African

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• Exact figures are difficult to come by because audience research differs across countries.
• But studies estimate radio listenership to be between 60% and 80% of the continent’s 1.4 billion population.
• Because of poor literacy levels and uneven access to the internet and technological infrastructure, old-fashioned radio remains a reliable and inclusive medium.

Early years

• European states were quick to realise the part radio could play in realising their desire to swallow up weaker cultures around the globe.
• Historians note that it also allowed Europeans in the colonies to connect to home, their culture and their languages.
• In the early 1920s amateur radio enthusiasts had already begun tinkering with the technology.

Propaganda

• The 1940s were marked by the introduction of indigenous language broadcasts by colonial powers wanting to influence public opinion and garner support for their war effort.
• While the British broadcast to Africa in some African languages, France broadcast only in French.
• Academics have argued that despite being designed mainly for propaganda, radio in Africa
  was always far more multifaceted and slippery than was intended by colonial powers.

Resistance radio

• Radio stations across British, French and Belgian colonies rapidly increased as people under colonial rule increased their efforts to achieve independence.
• In the mid-1950s the oldest liberation station in Africa, Radio Freedom, was established as an underground station in Zambia by South Africa’s resistance movement.
• Read more:
  Radio as a form of struggle: scenes from late colonial Angola

  In Angola, radio expanded with the outbreak of war in 1961 between liberation movements and the Portuguese colonial state.

Independence and state control

• A wave of independence movements birthed new nations as radio technology was becoming more affordable.
• In many African countries, Angola included, post-colonial state control of radio continues.
• But state control remains strong, with biased licensing for national radio and restrictive laws for community radio stations.
• The Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation was established in 1964 and still operates as a state broadcaster.

Private commercial stations

• By 2022, Ghana boasted 513 radio stations, ranging across public, commercial, community, campus and foreign broadcasts.
• Private commercial stations now dominate, broadcasting in local languages.
• In Mauritius, airwaves were liberalised in 2002, introducing private stations.

Radio now

• Digital convergence is reshaping radio consumption, blurring audience patterns.
• A 2022 survey across 34 African countries found radio was “overwhelmingly the most common source for news”.

• Christina Chan-Meetoo receives funding from the Higher Education Commission in Mauritius as part of a research team on Mauritian Creole.
• Marissa J. Moorman received funding from Fulbright Hays and the American Council of Learned Societies for her research on radio in Angola.

• According to the national survey, 41 percent of registered voters expressed support for Trump, while 37 percent favored Biden.
• These findings echo recent polls showing Trump consistently leading Biden by margins ranging from 1 to 4 percent.
• Demographic analysis of the poll data highlights the role of racial and ethnic identity in shaping candidate support.
• Further examination reveals Trump's strong hold on white non-college graduates, with 52 percent favoring him over Biden.