40 Years of Broadcasting from London in African Languages

Graham Mytton

In 1957 the BBC began broadcasts from London in Somali, Hausa and Swahili. Through these broadcasts the BBC has made a major contribution over the past forty years to communication in Africa and to the development and use of these major languages. Writing about broadcasting for anyone with an interest in archives, sources and permanent records of any kind raises some problems. The importance of radio and television in the history of the 20th Century is without question. But the problem remains for the writer and scholar to find or be able to refer to any good sources at all for a medium that is, by its very nature, ephemeral. If anything is kept it is for the purpose of using again, not generally for the sake of history.

The Importance of Radio in Africa Broadcasting, mainly through radio, has been of particular importance in Africa. Its arrival on the continent in the 1920s was not of major significance at that time. This was because although many colonial settlers and officials soon acquired sets in order to hear broadcasts from London, Paris, Hilversum or the very few African transmitters, very few indigenous Africans had sets. Very few of them lived in houses with an electricity supply. There were battery driven radio sets, but these were expensive and cumbersome and there were very few in Africa. The arrival of the transistor changed all this forever and led to radio becoming widely available, being both cheap and capable of being run on torch batteries. As a result, radio became the major mass communications medium of Africa during the 1960s. It was the discovery in 1948 of the semi-conducting properties of silicon by three inventors, Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley, working in the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United States, that made this happen. They had little idea at the time of the significance of their discovery but it was probably the single most important technological development of the 20th century. Their breakthrough led not only to the transistor revolution that began about ten years after their first crude device was made but also, as the technology improved, to miniaturisation and digitisation that has made possible the massive changes in the whole field of information that have marked the closing years of the century. You would not think that radio was an important medium in Africa if you relied for your evidence on articles and books about the continent's history, politics, society or culture. Few of them ever mention broadcasting, even though it plays such an obvious role in political events and in the development of such things as music and language. While most of Africa's printed press has been in the languages of the former colonial powers, radio has been less

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dependent on these relatively 'elite' languages. The first broadcasts specifically aimed at African audiences were in Northern Rhodesia in 1941 and were in indigenous languages. This Central African Broadcasting Station, as it became known, eventually broadcast in most of the major languages of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.3 Elsewhere, especially in anglophone Africa, similar policies were followed and indigenous languages provided the mainstream of all radio broadcasting. To this day many more African languages are used in radio than in the press. Radio broadcasting in sub-Saharan Africa grew very rapidly from the mid 1950s onwards, both in transmission and reception. The mostly low-powered and limited facilities used by the colonial powers were gradually upgraded and extended. More powerful transmitters were brought in and improvements were made to broadcasting facilities. However, African broadcasting remained in the hands of the state, almost without exception. The colonial authorities, prior to their departure, had regarded broadcasting as something that they should control as an instrument of persuasion and propaganda. The governments of the newly independent states took much the same view. By 1982, when I wrote a book on the media in Africa, I could find only three privately owned radio stations on the entire continent, and a further three owned by religious organisations.4 This near monopoly has recently begun to loosen as private radio stations have begun to emerge. At the time of writing there are more than 300 radio stations in Africa owned and run by organisations independent of the state. Some are commercial, some religious and some community-based. The dominance of the state in African broadcasting is one reason why there is so much listening to international radio stations like the BBC. The lack of local choice, which was typical of all African countries until recently, is still the case in more than half of Africa's 53 nation states. It has meant that levels of listening to the BBC and a few other international radio stations, most notably Deutsche Welle from Germany, VOA from the United States and RFI from France, are higher than on any other continent. Ownership of radio sets has grown at a very fast pace. In 1955 there were estimated to be less than half a million radio sets in sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. Ten years later the number had grown tenfold. By 1975 there were an estimated 18.8 million radio sets. Recent economic difficulties have slowed the growth rate but today it is estimated that there are 74 million radio sets in use in sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa. This means that there are now just over 14 radio sets for every 100 people.5

The BBC and its Languages The BBC World Service traces its history back to 1932 when the Empire Service began broadcasting programmes in English to all parts of the British Empire. John Reith, the BBC's first Director General, saw the importance of the English language as a unifying factor. There were, at first, no plans for broadcasts in other languages. But when fascist Italy began propaganda broadcasts in Arabic, it was not long before a British response seemed called for. Reith's persistent and powerful vision was for Arabic language broadcasting independent of the government, at least in its editorial content. His argument won and on 3rd January 1938 broadcasts began. As if to prove the point about independence, although the event was pure coincidence, on the very first day of Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X viii Introduction

broadcasts in Arabic, the BBC carried a story that the British government would have suppressed had they been directly responsible for broadcasts. The third story in the opening news bulletin reported that an Arab had been executed for the then capital offence in British Mandated Palestine of possessing firearms.6 The news of the execution was heard far beyond Palestine and, as a Foreign Office official noted, 'practically all news from Palestine must be intensely painful to the Arabs and can only send our stock down still further in the Middle East.'7 Although the BBC's budget is paid for by the British Government through the Foreign Office's Parliamentary vote, the content of broadcasts is not directed by them, either directly or indirectly. This fact has often infuriated or frustrated members of British administrations and puzzled or frustrated foreign complainants about some of the output. Further expansion of broadcasting in other languages followed, mainly if not entirely driven by the Second World War and Britain's role in it. By the end of the war, the BBC was broadcasting in 43 languages, 25 of these were to Europe, 14 to Asia and 2 to Latin America. Apart from Arabic and Afrikaans, there were no services to Africa intended for the indigenous people. Broadcasts in Afrikaans were started in 1939 but ceased in 1957 just as other African language broadcasting began. As early as 1940 there were some far-sighted people in both the BBC and the British civil service who saw the potential of radio in all parts of the world and realised that many languages other than those of the colonial powers needed to be used. The idea of broadcasting in indigenous languages of Asia and Africa originated in 1940 when the wartime Ministry of Information asked the BBC to prepare a long range plan for expansion of broadcasting, especially in foreign languages. The BBC responded with detailed proposals which included several languages of the British Empire, including Hausa and Swahili. Agreement was swiftly reached but the plans were rather too ambitious. The facilities available simply could not be expanded sufficiently. Several Asian languages, including Gujerati, Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malay were launched at that time, but African languages had to be shelved. As I have already noted, there would not have been much of an audience had the BBC begun broadcasting in African languages in the 1940s. Very few Africans had radio sets. There was no broadcasting anywhere on the continent specifically for African audiences until 1941 when, in Northern Rhodesia and on a very modest scale, radio transmissions aimed at informing the families of African soldiers of the progress of the war. But there were very few listeners until well after the war when the first low cost sets not requiring mains electricity began to be made available.

Egyptian and Soviet Activity While the BBC prides itself on its independence from the British government, it cannot deny that much of the stimulus for the expansion of its international broadcasting has come from political considerations. Just as the Arabic Service and many of the other foreign language services were started in response to international tensions or difficulties for the British, so also it was with African languages. While it was the challenge of Italian fascist propaganda that stimulated the response of the establishment of the BBC's Arabic Service, it was the challenge from the Arab world itself that stimulated the eventual Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X Introduction ix

establishment of African language broadcasts. The revolution which had overthrown the rule of King Farouk in Egypt established the era of the anti-imperialist and pan-Arab leader Nasser. Under his leadership and influence, Egypt began to seek to be a regional leader. It sought influence not only in neighbouring Arab countries but also to the south in what was still European-ruled sub-Saharan Africa. Broadcasts in several African languages were started. By 1954 Cairo was already broadcasting in Swahili. It soon added some Sudanese languages and clearly had ambitious plans for more. News that Cairo Radio was about to start broadcasts in Somali reached London in 1956 and stimulated the Colonial Office to ask the BBC what it would cost to broadcast in that language. There was a lot of concern that the Egyptians could exploit the tensions arising from the division of the Somali speaking people by the boundaries of the colonial period into five territories - Kenya and Ethiopia as well as the Italian, British and French Somali territories. By 1962 further expansion by Radio Cairo had seen the addition of Amharic, Iingala, Sesotho, Nyanja, and Hausa. Later it added Yoruba, Fulani, Shona and Ndebele.8 The British always saw broadcasting from Egypt as a threat. In fact, Radio Cairo, despite its extensive broadcasts in African languages, has never attracted measurable audiences.9 However, the British were worried, and not only about Somali. The BBC was keen to expand and when Bernard Moore, the then Head of the BBC African Service proposed, following a visit to Nigeria in 1956, that broadcasts be started in Hausa, the Colonial Office agreed. Moore also argued that if broadcasts were to be started in Somali and Hausa, Swahili, as the largest indigenous African language and its most rapidly growing lingua franca should also be added. Agreement was swiftly reached. By September 1956 the Colonial Office formally proposed to the Director of BBC External Broadcasting, J. B. Clark, to broadcast in these three African languages.10 Soon there was also much concern in Britain about Soviet broadcasting to Africa. Radio Moscow began broadcasting in Amharic, Swahili, Somali and Hausa shortly after the BBC began its African language broadcasts, and probably in response to them. But having started, the Soviet Union went a bit further. By 1963 it had added Bambara and Malagasy and, in the next couple of years, added Lingala and Zulu. Radio Moscow was rather more successful than Radio Cairo in attracting listeners. But audiences were nowhere very large, except in Mali. An audience survey in the capital Bamako in 1988 showed that more than one in four of the city's adult population were weekly listeners to Radio Moscow's service in Bambara. The service was closed shortly after the end of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union." But all this activity on the part of the Soviet Union did not really happen until the 1960s, well after the BBC had already begun its transmissions. The BBC began its broadcasts in Hausa on 13th March, Swahili on 27* June and in Somali on 18th July 1957. First, suitable broadcasters had to be found. Even with only two fifteen-minute broadcasts per week at the beginning, the BBC needed people who were able to communicate effectively in the respective language and who could exhibit skill in the often difficult task of translating modern ideas and terminology from English. Students provided part-time support for the early broadcasts but professional full-time broadcasters also needed to be recruited or, if there were none, to be trained. The first three Hausa broadcasters were all Nigerian students, studying at that time in London

- Aminu Abdullahi Malumfashi, Abubakar Tunau and Zakari Mohammed. Abdi Dualeh was brought in from Radio Hargeisa in British Somaliland to be the first broadcaster in Somali. Oscar Kambona, then a student in London and later Foreign Minister in Tanzania, was the first voice in Swahili.

Programmes Within a couple of years, BBC broadcasts in each of the three languages were extended to daily transmissions as soon as funds permitted and the necessary staff could be recruited. The BBC became a powerful voice in these languages and an influence on the development and use of all three of them. This role seems to have been appreciated in the target area and it was reflected in some of the programme content. For example, the Swahili Service ran a weekly programme 'Kiswahili Siku Hizi' (The Swahili Language Today) which explored the way in which the language was finding new words or using old words with new meanings. Professor George Mhina, Tanzanian Swahili scholar, inaugurated the programme in 1975 and it ran for four years. The Institute of Swahili Research and the Swahili Language Council (Baraza la Kiswahili) both provided material for the programme and have recognised the importance of the BBC Swahili Service in giving authority and wide currency to the development of the language and the new vocabulary required in a modern world. The Swahili Service made major contributions to the development of written literature in the language. Among the more important contributions in this was a short story competition launched in 1967. Listeners were invited on the air to send in stories. It was promised that any story that was broadcast would be paid for. As one of the producers responsible, Nasor Malik, explained to me: 'It gave a chance for established writers to send in new stories, and also contributed to the emergence of new writers who did not previously realise that they could write entertaining stories and get money for it.'12 After the stories were broadcast, the BBC negotiated an agreement with Longman and five books were published.13 A similar competition was run in 1979. A couple of years after that there was a poetry competition organised by BBC producer and poet Abdilatif Abdalla. One of the Swahili Service's most adventurous broadcasts was of Julius Nyerere's translations of Shakespeare - Juliasi Kaizari in 1964 and Mabepari wa Venisi in 1971. Both were produced by the then Swahili Service Head, the late Pat Edwards. The Hausa Service also had an occasional stab at drama, but also, and more regularly, broadcast programmes of Hausa proverbs and poetry. Poetry plays an important role in Somali culture and this too has been reflected in BBC output. Both the Somali and Hausa Services have also played important roles in the modern development of these languages. Other broadcasters tend to follow the BBC's lead in the choice of words for new inventions and developments. The BBC's choice of words or phrases for such things as spacecraft, non-proliferation agreement, deregulation, privatisation, structural readjustment programme, and so on, tend to end up being used by other broadcasters and indeed the press also, and to enter the standard language if not always of every day use, at least the usage of the educated. Sometimes the BBC has an influence on the actual way in which the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X Introduction xi

language is used and can shift usage. For example, the traditional Hausa name for Ethiopia was Habasha, from the Arabic name for the country. This has the same origin as the word which was once used in English, Abyssinia, which is regarded by many Ethiopians as anachronistic and derogatory. We decided when I headed the Hausa Service, to change usage to Etiyopiya, a more accurate and appropriate designation. Several other broadcasters now use this word. All three language services, as major communications media in each respective area, play a continuing role in helping to define the mainstream use and vocabulary of each language. Here is an area which deserves scholarly attention and research. Can one trace the development of each language across its respective area of use to external broadcasters like the BBC? What is its relative importance vis-a-vis other influences and sources? I would guess that its influence would be found to be considerable. Each language service played a part in the political development of the target areas. It is difficult to be sure how significant this was but some events are worth noting. David Wakati, later Director of Broadcasting in Tanzania, interviewed Julius Nyerere on the BBC as early as July 1959, when Nyerere was still campaigning. James Kangwana who also worked for the Swahili Service of the BBC and later went on to be Director of Broadcasting in Kenya interviewed Jomo Kenyatta during the Kenya constitutional conference in London in 1963. The Hausa Service was able to follow closely the constitutional and party political developments that led to the restoration of civilian rule in Nigeria in 1979 and its subsequent collapse in 1984. The Somali Service has been the main, and sometimes the only, source of information on the rapidly changing and complex power struggles over the past ten years in Somalia.14

Audibility and Audiences During their early years, the three language services were not always or everywhere very easy to hear. Relying mainly on shortwave transmitters in the UK, the signals reaching East and West Africa were often weak and subject to fading and interference. Reception of the Hausa Service was soon improved by the installation of new and more powerful shortwave transmitters nearer to the target area, on Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean in 1966. But it wasn't until 1988 that the much worse situation in East Africa was put right. The BBC transmitters, opened in that year on Seychelles, transformed the situation and produced a dramatic growth in listening. Before the audibility improvement, the BBC's weekly audiences in both Kenya and Tanzania were quite small. The BBC had far fewer listeners than the German station, Deutsche Welle which had transmitters in neighbouring Rwanda. In the 1980s the BBC's weekly audience for its Swahili programmes among adults, according to survey research conducted at the time, was 4% in Kenya and 5% in Tanzania.15 After the Seychelles transmitters were completed, the weekly audience in each country rose to 22% and 9% respectively by 1990 and to 22% in each country by 1995. Periods of heightened political activity can boost the audience reach further, as happened in 1992 and 1993 when one in three Kenyans and Tanzanians were listening weekly. Audiences in Hausa have for a long time been rather larger, and have increased further recently, largely as the result of political circumstances in Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X xii Introduction

Nigeria. Most listeners to the BBC programmes in Hausa live in the northern part of Nigeria and in neighbouring Niger. There are also communities of Hausa speakers in several other West African states, most notably, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin and Burkina Faso. The audience figures for Hausa are not directly comparable with those for Swahili since, while Swahili is a lingua franca for the whole of Tanzania and Kenya, Hausa does not have this status in Nigeria, or in any other country. It is a lingua franca over a wide area, but it is not the national language of any country. Audience data are, however, usually defined by the boundaries of nation states. Bearing that in mind, the audience figures for the BBC in Hausa are impressive. A national survey in 1983 produced a weekly listening rate of 13% of the adult population of Nigeria. Five years later a further national survey produced a similar result - 14%. The deteriorating political and economic circumstances in the country then led to an increase in the audience. A national survey in 1991 put the national weekly audience reach at 18% while in 1996 the equivalent figure was 16%. It should be remembered that these are national figures and therefore a little misleading. Most of those covered by these surveys were not Hausa speakers. If we just look at people in the Hausa heartland of the Northwest the weekly audience in the 1996 results is 40%. A further survey in Kano in December 1997, found that 73% of adults in this northern city were then listening weekly. Across the border in Zinder, Niger, a survey in 1995 found that 67% of the city's adults were BBC Hausa Service listeners.16 There is an interesting feature of the BBC's audience to its Hausa language broadcasts. Usually people who listen to the BBC tend to be among the better-educated sections of the population. They are usually men and younger than average in most countries. The typical BBC listener, in most parts of the world, is young, male, quite well educated and lives in a town or city. But the Hausa audience is not really like that. There are many young, urban male and educated listeners. But listeners are just as likely, or in some cases even more likely, to be rural farmers, urban labourers or unemployed. 35% of the audience is aged between 15 and 24, almost exactly the proportion in the adult population. 19% have higher education, also in line with the real picture among northern Nigerian adults. 42% of the listeners are women, compared to just under half of Kano's population. This is by far the highest proportion of the BBC audience being female in any Islamic region of the world. In Pakistan where there is a 21 % weekly audience for the BBC in Urdu, the listening rate among women is only 5%. Only 11% of the BBC audience in Pakistan are women. Unusually, the demographic profile of the Hausa audience is in most aspects very close to that of the general Hausa-speaking population. In both Tanzania and Kenya, the principal Swahili countries, there has always been more listening in Swahili than in English. In Kenya, three times as many Kenyans listen to the BBC in Swahili than in English while in Tanzania the ratio is ten to one. Similarly, in Hausa-speaking areas of West Africa, we usually find that listening in Hausa is the first choice for speakers of the language. In the survey in Kano, for example, listeners to the BBC in Hausa outnumbered listeners to the BBC in English by about three to one. A lot less is known for certain about audiences for Somali. Extensive and reliable audience research inside Somalia is not possible because of continual civil war, famine and lawlessness. Before the war a limited survey was carried out in 1988 in Mogadishu only. The sample was not fully representative of the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X Introduction xiii

adult population; probability sampling was not easy to achieve. The sample appears to have been representative of radio set owners, 41% of whom were regular BBC listeners - that is listening at least once a week. The first ever national audience survey carried out in Ethiopia in 1994 found that most Somalis in Ethiopia were listeners and it was estimated that there were over 700,000 weekly listeners at that time, just over 3% of the adult population. Inside Somalia itself today, anecdotal evidence suggests that the BBC Somali Service reaches a majority of the population and that it is listened to more than any other station, foreign or domestic. This is obviously a very unusual situation and one that is the product of the continuing political stalemate and tension. There is a high demand for the Service from Somalis living elsewhere. To meet this demand, the Somali Service is now available throughout Europe on satellite. The BBC World Service, basing its calculations entirely on evidence from recent survey research in over 100 countries, makes regular estimates of its global audience. These are broken down by language, region and country. According to the latest information, the Hausa Service now has about 9.5 million weekly listeners. The Swahili Service's equivalent figure is 6.5 million. No meaningful estimates can be made for Somali because of the very limited number of areas that can presently be covered by survey research.17

Relays and Rebroadcasts In the early days of the three language services, radio stations in the respective target areas rebroadcast the transmissions. In 1961, the two daily Hausa transmissions were received by the NBC in Northern Nigeria and re-transmitted there. Similar arrangements for rebroadcasting were enjoyed in Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia. But these rebroadcasts gradually were dropped in the 1960s by the receiving radio networks. It was partly the assertion of national independence by the broadcasters concerned or their governments, and partly the fact that sometimes the BBC broadcast things that the local politicians and officials did not like to hear. The argument runs something like this. 'We are an independent country. We have our own national broadcasting station. This is the voice of the people and of its government. It is not appropriate to hear the voice of Britain there.' And so it was that by the middle 1960s the BBC's rebroadcasts on the African continent, of which there had at one time been several, had almost all disappeared. The BBC valued rebroadcasts as a way of reaching the maximum number of listeners. Everyone who had a radio could be expected to listen to the local (there was usually only one or at most two) station and there hear, at one time or another, the BBC. But the BBC was never entirely reliant on rebroadcasts, and from the beginning all three language broadcasts were transmitted on shortwave. Shortwave transmissions have special properties that make them so effective a means of international communication. Aerial arrays at the originating transmitters are designed in such a way as to send the shortwave, high frequency radio signal in the direction of the target area several hundred or even thousand miles away. The signal is aimed at the ionosphere, usually somewhere beyond the horizon. The ionosphere is an invisible layer of the upper atmosphere which, due to radiation from the sun, has certain electro-magnetic properties. Radio waves behave in many ways like light. They Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X xiv Introduction

travel in straight lines, at the same speed and can be reflected or refracted by different media through which they pass. The ionosphere acts as a reflector of radio signals of certain frequencies, especially in the shortwave bands. This is why shortwave can be used to send radio signals over long distances around the globe. The signals are reflected back down to the ground at a distant point from the originating transmitter, are then reflected back up to the ionosphere and so the process repeats itself. It is possible for a transmitter in Britain to be heard in New Zealand, and in fact several can be heard in this way. However, shortwave, on which the BBC was now entirely reliant, suffers from many problems and difficulties. The ionosphere does not reflect in an even way. It behaves differently between night and day time. It is enormously affected by solar activity. A good, clear, strong signal can become in a short period, weak, noisy and impossible to listen to. Listeners in many areas of the world have become more accustomed to good local reception of radio stations on FM and consequently have become less tolerant of the vagaries of shortwave. However, it is not true to assert, as some have done, that shortwave is dead or dying. It is still, by a wide margin, the means of transmission which reaches the most BBC listeners, around the world. This is especially true in Africa. Many African national broadcasters still rely on shortwave to guarantee national coverage for their domestic services. Shortwave in Africa remains an important delivery method both for international and national radio services. BBC shortwave broadcasts continued without a break after rebroadcasts mostly came to an end during the 1960s. But the termination of rebroadcasts does not seem to have affected the size of the audience. Indeed, all the available evidence suggests that audiences continued to grow. Listeners became used to tuning direct to London and the numbers doing so continued to rise. Indeed, the ending of the relays may have helped audience growth by helping the BBC's separate identity and purpose to become clearer. Listeners were able more clearly to distinguish in their minds the difference between stations whose purpose was to be a government mouthpiece and the BBC whose objective was to serve the listeners as best it could by being reliable, truthful and comprehensive. As noted earlier, demand for the BBC and consequent listening levels increase at times of political crises and difficulties, especially those which involve to a greater or lesser extent the increased interference in or control of the media by the government. Whatever the difficulties that are sometimes experienced with shortwave, listeners who have sufficient cause to want to listen to an alternative source of information will tolerate poor and unreliable reception. Rebroadcasts of the BBC, which virtually ended everywhere in Africa in the 1960s, have now reappeared in several countries. This reverse is striking evidence of how the media environments have changed. Two connected factors have been at work. The process of media deregulation in Africa, which began ten years ago, has ended state monopolies in several countries. In some places, foreign broadcasters have been able to apply for licences to install their own FM relays. This is how it is now possible to hear the BBC in Abidjan, Kigali, Dakar, Kampala and Nairobi. These relays for most of the day carry the main BBC World Service output in English, switching into other appropriate languages when these transmissions are scheduled. The second and certainly more important feature of deregulation is the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X Introduction JC

licensing of independent commercial, religious or community and non-profit radio stations. Some of these have sought to strengthen their appeal to listeners by carrying some international output. At the time of writing, two domestic radio stations in Niger, in Niamey and Zinder are carrying BBC Hausa broadcasts. There are also some stations in Congo (Zaire), Tanzania and Uganda which carry some BBC output in Swahili. All three services have ambitions to be more widely available. This has been especially important for the Somali Service, given the widespread and scattered Somali diaspora. It is already available throughout Europe on satellite, on a sub-carrier of one of the Eutelsat vehicles. The next ambition is to be available in sound on the Internet. Meanwhile, all three BBC African language services can be received on satellite as part of the South Africa-based Multichoice Satellite 'bouquet' mostly of TV services.

Satellite Radio International radio broadcasting, as well as some domestic radio broadcasting in physically very large countries, still depends largely on shortwave. This is because of the great distances involved. Shortwave, old technology though it is, remains the only way that a broadcaster can reach anywhere in the world. Satellite delivery could change all that and perhaps it is surprising that satellite radio has not appeared until 1998. Satellites orbiting in suitable trajectories, could deliver radio services to the entire globe and bring a convergence of domestic and international services. The prospect has intrigued and excited broadcasters for several years. But it has not happened yet. There have been a number of technical problems, not least the fact that none of the present technologies used for transmission and reception will work satisfactorily from space. Now advances in digital technology make satellite radio a possibility, although it will mean a new kind of radio set is required. Satellite radio has a particular relevance for Africa because it enables the great distances to be covered without the need to install great numbers of ground relay stations that are necessary with conventional transmission systems. One man who saw the great potential of satellites for radio in Africa several years ago was a young Ethiopian lawyer, then working at the International Telecommunications Union, Noah Samara. He is now the head of a Washington D.C.-based company, Worldspace, which is launching a satellite over Africa in 1998 which will begin broadcasting in 1999 several radio channels in three distinct beams - to North-West, North-East and Southern Africa. The North-Eastern beam will also serve the Middle East. Several simultaneous services of various genres of music, news, environmental, documentary, educational and other streams are planned. The major international broadcasters will also probably be on board, either at the start or soon after. To start with there are likely to be very few listeners because the sets will go on sale at the beginning of 1999. However, the service is likely to be very attractive and it is probable that sales will be swift among the better-off. The radio services on offer will be a considerable advance on what African listeners currently have available to them, and in excellent stereo quality. There are some technical problems to do with reception of the satellite signal in cities where there are tall buildings, but it is not until the system is Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X xvi Introduction

running that it will be possible to see how these can be overcome. There has been a massive investment in the project and it is difficult to see how it will pay for itself in the immediate future. Radio is not a very profitable business anywhere outside the very rich cities of the West. Samara and his backers have embarked on a riskyproject , but it is worth noting that this is an especially historic event. Worldspace will go on to launch similar satellite services for Asia and Latin America, but Africa will come first.

Impact and Importance Despite the ending of the original rebroadcasts in the 1960s, there continued to be generally good relationships between the BBC and the state broadcasters in the main receiving areas. Many of the staff came on attachment from East or West African broadcasting stations, returning later to continue their careers. Many of the most senior people in radio and television in Kenya and Nigeria are former BBC employees, in many cases in the Swahili or Hausa services. David Wakati, for several years Director of Radio Tanzania was an early staff member of the Swahili Service. Mohammed Ibrahim former President of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and Director General of Nigerian Television was an early BBC Hausa broadcaster. Other well-known Swahili broadcasters included Athmani Magoma, Ali Mazrui, Ignatius Muhimbira and James Kangwana. The latter later became Director of the Voice of Kenya. Nigeria's turbulent political history has been reflected in the careers of several ex-BBC Hausa broadcasters. Umaru Dikko a former Minister, Abubakar Rimi a former state Governor and Bagudu Bida a former Director of Broadcasting have each spent periods in jail. The continued existence of the three African language services of the BBC has not always been at all certain. As early as 1967, it was actually proposed from Whitehall that they should be closed. Influential voices within government took the view that with the growth of English, especially within Commonwealth Africa, broadcasts in that language, which the BBC had in any case greatly expanded and improved for Africa, would suffice to meet Britain's post-imperial requirements. Something I have not mentioned thus far is the major changes that had taken place with the English output. What had begun as the English language Empire Service developed into the General Overseas Service and later the World Service in English. It had some regional variations, but in general terms, what you heard if you were listening in Vladivostok was not greatly different from what you heard in Valencia. But in Africa, for a good part of the World Service's history a distinct English alternative service was developed. Early heads of the service, Grenfell Williams, Moore and Watrous, recognised that English would become a very important language in Africa and that the interests, needs and outlook of Africans who spoke English would be rather different than those of the mainly European audiences served at that time by English language output. Today, the fact that the largest audience proportionate to the population anywhere in the world for the World Service in English is to be found in Africa arises largely from the fact that so many of the programmes in English transmitted to the continent, are designed solely with African audiences in mind. During the 1960s there were even specially targeted programmes with titles such as 'Calling East Africa', 'CallingNigeria' and 'Calling Sierra Leone'. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X Introduction xvii

These eventually gave way to two daily and several weekly programmes designed to serve English speaking audiences in all parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the best known being the two daily news magazines, 'Network Africa' and 'Focus on Africa', which are probably between them the most authoritative and comprehensive news service that Africa has from any source. It is sometimes difficult to argue successfully both for the continuation of African language broadcasting at the same time as advocating the expansion of what the BBC often calls 'alternative' English. It is true that in many cases, the target audiences are the same. Sometimes the same people listen to both African and English language broadcasts. It would certainly save resources to concentrate on English. This was proposed most seriously in 1967. The BBC responded with vigorous rebuttals to the claims that the 'people who really matter' all listen in English. I was unaware of the controversy at the time. As a post-graduate student at the University of Dar es Salaam, I was busy carrying out some survey research in remote parts of Tanzania as well as in some of the main towns and in Dar itself. My survey, which was designed to measure the spread and importance of the press and radio at that time, looked at listening to both domestic and international radio services. It was very clear from my survey that almost all listening to the BBC was in Swahili. Very few people contacted at random in my survey ever listened in English. Those who did listen were often doing so in order to learn or improve their English. They did so by hearing what the news was in Swahili and then hearing more or less the same stories in English. There were also some lessons in English with Swahili explanations. My research showed that had the BBC stopped broadcasting to East Africa in Swahili at that time, its existing audience would virtually disappear. I reported this to the BBC, unaware of the significance of what my research had shown and innocent of the raging controversy. I have no idea whether my research made a major contribution to the discussion or helped to change the government's mind. But soon afterwards all talk of closing African languages went away.18 Hausa and Swahili are now regarded by the BBC, if not by the Foreign Office also, as languages of medium or high priority unlikely to be the first victims of any future proposed cuts. The future of broadcasts in Somali has been questioned from time to time. Its approximately 12 million speakers compared with Swahili's 55 million and Hausa's 45 million make it of only secondary importance in a wider picture in which one could make strong arguments for broadcasts in Bambara, Lingala, Yoruba and Nguni (i.e. Zulu/Xhosa). But Somali has become a special case deserving of special treatment, at least for the time being. Somali itself has been targeted for closure by some elements in the British Foreign Office who at one time viewed it as a nuisance, bringing them many headaches and few or no benefits. The argument they used was that it involved Britain in Somali internal squabbles and disputes, simply by reporting them. Complaints and angry responses from certain factions, usually addressed to the British missions in Mogadishu, Nairobi or elsewhere simply took up a great deal of time and effort and did nothing positive for Britain's interests. These narrow and short-sighted views have not been heard again since the start of the civil war and the break-up of the Somali state. The BBC's extraordinary role has been reported and commented on favourably by many. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the BBC in Somali is the nearest thing Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X xviii Introduction

Somalia now has to a national institution. With no single acknowledged government, a globally scattered and dispersed people, a country without a civil service nor even a functioning post office or telephone system, and with Somalia itself having three or four separate ruling factions, each with their own radio services, the BBC Somali Service is the one single voice which serves all Somali speakers, and keeps the idea of being Somali alive. Whether this is an appropriate role for the BBC or not is a matter for debate. The fact is that the BBC does it, has been enormously successful and is vastly appreciated. To close it before Somalia is fully recovered and in good health again would be an act of cruelty and callous folly. Some tributes (unsolicited) received by the BBC make the point better than I can.

'In an environment so completely devoid of accurate and verifiable information, the BBC Somali Service represents a beacon of reliable news both on contentious internal events as well as linking Somalia to the events of the world at large. As such, the high level of credibility which the Somali Service has established for the BBC, has made it the single most influential, most important and recognised source of news and information in the Somali speaking area of the Horn of Africa.' C. Andrew Marshall, Programme Co-ordinator, World Food Programme, Somalia

'It is no exaggeration to state that the BBC is the single most important source of news throughout Somalia [and] is listened to by a very high proportion of Somalis. . . . We believe you are providing the Somali people with the kind of food for thought that actually makes a difference to their lives. . . . We at UNICEF Somalia consider it fortunate that we have the BBC Somali Service as a partner in our endeavour to improve child survival, development and protection, as well as women's welfare, in these turbulent times for all Somalis.' Pierce Gerethy, UNICEF Representative in Somalia

One of the factors that has made this possible is that Somali and all other language services of the World Service have, over the past fifteen years or so, supplemented the centrally organised news services of the BBC with their own reporters. Instead of relying solely or mainly on translations from despatches and reports in English filed mainly for use in that language, each service has sought to have at least some reporting originating in the respective language. One example can illustrate the point. The elections held in Namibia in the period leading to independence in Namibia were reported in Hausa language despatches by Kabiru Yusuf, a Hausa speaking journalist in Windhoek. All three services have also been able to send their own reporters to cover stories in different parts of Africa and other parts of the world. These direct reports, originating in the languages have given greater immediacy and authority to the BBC's coverage. Each service began with the stated aim of 'providing listeners with news and commentaries presenting the British and Western view on current African and international affairs and to give a projection of the Commonwealth, British trade, scientific achievement and education.'19 The purpose now is very much broader and rather less devoted to the promotion of Britain. The services' success, measured by their large and generally supportive audiences, lies mainly Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X Introduction xix

in the provision of reliable and authoritative news covering African and other world news, sport and other items of interest which indigenous media are as yet unable to provide.

Education All three services have always featured educational programmes as a major objective. Indeed, one of the Swahili Service's most successful and longest running initiatives has been its Maarifa Club, an educational series which seeks to make learning fun for both young and old by encouraging participation and involvement through membership of a club. More recently most languages broadcast by the BBC World Service have been featuring series on major issues for public debate - issues about which there is both much controversy and ignorance. This year, all three African languages services are focussing on human disability, featuring the challenges faced by disabled people in their lives, looking at negative perceptions some people have about disabilities, and at what governments, charities and other bodies can or should do. In 1997 there were series in both Swahili and Hausa on AIDS. Special editions of Maarifa Club looked at the spread of AIDS in East Africa and how this might be controlled. In Hausa a ten-episode drama was accompanied by factual documentary programmes. In both languages, free educational booklets were produced and cassettes of the programmes were made available to specialist health-care agencies. Another educational series looked at the problem of drug abuse. Much of the funding for these series has come from the European Commission in Brussels, a recognition of the fact that the three services are an effective way of reaching a very large number of people with important information and advice, a very cost-effective form of development assistance.

What Listeners Say Broadcasting is an ephemeral form of communication, and this applies not only to what is actually transmitted. Listeners have been an important part of the output through their letters and, increasingly, faxes, emails and phone calls. The number of letters received fluctuates greatly. At their highest, each of the services has attracted as many as 2,000 letters per month, but the steep rise in postage charges in many African countries in recent years has tended to reduce the numbers sent, despite the fact that the BBC has its own P. O. Box in several African countries, making it possible for listeners to save on postage costs. The difficulty and expense of writing to the BBC does not seem to have affected the flow of Somali mail however. Despite the fact that the country has had no postal service for several years, Somalis in the country continue to get letters to the BBC. Some arrive through a mail system organised by the Red Cross and these are directed mainly at the Missing Persons programme that for many years has sought to put Somalis in touch with family and friends with whom they have lost touch. The programme has been in especially strong demand since the civil war. Last year, Somalis wrote over 20,000 letters to the BBC, between one third and half of them were addressed to Missing Persons. About 100 per month are faxes and some of these come from Somalia itself where, although the telephone system has mostly broken down, satellite phones Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X 1 xx Introduction

and fax machines are available. Although extremely expensive to use, the importance of making contact in this way is sufficient incentive. One listener explains how important it was for him:

'. . . this programme made it possible for me to get information from my sister in Australia who we thought had died during intensive fighting in Mogadishu in 1991.'

Several letters to each service discuss current topics of importance, ranging from domestic politics to sport. Many are about personal problems and difficulties in health, education and employment. The BBC is often written to in tones that one would write to a friend and this seems to be how many listeners regard it. They complain when, as happens from time to time, schedules and programmes are changed. But most letters are appreciative and many illustrate the role that the services from London play in providing information about both local and world affairs. For many the most important role is the provision of news about what is going on at home, as one Hausa listener recently wrote.

'We always tune to the BBC to listen to what is happening in Nigeria because the Nigerian state-owned radios do not tell us the truth . . .' (Hausa)

Selections of letters are translated and monthly reports are produced for internal distribution. Fortunately for future historians these reports are archived and will one day provide a fascinating and probably unique insight into the impact and importance of African language broadcasting by the BBC in the latter half of the Twentieth Century.

References 1 Graham Mytton worked for the BBC World Service from 1973 until 1998. For the first ten years he was in the African Service including a period in which he was in charge of Hausa language programmes. From 1982 to 1996 he was in charge of audience research for the whole of World Service. From 1996 to 1998 he was Controller of Marketing. He is now an independent consultant and trainer in audience and market research, specialising in the use of research in less developed countries. 2 I have written elsewhere about the problems of radio and television in Africa as resources for study in 'African Radio and Television as Information Resources' in Patricia M. Larby (editor), New Directions in African Bibliography, London: Standing Conference on Library Materials on Africa, 1988, pp. 87-93. 3 For an excellent account of this period in African broadcasting, see Peter Fraenkel, Wayaleshi, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1959. 4 Graham Mytton, Mass Communication in Africa, London: Edward Arnold, 1983, p. 19. The standard reference work on world broadcasting, listing broadcasting organisations, their transmitter facilities and other details is the annual World Radio TV Handbook, Amsterdam and New York: Billboard Books. 5 The BBC World Service has for several years published an annual estimate, country by country, of radio and television sets. World Radio and Television Receivers, London: BBC World Service Marketing.

6 Peter Partner, Arab Voices: The BBC Arabic Service 1938-1988, London: BBC, 1988, p. 17. For the most comprehensive account of the origins and development of BBC's international radio broadcasts see Let Truth Be Told by former Managing Director of External Broadcasting, Gerard Mansell, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1982. 7 Partner, op. cit., p. 19. 8 World Radio TV Handbook, op. cit., passim. 9 I have two theories why Radio Cairo has never been a popular station anywhere outside Arabic speaking countries. Shortwave enthusiasts tell me that transmissions from Cairo are often unreliable and very variable in the frequencies used. That is likely to make repeat listening difficult. My other theory is that the broadcasts were probably not very interesting, consisting mainly of translated Egyptian government propaganda. 10 Mark Dodd, 'How Broadcasting in Somali from the BBC Began', Anglo Somali Newsletter, October 1989, reprinted in 40 Years of the Somali Service: Halkani waa BBC London, BBC Somali Service, 1997. 11 This was the largest recorded audience ever found for Radio Moscow in any survey conducted for the BBC World Service in any part of the world! Radio Moscow, now the Voice of Russia, also closed all its other African language broadcasts and several of its Asian languages. Few of them rivalled the BBC, Deutsche Welle, VOA or Radio France International in audience size, at least in Africa. However they did perform rather better in South Asia than, for example, Deutsche Welle. But at a stroke, and with no apparent reference to audience reach or other performance criteria Radio Moscow/Voice of Russia lost most of its listeners, virtually overnight. The terminated languages, including Swahili, Hausa, Somali and several Indian languages - Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu among others - had formerly had significant audiences. 12 Nasor Malik was the longest serving BBC Swahili broadcaster. Of Zanzibari origin Yve vaas. x\ve.te ax t\\ebegtravffvg, awd tewted va. \S>%1 s&et ?>0 -jeats COTY\.VS\WO\I% serAce. 13 Hekaya za Kuburudisha, Nairobi: Longmans, 1968, passim. 14 Some African governments have at times viewed the BBC with hostility. Presidents Ghadafi of Libya, Moi of Kenya, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, several "Nigerian heads of state and many deposed and departed leaders have complained about a source of information over which they had no control, but which they knew was listened to by many of their own subjects. But no serious attempts have ever been made to jam BBC broadcasts. Today relationships are much more relaxed as evidenced by the fact that the BBC and other international broadcasters are becoming available through local transmitters. 15 Surveys in East Africa were conducted mostly by Research International East Africa. In Tanzania, the early surveys were conducted by an ad hoc research team put together for the purpose. Surveys conducted for the BBC here and in other parts of Africa and the world, are designed to produce estimates of the BBC and other broadcasters' audiences among the general adult population. They are also designed to monitor changes in audience behaviour and needs and also to measure general media access and use. Results are published internally but bonafide scholars can gain access to research reports. Some results have been published in various sources. See especially Graham Mytton (editor) Global Audiences, London: John Libbey, 1993. 16 Surveys in Nigeria were conducted by RMS Research or Research International Nigeria. 17 In January 1998, the BBC World Service's Marketing Department, which has commissioned, carried out or purchased research in most parts of the world, Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026667310000622X xxii Introduction

calculated the BBC World Sendee's global weekly audience in any language to be 138 million adults. Of this total, 38 million are estimated to live in Africa. If we exclude the Arabic speaking north and include only sub-Saharan Africa, the estimate is 29 million, 21 % of the global total. IS Audiences in English in Tanzania and elsewhere in Swahili-speaking areas are much more significant today. The BBC now has estimated weekly audiences in Tanzania of about 300,000 for English and 3.3 million for Swahili, while the equivalent figures for Kenya are 1 million and 3.2 million respectively. There are very large overlaps between the audiences for each language. 19 Internal memorandum, 1.6.1961.

Present Transmission Times firom London All times are UTC (i.e. GMT). All broadcasts are daily unless otherwise stated. Hausa 0530-0600 1345-1415 1915-1945 Somali 0900-0915 1415-1500 (1415-1430 Monday to Friday only) 1800-1830 Swahili 0300-0330 0400-0430 1530-1615 1745-1800 Present Wave-lengths used language time [UTC; GMT] frequencies, in KHz [metre bands]

Hausa 0530-0600 6155; 7105; 9610 [49m; 41m; 31m] 1345-1415 15105; 17810; 21640 [19m; 16m; 13m] 1915-1945 11880; 15105; 17885 [25m; 19m; 16m] Somali 0900-0915 15420; 17770 [19m; 16m] Mon-Fri: 1415-1430 11860; 15420; 17880; 21490 [25m; 19m; 16m; 13m] Sat-Sun: 1415-1500 11860; 15420; 17880; 21490 [25m; 19m; 16m; 13m] 1800-1830 6005; 9630; 15360 [49m; 31m; 19m] Swahili 0300-0330 6050; 9610; 11850 [49m; 31m; 25m] 0400-0430 5166; 7105; 11730 [49m; 41m; 25m] 1530-1615 11860; 15420; 21490 [25m; 19m; 13m] 1745-1800 6005; 7230; 9630 [49m; 41m; 31m] The BBC is also currently broadcasting in Kinyarwanda and Kirundi on Mondays to Fridays at 1615 to 1645 on 11860 and 21490 English [Africa service; World service] Focus on Africa Mon-Fri: West & Central Africa East Africa Southern Africa 1505-1530 15400/19m; 17830/16m 11940/25m; 11860/25m; 15420/19m 1197/251m; 6190/49m; 11940/25m; 21660/13m 1705-1740 15400/19m; 17830/16m 6005/49m; 9630/31m; 11860/25m 1197/251m; 3255/90m; 6190/49m; 15400/19m 1830-1900 15400/19m; 17830/16m 6005/49m; 9630/31m; 11860/25m 1197/251m; 3255/90m; 6190/49m; 15400/19m Sat-Sun: 1705-1740 15400/19m; 17830/16m 6005/49m; 9630/31m; 11860/25m 1197/251m; 3255/90m, 6190/49m; 15400/19m

Talk About Africa Wed: 1615-1645 15400/19m; 17830/16m 15420/19m 1197/251m, 3255/90m; 6190/49m; 21660/13m 1901-1930 15400/19m; 17830/16m 6005/49m; 9630/31m 1197/251m, 3255/90m; 6190/49m; 11835/25m

Network Africa Mon-Fri: 0330-0400 6005/49m 9610/31m; 1173O/25m 1197/2531m; 3255/9Om; 6005/49m; 6190/49m; 9600/31m 0430-0500 6005/49m;7160/41m 15420/19m 1197/251m; 3255/90m; 6190/49m; 9600/31m 0530-0600 6005/49m; 7160/41 m 15420/19m; 17885/16m 1197/251m; 3255/90m; 6190/49m; 9600/31m 0630-0700 6005/49m; 7160/41 m 11940/25m; 15420/19m 1197/251m; 6190/49m; 9600/31m