Despite challenges, a community radio station in Kenya provides valuable information on HIV

Kangema RANET FM is a local community radio station serving a rural community in Central Kenya. Before a workshop conducted by Internews, the journalists at the station thought their community was not ready to talk about HIV and AIDS. They said they didn't know anyone living with HIV in their community.

Then some of the workshop speakers turned out to be their neighbors.

The seven-day journalism workshop focused on HIV and stigma and made the journalists realize they had previously ignored the issue in their broadcasts.

By the end of the workshop, the journalists resolved to start two one-hour interactive programs which would be aired twice a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The first program was aired on July 2 and received positive feedback from the listeners. Several text messages commended the station for taking the initiative to educate the public on HIV in an effort to reduce stigma and misconceptions.

The HIV programs we started made us realize there was a great thirst for information on HIV related content, said one of the participants, Teresia Wanjiku.

The journalists are dedicated to producing the program despite the many challenges that Kangema FM faces in terms of resources. They lack a recording studio with good acoustics. They lack transport to go to the field to interact with the community and collect stories. The station is often off the air due to inconsistent electrical power and a lack of a reliable backup.

Internews provided Kangema FM with a desktop computer with audio editing facilities, two audio recorders and headphones. This, along with consistent mentoring, will make it possible to keep the new programs alive. The journalists at Kangema FM hope the programs will increase HIV testing and early treatment in their community.

Listen to the programs in Swahili.

From the Data Journalism Blog

Simple visualizations make large amounts of data easy to understand at a glance, allowing readers to engage more directly with the data. Choropleth maps are an iconic example of presenting data using colour intensity to illustrate prevalence rates. For example, blue signifies the high chance a child raised in the Read more

A pivot table can be used to quickly summarize and analyze data in a worksheet. Pivot tables have functionality including sort, count, and total and can even be used to create another table to display the summarized data. Pivot tables are an alternative to functions or formulas in Excel e.g. Read more

Read more

Kenya has lost its position as the biggest spender on health per capita to Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania over the last 15 years. An analysis of World Bank data shows that though Kenya has remained the biggest economy in the East African region, it is increasing its spending on health Read more

Share this page