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When radios forget World Radio Day!
Writer: Odoobo C. Bichachi. PHOTO/COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Uganda radio stations seem to devote enormous time towards discussing mostly sex and relationships. It doesn’t matter what time of the day, but tuning into any FM station will likely give you a song and a conversation on one relationship/sex problem or another. That’s okay, after all, life is a product of sex/relationships. But life is not all about sex and relationships!
Yesterday was World Radio Day, usually marked every February 13 since 2012!So, did you listen to radio yesterday? Chances are you did; either in a vehicle while going to work, as you passed by a shop with blaring speakers in the trading centre, or just at home as you went about your chores. I did listen to radio yesterday as I drove to town, shifting the knob to different stations – local and international – particularly the hourly news bulletins.
Curiously, none of them mentioned World Radio Day! Does this mean those being celebrated were not celebrating? Anyhow, one of the new things on radio yesterday was the return to the airwaves of Dembe FM 90.4 after several months’ hiatus. I loved the vibes. Make it a point to tune in. Dembe FM is one of the two NMG-Uganda radio platforms and broadcasts in Luganda. The other is KFM 93.3. Back to World Radio Day, the 2025 theme is “Radio and Climate Change”. This is a very important picking considering the climate crisis the world faces, and the unassailable reach radio has in the world.
Last year (2024) was the planet’s warmest year on record, according to recent analyses by scientists. This means the world is far from winning the fight against global warming. Radio, on the other hand is the communication medium that reaches by far most people in the world, reaching nearly 3.9 billion people globally as of 2024 (UNESCO).In Uganda, radio remains the medium of choice for majority.
According to a 2024 Twaweza report quoted in The Independent news magazine, “Citizens continue to point to the radio as their main source of information (56 percent), from 79 percent in 2017 well ahead of any other form of media. However, it continues to show a decline, with other sources gaining ground, including TV (16 percent, up from 9 percent seven years ago), word of mouth (16 percent, up from 4 percent), the internet (4 percent, up from 0 percent) and social media (3 percent, up from 1 percent),” the report reads in part.”
This year’s World Radio Day theme is therefore a call on radio stations to leverage their enormous reach to preach the message of climate change and what can be done – at a collective, governmental, or personal level – to create the little changes that together will impact on the efforts towards slowing or reversing global warming.
Unfortunately, Uganda radio stations seem to devote enormous time towards discussing mostly sex and relationships. It doesn’t matter what time of the day, but tuning into any FM station will likely give you a song and a conversation on one relationship/sex problem or another. That’s okay, after all, life is a product of sex/relationships.
But life is not all about sex and relationships! Supposing Uganda radio stations in-between music devoted a little time every day to discussing community practices that affect our immediate environment – like domestic garbage disposal, then perhaps practices of dumping rubbish in storm water drains or pouring dirty dish water into the road (prevalent in suburbs) would perhaps be minimised. Or supposing radio stations picked a campaign to change people’s “epidemic” inclination to take polythene bags (buveera) from retail shops to carry in anything, including those already packaged.
A conversion on why a plastic bottle of mineral water should not be put in a kaveera only for the user to throw both away minutes later (usually in the storm drains) could empower people to reject polythene bags from shop keepers, helping save the soil and drains. Then there is the uneducated habit of trimming grass off the road sides next to storm drains, thus exposing top soil and facilitating soil erosion that causes siltation and blockage of culverts. A regular conversation around such issues could wake up roads authorities to champion more environmentally sensible practices, instead of continuing with what their grandparents used to do around the home yards.
According to the Twaweza report, quoting Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), there were 264 radio stations across Uganda as of 2024. Of these, 77 radio stations are in Central Uganda, 82 in Western Uganda, 58 in Northern Uganda and 47 in Eastern Uganda. Those are huge numbers and significant voices that could impact the environment if only they took their minds off sex and politics for a few moments every day. Let World Radio Day 2025 be the starting point of reflection for our radios.
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