"Community radio is participatory radio with a social development purpose"
The World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC)-Africa

A colleague of mine told me an interesting story recently. She works with a project that has to do with the establishment of three rural community radio stations--one in Mang'elete, Kenya, one in Terrat, Tanzania and one in Kagadi, Uganda. The aim of the project was to enable the communities involved to analyse and debate development issues from their own perspectives, thus providing a linkage between local-level experiences of development on the one hand and the national-, regional- and international-level policies that shape those experiences. Beyond production of content, all three communities also own and manage their stations.

The Kenyan station, Mang'elete Community Radio, was the last to go on-air due to the protracted wrangling to get a licence and a frequency for the station. Under the former government, little movement was initially possible. The former ruling party was clear about not wanting independent electronic media to go beyond the capital city.

The regulator, in a more open and reasoned fashion, had concerns about the definitions of a 'community,' definitions of a 'community radio station' and so on. The preconceptions were many. That, in Kenya, a 'community' could only be understood to be an 'ethnic' community. That no 'community' at the local level, however well-organised and prepared to run a station, would be able to withstand the political (disguised as ethnic) pressures that would inevitably be brought to bear on it to slant its coverage to the advantage of one political faction or party over another. And so on.

Finally, after much negotiation and some political intervention, the station got its licence and frequency. The story my colleague told me has to do with what happened since. Once the station went on-air, its value to those politically-inclined sharply rose. It started raising money through community service announcements. The women's group which had initiated it found themselves quickly shunted aside as men sought to gain control of management and programming. The men quickly factionalised. The coordinator was accused of nepotism and corruption. In short, it was a mess.

My colleague, whose role was merely to facilitate fundraising, training and technical support for the three community radio stations was forced to step in, together with colleagues from the other two stations in Tanzania and Uganda. Attempts at reconciliation failed. She finally, with the help of the local provincial administration, ordered the station off-air to enable sanity to prevail again. Finally, two months later, all has been resolved. Women are back in charge of the management committee, with a clearer sense of how to manage personal and political interests. A temporary caretaker has been found to run the station pending conclusion of inquiries into the financial allegations. And valuable lessons have, hopefully, been learnt about the difficulties of 'participation.'

I thought about her story earlier this year, reading reports on the elaboration and implementation of projects under Kenya's new Constituency Development Funds (granted to all constituencies for spending on development under the constituency's representative to parliament). When she had first called me, at the height of the crisis, I was tempted to throw the baby out with the bath water. That is, to take the story as yet another example of why 'participation' does not work. Sad, but true--it is so easy to become cynical and jaded. But another colleague cautioned both of us, reminding us that people's experiences of genuine control--at any level--are still too fragile, too new to dismiss what first, inevitably, happens when their control is genuinely facilitated.

So perhaps it is unsurprising then that since the reports on the CDF projects were done, much critique has arisen. The Law Society of Kenya pointed to their unconstitutional nature given that they are monitored by parliament, whose members serve as the chairs of the CDF committees. The reports themselves pointed to problems in the make-up of some CDF committees--as usual, accusations of nepotism abounded. The reports also showed the disparity of approaches to project prioritisation. The more rational committees opted for projects that already existed but had been stalled or for projects determined by constituency-wide consultations on project priorities. The less rational committees opted for projects in the personal and political interests of the committees' chairs.

None of these are insignificant problems and they do have to be addressed. Particularly if we understand the CDF projects to be a short-term, interim step towards decentralisation and devolution. Constitutional or not (and they should be brought in line with constitutional principles), the CDF projects are an experiment. As is Mang'elete Community Radio. Experiments from which we all should take pointers as to how to most effectively involve our 'communities' not only in a determination of our own development interests, but in the management of those interests. That implies that our parliamentarians should stop seeing them as their own personal property but rather as their opportunity to enable informed and genuinely bottom-up 'participation.'

Is that too tall an order?

* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the Executive Director of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET)

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