Cameroon Engaged In African Rural Radio Program Analysis (ARRPA) Initiative

By James Achanyi-Fontem, ARRPA Cameroon
Cameroon is participating in an African Rural Radio Program Analysis (ARRPA) Initiative organized by Farm Radio International (FRI), a Canadian based charitable organization that supports broadcasters in meeting the needs of local small-scale farmers and their families in rural communities.FRI is supporting and implementing an investigative research program, ARRPA in five African countries namely: Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania. Tchetta Meli Evariste Rostand just returned from Arusha, Tanzania, where he participated in a face-to-face workshop on the use of the tools for the investigation following an online course facilitated by Bartholomew Sullivan based in the FRI Africa regional office.
The face–to-face training was coordinated by Doug Ward, the chair of the Board of Directors of FRI in the presence of the executive director, Kevin Perkins and his collaborators in Canada and Africa. The research project aims at discovering and documenting the farm radio programming continuum in order to understand all the key processes that take place at the radio station level in researching, producing and broadcasting radio programs for small-scale farmers. For 30 years now, FRI has been producing and distributing radio scripts in order to help radio stations create better programs for listening farmers, and more recently FRI has been sending out the Farm Radio Weekly news and information services. One of the questions that ARRPA seeks to answer is, “to what extent and how are these services used by broadcasters, and can they be enhanced or supplemented with additional resources in order to make a stronger contribution to the production of effective radio services for small-scale farmers?
During the face-to-face workshop in Arusha, Tanzania, the FRI Chair emphasized on
specific objectives of ARRPA:
To understand and document how radio stations go about producing and airing farm radio programs.
To document how FRI’ scripts, newsletters and other resources have been used in the stations’ farm radio programming.
To find out how to make our support services more useful to broadcasters in farm radio programming.
In working towards these objectives, FRI is partnering with four radio stations of different typologies producing and airing programs for farmers in the five African countries that are interested in the investigations. In Cameroon, Tchetta Meli is visiting five station: CRTV Littoral in Douala, Lebialem Community Radio in Menji, Radio Bare Bakem in the Moungo, Radio Yemba in Dschang and Radio Medumba in Bangangte for the investigation. The ARRPA initiative in Cameroon is piloted by Cameroon Link, that has been a partner of Farm Radio International for over 20 years.
It is expected that ARRPA will enable FRI determine what services are more useful to African broadcasters / radio stations and how best to support them in meeting the needs of local small scale farmers. Findings of the study will also inform FRI on the development and implementation of innovative farm radio services for smallholder farmers in line with its 2011-2015 strategic plan.
For more information, please visit the web site of Farm Radio International at- www.farmradio.org

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Extends A Hand To FRI

By James Achanyi-Fontem, Cameroon
Email: camlink99@gmail.com
The Executive Director of Farm Radio International, Kervin Perkins, has informed its African Partner Organizations that Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will continue to give support to FRI work in 2011. This information was made known in the FRI Weekly Bulletin of February 2011
To break the news, Kervin Perkins said, 2011 is off to a great start, at a time FRI completed the 42-month African Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI) and was already pulling together reports and spreading the news about what it learned because of the research.
FRI director acknowledged that FRI gathered compelling evidence, for the first time, that participatory radio works and works well! This means that when radio programs feature farmers' voices and perspectives and features practical, sustainable farming practices they are very widely listened to and have a measurable significant impact on farmers' knowledge and most importantly, their practices.
On the strength of these findings and the outstanding work of Farm Radio International's staff in Africa and Ottawa, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has offered a second grant to allow us FRI extend effective farm radio services to more farmers in more countries! The 92nd script package released in late December 2010, focuses on the very important issue of water integrity in Africa.
Farm Radio Weekly, is FRI electronic bulletin of news and information about small scale-farming for African radio broadcasters, and it passed the 1000 African subscriber mark in 2010. To strengthen its ability to serve these rural broadcasters even better, FRI have opened two small news bureaus in Africa - one in Malawi, and one in Burkina Faso. These bureaus are already generating original stories about farming issues for Farm Radio Weekly. Another exciting piece of news is that the 2010 winner of the George Atkins Communication Award, Grace Amito, will visit Canada in March 2011.
Grace is the producer and host of farm radio programs at Mega FM in Northern Uganda. During her travel to Canada, she will meet with and give presentations to friends of Farm Radio International in Ottawa, Toronto, Guelph and Montreal. Friends and donors to Farm Radio International will get hard facts about Africa and the work of FRI during the rounds. Brenda Jackson at brenda@farmradio.org is booking appointments on this eventful trip by our African colleague. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on how to expand FRI work in Africa, please email Kervin Perkins through kperkins@farmradio.org. For more on Farm radio International work, click on its web site - www.farmradio.org