Fine-tuning Africa's radio stations : connecting communities and cultures : review essay

Abstract

For much of the 20th century, the increasing popularity of the radio as a 'hot' medium - to borrow Marshall McLuhan's words as quoted by David Hendy in his Radio in the Global Age - stimulated the imaginations of Africa's disparate and diverse communities. It not only kept them informed about their histories and cultures, but it also relayed information about the ongoing developments in and beyond their communities. The radio acted and continues to act as a powerful instrument that connected the pulsating and dynamic African cities with the mildmannered and placid African villages. It did so by transmitting news broadcasts about events that had taken place on different parts of their imagined continent and by relaying orally narrated stories about their communities' past.