Due to low illiteracy levels in Africa and the need to promote local languages, many radio stations broadcast in vernacular languages (Mytton, 1999; Myres, 2009; Chibita, 2011 etc.). For example, Okoth (2015) established that there is need to set up vernacular radio stations in Kenya’s rural areas as 67 percent of the country lives in rural areas. The rural people are generally poor and cannot afford television sets or newspapers so they rely on radio. This situation is not peculiar to Kenya but many other African countries (AMB, 2014). This scenario, coupled with other factors has given rise to the emergence of community radio stations. However, not all vernacular language radio stations are owned
by the community. There are some that are commercially owned and they also have a large number of audiences (Okoth, 2015). With the exception of Zimbabwe, many African countries have licensed community radio stations. It is these radio stations that mainly broadcast in vernacular languages.
The issue of vernacular language broadcasting has been examined by many scholars. Chibita (2011) examines the possibility of having multiple publics and multiple languages in radio stations in Uganda. She realised that not all Ugandan languages are broadcast on radio stations in the country. She also states that by 2009 Uganda had 123 radio stations that were registered and broadcasting. There are 36 languages spoken in Uganda but only four main languages are predominantly used for broadcasting. These are English, Kiswahili, Luganda and the 4Rs - Runyoro, Rutoora, Runyankore and Rukiga. The other languages are only heard on radio for a few minutes per week. With so many languages, it then becomes difficult to cater for all the ethnic groups on the national radio stations as it is difficult to broadcast in languages that are spoken by all ethnic groups. Like Bosch (2011) and other scholars, whose work is going to be discussed below, Chibita (2011) is of the view that if radio stations do not cater for all languages, then they cease to act as public sphere platforms. The issue of language is also pivotal in these discussions and in the Ugandan case, vernacular languages are also used in the talk shows (Chibita, 2011).
Use of vernacular language on radio has improved audiences’ participation on radio. Tettey (2011) describes how talk radio in Ghana has allowed the citizenry to use vernacular languages in programmes that are officially in English. This allows people to even initiate discussions on issues that are pertinent to their society. In the Kenyan case, Odhiambo (2011) describes how Citizen FM, which broadcasts in Kiswahili, accords citizens the opportunity to discuss issues that are directly related to governance. Odhiambo (2011:45) talks of “the people’s parliament”, where the “culture of silence” is “no more”. The radio station (Citizen FM) is presumed to have allowed citizens to openly discuss political issues thereby enabling them to make informed choices on which party to vote for during election t ime.
Many scholars agree that the use of vernacular languages promotes audience participation in radio programmes (Musau, 1999; Prah, 2004; Myers, 2008; Bosch, 2011; Odhiambo, 2011; Chibita. 2011 etc.). In the Ugandan case, as discussed earlier, there is a challenge emanating from the multiplicity of languages spoken in that country. Many African countries have the same problems where different
indigenous languages are spoken (Hachipola, 1998; Musau, 1999; Batibo, 2005 etc.). On this matter, Musau (1999) discusses the question of language and nation building where he interrogates the choice of the language to be used in the case where there are many languages. On this note he agrees with Chibita (2011) in the Ugandan scenario. However, Musau (1999) argues that countries like Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania have no problem in selecting a local language as there is Swahili which is a common vernacular language in the whole country. For Kenya, Musau (1999) advocates for the use of Swahili in the media and that would promote nation building. He further suggests that Swahili be used as a regional language. Batibo (2005) examines the Botswana case where he realised that the Khoisan, who are a minority group (in terms of population), prefer to use Setswana, which is used by the majority, instead of their own Khoisan language.
In the Ethiopian case, Mohammed (2013) explores how radio has been used to communicate with rural people as they do not have access to other forms of the media like television and newspapers. The use of local languages in the few radio stations available in Ethiopia also contributes towards its popularity. Ethiopian policy makers have taken advantage of this and use radio to disseminate development programmes that assist in the alleviation of poverty in the country. Prah’s (2004) extensive research on using African languages on radio in Ghana, Mali and Senegal indicates the importance of language in radio programming. He established that radio is more popular in these countries mainly because it uses local languages. One of his objectives was to find out audiences’ programme preferences of selected radio stations in the three countries mentioned above. The majority of the listeners in all the three countries indicated that they select programmes that are broadcast in their languages.
The use of vernacular language radio was also explored in farming. The African Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI) (2011) and the Farm Radio International (FRI) (2011) carried out studies to establish the relationship between radio and ICTs in farming. Mali, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana were used as case studies. The organisations found out that ICTs enhance the use of radio in disseminating agricultural information. The studies further established that the use of local languages in these programmes increased farmer participation. The extension workers and the radio broadcasters used local languages in programmes that involved listeners who have formed ALCs. This case is similar to Manda (2015) who discovered that the use of local languages led to the increase in the membership of the RLCs for radio stations in Malawi. Zimbabwe’s National FM has a listeners’ club known as
National FM Listeners Club. The problem is that the club’s active members are Shona speakers and the club was not formed to promote the use of minority languages.