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15
Voices to Africa Compared
*The BBC World Service has an estimated 60 million listeners in Africa, about 40 per cent of
its worldwide estimated audience of 150 million. Half of the BBC’s English listeners live in
Africa.
*The VOA has an estimated 39.4 million listeners in Africa, about 45 per cent of its worldwide
estimated audience of 87 million. Largest audiences are in Nigeria, the Horn of Africa and the
Great Lakes region.
*RFI has an estimated 15-16 million listeners in Africa, about a third of its estimated worldwide
listenership. Popular programs include
RFI Soir
, heard Mondays through Thursdays, and
Le
Debat Africain
, on Sunday mornings.
We are happy indeed with the service
of VoA in terms of balance and a
credible approach. We vote for that to
continue. It is like a religion to most
people. They don’t like to miss a
programme on VoA.
Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, Governor
of the State of Kaduna, Nigeria
The Imminent Dawn of a Polio-Free World?
VoA has helped millions of people around
the world, especially inAfrica, to learn where
they might immunize their children against
polio. In 1997, the Voice joined international
organizations, national governments and
NGOs including Rotary International in the
Global Polio Eradication Initiative, an
unprecedented public health care venture.
VoA has used listener contests, radio health
dramas, fan club conventions, charity
football matches, public service
announcements and other special programs
— 5,000 programme segments in all — to
help inform parents about the availability of
immunisation services for their children. Five
years ago, more than 350,000 cases of polio
were recorded each year. Today, there are
only 100 to 125 known cases worldwide, and
health specialists hope the world will be
entirely free of polio by 2005. Recently, VOA
listeners inAfrica were invited to tune to VOA
for information on synchronized national
immunization days (October 5/November 2)
in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory
Coast, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau,
Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria,
Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
Congo in Kinshasa just two days after
terrorists struck in New York and Washington
on September 11. Joseph Kabila was sitting
in his office and on his personal computer
was bbc.co.uk. “Either he is a very
considerate host and diplomat,” Langridge
says, “or an avid follower of the BBC in
English and French. My guess is that he was
and is both. Two days after 9/ll was a perhaps
a special time for him to access the most-
used news online site in the world.” In 2001-
2002, the World Service expanded its Somali
broadcasts and introduced a new website,
bbcsomali.com. Results were astonishing. The
site gets 800,000 to 1,000,000 page
impressions a month, and around 200,000
listens to audio on line. Audio usage there,
Langridge adds is the largest of all BBC
languages.
In addition to e-mails, the World Service has
phone-ins, fax, live calls from listeners,
notably on an English programme,
Talking
Point
, heard Sundays. The BBC French Service,
BBC Afrique
, broadcasts call-ins periodically
and recently had as a live guest the prime
minister of Niger. “A new development,”
according to Langridge, “is
Africa Live,
where
live audiences and experts are electronically
linked from two or three cities in the
continent to moderators in London or an
African capital city.” They discuss anything
from the burdens of family demands on
expatriate Africans, tests for HIV/AIDS, the
differences between East and West Africa.
Langridge adds that the programme, mainly
in English but also in other languages, may
soon feature African producers challenging
decision-makers in the West on tariffs, debt
and other economic issues.
Tailored public service television and radio
programmes
At VOA, producers are developing the most
innovative programming since the launching
of
Africa World Tonight
a decade ago. This
winter, the Africa Division has launched a
new weekly health call-in programme,
Housecall
, and is expanding its broadcasts
to Zimbabwe. A new one-hour evening
programme in English, Shona and Ndebele is
designed to provide news and information
denied to Zimbabweans because of the
Mugabe government’s severe crackdown
against the media. She hopes that VOA can
fill the resulting information vacuum with
“accurate and objective news. Our
broadcasts,” Dillard added, “will be fair to
all parties and will not be the tool of any
political group, government or opposition.”
Topics of VOA call-ins and current affairs
specials of particular concern to residents of
Zimbabwe: food shortages, school fees,
health problems (including HIV/AIDS),
inoculation campaigns against polio and
other diseases, family health and nutrition.
The Zimbabwe project is made possible by a
grant from the U.S. Agency for International
Development.
Meanwhile, a new relatively new production
unit within the Voice’s Africa Division, VOA
TV to Africa, is growing rapidly. In late 2002,
two new programs were launched:
Up Close
With Maimouna Mills
(a pioneer television
host at VOA) and
Healthy Living
(focusing on
prevention of HIV/AIDS and living with the
disease). Much of the activity was inspired
by the success of a weekly radio-TV-internet
simulcast call-in programme introduced in
August 2000,
Straight Talk Africa
. Its host,
veteran journalist Shaka Ssali, has
interviewed dozens of prominent Africans,
including more than 20 heads of state. VOA
interactives and interviews lately have
provided forums for both opposition and
government-backed candidates in local and
national elections ranging from Nigeria to
Kenya to Zimbabwe. The simulcast radio-
television programmes, and a more recent
addition called
Special Report Africa,
are all
in English.
In October 2001, VoA’s Africa Division also
launched its first weekly TV program in
French,
Washington Forum
. “We believe,” says
VOA TV to Africa manager Diane Butts, “that
with our new diverse programming, we can
continue to open new doors of understanding
and communication among the peoples of
Africa, America, and the rest of the world.
Future shows,” she adds, “will offer
something for every member of the
household, from the youth to the elderly.”
Television viewers and other observers agree
that the continuing success of the distinctly
interactive approach in international
broadcasting to Africa depends upon its
credibility. An American columnist, Austin
Bay, terms the BBC World Service Western
civilization’s “WMI, a Weapon of Mass
Instruction.” “The reason it works,” he writes,
“is credibility, not megawatts or megabucks.”
A Nigerian viewer of VoA’s TV to Africa, agrees.
In a letter to the staff of
Straight Talk Africa
,
Remi Oyeyemi wrote: “That fearless
programme … increased the credibility and
the integrity of your medium, a least with
120 million Nigerians.”
Diane Butts, of VoA TV to Africa
Alan Heil, retired deputy director of the
Voice of America
,
is an occasional
contributor to
The Channel.
