Farm Radio International marks World Radio Day
To celebrate World Radio Day this year, Farm Radio International (FRI) collaborated with UNESCO to produce an audio piece that highlights a unique radio program created in northern Ghana. FRI worked with broadcasting partner, Rite FM, to design a radio competition. The show focused on climate change, farming and the environment. You will find an audio piece which features FRI’s African Operations Director Gizaw Shibru describing the series below:
The competition was aimed at school-aged youth. Jonie Addo-Fening is the managing director at Rite FM. He says:
“A lot of the students, including my own son, were not very comfortable with [agriculture] and he takes agriculture in school. But, you know, when you ask him if he wants to take it as a career, he says ‘no, because the farmers are too poor.’ So it gave me this idea [...] to start thinking about who the future farmers of this country will be.”
The series featured a live audience, text message voting and teams of students creating segments for the broadcasts. It proved to be very popular with students. By the end of its six-week run, the radio station had received over 100,000 votes and texts about the shows.
The series was described in Farm Radio Weekly #228, in December of 2012 (“Reality radio at RITE FM, Ghana”). To find out more about the series, go to: http://weekly.farmradio.org/
To visit Rite FM’s website and find out more about their approach to broadcasting on farming, visit: http://www.ritefmonline.org/
