The Concoction

An Ethiopian woman's musings on Africa, the world and everything in between

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        Global Voices Online - The world is talking. Are you listening?
        Wednesday, April 04, 2007
        How far does citizen journalism go?
        Welcome, dear listeners, to the newest program of the series, Interactive Radio for Justice.... In this program, we receive questions about justice from the population.

        This is the beginning of a radio program in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The full story here.

        (photo: Personal Democracy Forum)

        It is encouraging to see that good old radio is being interactively used to give people voice in rural Africa. Congolese victims of war are at last having their say.

        With all the current "citizen journalism" hype, good work, half baked work, lousy work… over the internet, I wonder what "citizen journalism" using the internet means to those who don't have access to basic necessities let alone something fancy like the internet. This is of course considering the fact that those people are the majority and "citizen journalism" still refers to the global minority. It is a start, wonderful changes are happening because of citizen journalism, big companies are shaking in their boots... Still, it excludes the majority of global citizens.

        According to FAO "rural and community radio in Africa currently reach a far wider audience than the Internet or television." Well, that doesn't require rocket science to figure out.

        Listen to the challenges of rural radio broadcasting and how those challenges are met with basic technology to inform people about food security, livestock, water and other issues.

        It will be truly remarkable if some geek somewhere figures out a way to use podcasting and blogging the other way round. Upload rural voices from radios on the internet. Now that will be true citizen journalism.

        Relevant links

        Grassroots, local language climate reporting
        Community journalism in Africa
        Community journalism and development
        posted by Fikirte @ 9:36 AM   Digg!
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        Kamilat - victim of acid burning The face of VAW - violence against women. It should and can be stopped with enough commitment. Helping one woman at a time is a start.
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