On Thursday February 13, 2025 Africa joined the rest of world to celebrate the role that radio, still considered the most widely accessed medium on the continent on the plays in the understanding, management and impact of climate change in short and long terms.
African radio stations have unknowingly covered very crucial aspects of climate change for many decades dating back to Western colonial rule, with the main focus among grassroots communities being weather reporting and environmental conservation.The medium has been the most suitable because it can quickly reach people at a large scale, including those living in regions that are very difficult for humanitarian organisations to access with aid. Using local languages, radio can also help empower individuals to take immediate action and encourage communities to work together, thus increasing their adaptive capacity.
Most joint venture initiatives linking radio programming and climate change knowledge in developing countries presently concentrate on sharing alerts and forecasts that help farmers to prepare for adverse weather conditions.Information sharing facilitates for early preventative measures since such content remains critical in communicating local climate change adaptation measures as once reported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Nairobi Work Programme.
In these instances, community radio, due to its location and simplicity has the potential to strengthen community voices and make available an accessible space for exchanging useful information and knowledge between communities that are most likely to endure similar effects.
In some parts of Africa several initiatives have been established to strongly promote climate change mitigation, future proofing and adaptation using radio. For example, BBC Media Action, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) charity works with international radio stations including those in East Africa and the horn of Africa in building their capacity to produce climate change programs for rural communities whose livelihoods are highly dependent on the weather conditions.
“Our aim is to build the capacity of these radio stations to produce quality programming that meets the information needs of their audiences. We do this by providing remote and on-the-job training to journalists working at these radio stations, many of whom do not have formal training but have a deep passion for journalism” said Diana Njeru a BBC Media Action project manager based in Nairobi, Kenya
Mtaani Radio also in Nairobi, has, according to the station manager Kelvin Nyangweso designed guidelines to assist radio journalists on safeguarding measures when reporting on environmental disaster issues.
“We train them about disaster management and also give them protective gear when they go to the field to report news and make programmes. They should always file from safe zones; we liaise with people from emergency services so that they respond urgently whenever safety needs arise” Nyangweso told The Standard.
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At global level Unesco advocates for stronger protections and support for journalists who cover climate-related matters to ensure the provision of accurate, independent information to the public.
“Protecting journalists is synonymous with protecting the public’s right to know,” emphasised Mirta Lourenco the body’s chief of media development and media in emergency.
“Transparency and accountability are key for environmental reporting, which is why the safety of those on the front lines of this work is crucial.” she added in an interview with RedTech radio magazine.
The Panos Institute for Southern Africa headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, revealed the director Vusumuzi Sifile Sibanda, has instituted a number of interventions aimed at strengthening the capacity of radio personnel at radio stations, especially among poor and marginalised communities in the region,to seek and share information for use when engaging with each other and different regional stakeholders especially key decision makers.
Explained Sibanda, a former The Standard and NewsDay journalist: “We have done this through trainings on diverse development matters looking at the thematic issues that the radio stations have to address but also strengthening the skills capacity of radio practitioners. We have also trained them on different aspects of climate change including resilience, justice and sustainable natural resources management, including agriculture.”
“On the technical side”, elaborates Sibanda “we have trained them on how to deploy digital technology and related tools to access information and package content that can be fact-checked, verified and help to grow their audiences.”
In Ghana, a radio programme produced by Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA), Farm Radio International and various community radio stations reportedly reached more than 240 000 farmers with daily, weekly, and seasonal forecasts and information on climate-smart agriculture technologies and practices.
“Farmers need climate information to be delivered in formats that can be easily understood and radio achieves this by delivering the information through voice and local languages. They always want it in a language they can understand.” said Gideon Sarkodie a radio presenter with Adars FM in Kintampo in the Bono East region.
AICCRA’s collaboration with Farm Radio International and community radio stations in the West African country increased farmers’ use of daily, weekly, and seasonal forecasts and associated advisories, thus improved their capacity to choose and adopt the most appropriate and efficient climate smart technologies and practices to boost productivity.
“Because AICCRA brought the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) on board, people in the implementing zones actually learned about weather forecasting. They have come about to say, ‘Ok, we cannot do without weather forecasting’. And so AICCRA brought in these other partners who could upscale the forecasts to many people — like the Esoko weather platform and Farm Radio International,” explained Francisca Martey of GMet.
The Congo Basin, is a region where there is a still relatively high incidence of illiteracy, very localised languages and dialects and remote settlements, communicating information can be a challenge.This therefore calls for an urgent need of disseminating information about the effects and prevention of climate change widely.
Climate change on its own may not always be classified as an immediate danger, but broadcasting information about the challenges it causes to the environment and livelihoods is essential for disaster proofing the future. That’s why since way back in 2013, a project called Climate Change and Forests in the Congo Basin (COBAM) created a radio programme about climate change mitigation.
Named Changing Seasons, the programme was designed to create a sharing platform where listeners could hear about climate change in their forest communities in ways that were engaging, and practical. There were discussions about the scientific basis of climate change and its impacts and how to manage forests now that climate change is the reality.” revealed COBAM’s Anne Marie Tiani who was coordinator and co-evaluator of reach and impact surveys.
The show was broadcast in four of the most widely spoken languages in Central Africa – the Bantu languages of Lingala and Kituba, French and Pidgin English. It ran across Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on both small community radio stations and larger public national stations.
In celebrating 2025 World Radio Day Unesco urges broadcasters to pay closer attention to the quality and diversification of information sources as their weight has increased in the treatment of climate change-related information.
Warned Unesco in unpacking the 2025 theme: Deconstructing the arguments of climate sceptics, taking stock of greenwashing, deciphering economics of ecology, reporting on the divergent treatment of climate activists, investigating the lack of action or the obstacles to solutions, all require expert, diverse and reliable sources.
- John Masuku, a media consultant and radio trainer was UNESCO’s 2023 World Radio Day International Campaign Coordinator. Contact him on Email: jjwpmasuku55@gmail.com and on X: @john_masuku
