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E-book Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa

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Penilaian

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The book examines the significant role played by radio in empowering women in three West African countries: Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The choice of these three countries enables a fair comparison: all three face similar social, economic and political problems, share similar religious, tra-ditional and cultural backgrounds and, most importantly for this book, all suffer from similar, particularly high levels of gender inequality. Geographically, they border one another and are all subject to conflict and a deteriorating security situation. These problems, compounded by COVID-19, have had a serious impact on women, many of whom will have become heads of households because of their husband’s seasonal labour migration or because of conflict and the deaths of their husbands and male relatives. Radio is the most important source of information in the three countries as limited electricity, little internet, extreme poverty, and low literacy rates render other sources inaccessible to many, despite the emergence of social media. The three countries have French as their official language, but it is spoken by only a very small minority of the population, in contrast to the multiple national languages. Research into this topic area and francophone West Africa is limited in anglophone aca-demic literature, and therefore, this book contributes to filling that gap.The book is based on five years of research conducted in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso investigating and assessing the impact of the work of Fondation Hirondelle, the Swiss-based media development organisation. That the book covers such a lengthy period, encompassing so many upheavals, allows some of the more recent difficulties experienced by women to be better acknowledged and understood.The book discusses the output of one Fondation Hirondelle radio stu-dio in each country, each funded by international development organisa-tions or corporations and each broadcasting nationwide from their country’s respective capitals. The three studios were purposively sampled to represent different stages of radio growth within the overarching organ-isation, allowing development and experience to be considered. Studio Tamani in Mali is the largest and ‘most stable’ of the three. It started in 2013 and has 85 partner radios throughout the country (in 2022), reach-ing 80% of the population; Studio Kalangou in Niger started broadcasting in January 2016 and has 52 partner radios (in 2022), reaching 60% of the population; and Studio Yafa in Burkina Faso is new, having started in 2019, with 37 radio partners in 2022 (there are no figures yet available for its reach). Each broadcasts in French and national languages on similar themes but for differing amounts of time reflecting their stages of devel-opment (Studio Tamani—3.15 hours daily each week; Studio Kalangou—2 hours daily each week; and Studio Yafa—approximately 40 minutes daily each week). They were all created by the Swiss-based media development organisation Fondation Hirondelle. All are run locally with local editors-in-chief and local journalists and produce general news and information programmes in the form of debates, news programmes and short magazine programmes. Rather than broadcasting directly to audiences, each studio broadcasts to partner radios throughout their countries, which then use their FM networks to transmit the programmes to their communities, enabling local populations to access the information via FM radio sets or phones, connected, or not, to networks. This partner-ship with community radios, or proximity radios, is important because it provides the opportunity for the studios to connect with listeners and maintain proximity with their audiences, thus cultivating trust.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

384.546 HEY r

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

247 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783031359859

Klasifikasi

384.546

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Radio Broadcasting in Africa

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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