At the heart of the global knowledge economy are changing patterns of communication and new technologies. But the uneven distribution of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) makes it likely that information poverty will reinforce ‘real poverty’ in poorer countries. In the face of the north-south digital divide, can community radio help bridge the gap?

A recent paper commissioned for the Imfundo Project, a UK Government initiative examining the potential for the use of ICTs in the promotion of education in developing countries, argues that community radio is well placed to overcome the constraints that maintain the north-south digital divide.

Tokyo has more telephones than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Television is a mass medium only in the most developed countries. Computers and the Internet are not accessible to most of the world's poor. As the north-south digital divide expands, radio appears to be the only electronic medium that minimises the constraints on access to information.

Reviewing the challenges for education and social development of the dynamics of power and knowledge in the global information economy, this paper examines the potential of radio, and in particular community radio, to bridge the digital divide.

Research findings include:

• Radio is a technology with low production and infrastructure costs and marginal costs of distribution close to zero.
• As an aural medium, radio does not exclude those who are unable to read or write and it is ideally suited to conveying content in vernacular languages.
• In SSA, there is one radio receiver for every five people, or roughly one per household compared with one telephone line for every 50 potential users, and only 100,000 internet accounts outside of South Africa.
• Community radio offers a local counter-balance to global media concentration and the predominance of state institutional agenda setting. It promotes human rights, empowerment, democracy and active citizenship.
• With a single internet connection a radio station can connect people into a global dialogue while providing the means to place that in a local context.
• Community radio requires an environment in which the right to communicate is a fundamental human right essential to the maintenance of a democratic society.

Policy recommendations include:

• Greater awareness is needed of the educational and developmental potential of community radio among policymakers, regulators, non-government and community service organisations.
• Legislative reform should take account of the specific characteristics of community radio and provide for its support within the policy and regulatory framework.
• Assistance is needed to enable existing community radio stations to adapt to new digital production technologies and to increase their access to the Internet.
• Strategic links should be encouraged between community radio and telecentre development as well as other opportunities to cluster community media resources.
• Online and technology based learning centres should incorporate creative production facilities and access to local radio distribution as well as the Internet.
• Support for community radio development should be provided through intermediary bodies at national and regional level through training, guidance and mentoring.

Source(s):
‘Community Radio - the New Tree of Speech', Imfundo Background Paper #19, by S. Buckley, 2000 Full document.

Funded by: No. 10 Policy Unit, UK Government, 2000.

id21 Research Highlight: 20 June 2002

Further Information:
Steve Buckley
AMARC Europe
15 Paternoster Row
Sheffield
S1 2BX
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 114 221 0592
Fax: +44 (0) 114 279 8976
Contact the contributor: steve.buckley@commedia.org.uk

AMARC

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