risk: not a single private radio station
has been allowed on its soil!
Besides political factors, the weakness of civil society has clearly helped slow
down the growth of independent radio in Central Africa. Local NGOs and grassroots
organizations are not involved enough in national political debate. This results
in indifference on the part of donors likely to help set up radio stations, especially
by training staff and supplying equipment. “I obtained a frequency last year, but
can’t afford to purchase equipment,” says Begoto Oulatar, director of N’Djamena Bi-hebdo,
Chad’s most famous newspaper, which is now branching onto the airwaves.
Economic woes also prevent private radio from gaining a foothold in central Africa.
Public networks receive the lion’s share of advertising, the only source of income
for independent radio, which cannot count on user fees. To stay out of trouble, businesses
avoid advertising on stations with a reputation of being hostile to the government.
Take the case of Gabon’s Radio Soleil, which rose from the ashes of Radio Liberté
and was suspended five times in four years. During a 1999 Yaoundé conference
on pluralist media, Makaga Virginus, a station representative, explained companies’
reluctance to invest on its airwaves: “we were not subservient enough to the central
government, which has very close ties to the business world.”
Electronic
inroads to state monopolies
But
there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of radio in Africa. New technology
is making equipment lighter, smaller and less expensive. Direct access to information
on the Internet will probably prompt officials to loosen their grip. And there is
likely to be a change of mentality with the slow but steady influx of foreign radio
networks such as RFI, the BBC and Voice of America, which may end up softening political
rigidity.
Local radio stations created by international and non-governmental organizations,
such as the Central African Republic’s Radio Ndeke Luka, (heir to the United Nations
radio in Bangui), or Burundi’s RSF-Bonesah FM (founded by veterans of Radio Umwizero,
an initiative of the Association for Humanitarian Action), will also help along the
process. Worldwide groups like the Panos Institute, the Research and Technology Exchange
Group (Gret), the Hirondelle Foundation and Search for Common Ground, which have
contributed to radio pluralism in West Africa, are beginning to focus on Central
Africa.
The audiovisual landscape is changing in most countries. A case in point is Cameroon,
where the TV Max private television network, founded in August 2000, was barely two
months old when the public network adjusted its programmes to compete! Why don’t
private radio stations do the same? If the area acquired a network of groups and
NGOs working to promote independent radio, there is hope that Central Africa would
soon catch up with its neighbours in the west.
The 2001 Free Frequencies festival, an initiative of Kinshasa’s Réveil FM
(from March 19 to 22), was a step in the right direction. It brought together several
Central African operators and has already laid the groundwork for a regional organization
to defend the rights of private radio.
• Intergovernmental Francophone Agency, 13, quai André-Citroën
75015 Paris, France Web: http://agence.francophonie.org
• Panos Institute 9 White Lion St, London N1 9PD, UK
Web: http://www.panos.org.uk
• GRET - Research and Technology Exchange Group 211-213, rue La Fayette, 75010
Paris, France Web: http://www.gret.org
• Hirondelle Foundation 3, rue Traversière, 1018 Lausanne, Switzerland
Web: http://www.hirondelle.org/
• Search for Common Ground 1601 Connecticut Ave. N.W. Suite 200 Washington,
DC 20009, USA Web:http://www.sfcg.org |
