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Radio in Africa: Past and Present

Journal of African Cultural Studies, volume 36, issue 1 (2024), 5 pp.
"A century after its appearance on the African continent, the radio set has become so ubiquitous and seemingly old-fashioned a technology that it is easily overlooked. But like the automobile - perhaps the only other late-nineteenth century invention to have had a greater impact - radio continues to have a profound global influence. If it tends to be outshone in the Global North by the more recent innovations of television and digital media, in the South radio continues to have a dominant presence, particularly in Africa where it retains its status as the most popular mass medium. A recent continental survey of news audiences by Afrobarometer suggested that 68% of Africans source their news from the radio on a daily or weekly basis, while only 53% get their news from the television and 37% from internet sources (Malophane 2022). Nor is the dominance of radio limited to countries that have low rates of internet access. Another recent survey found that 80% of South Africans listen to the radio at least once a week in a country where digital media attract their largest African audiences (Bosch 2022)." (Abstract)