DANDAL KURA RADIO HELPING TO CHANGE NIGERIA
I stumbled across an interesting article on the Public Radio International (PRI) website today. Entitled How a shortwave radio network is helping to counter Boko Haram, it focuses on the broadcaster Dandal Kura Radio:
It’s easy to overlook the power of radio, when being hit by a firehose of apps, websites, video and social media. But when you’re out in the sticks, especially if there’s crisis or unrest, radio saves lives.
“In crisis situations, information is very, very important. Sometimes more than food, you need information," says Faruk Dalhatu, managing director of Dandal Kura Radio International in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a former Boko Haram stronghold. “Because, if you’re on the run, you need to know which direction is safe, before you even think of close family members that have been separated from you.”
What’s more, you don’t need to know how to read to listen to radio. You don’t even need to own a radio; you can just listen to someone else’s. And if you’ve got a cellphone — and many people even in remote parts of Africa do — you can call in and have a voice.
All this informed why the relatively new Dandal Kura radio network, which started broadcasting in early 2016, was set up, with help from the United Nations and other funders, as it was — a regional, interactive, international radio network, reaching across borders, the way Boko Haram does, in the language Boko Haram and some 10 million people in the region speak, Kanuri. The region includes northeastern Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
“This is the first Kanuri-language radio network in the world,” says David Smith, the founder of Dandal Kura Radio International, and previously founder of Radio Okapi in the Republic of Congo — credited by one senior UN peacekeeping official as electronically destroying the frontline in the war in the Congo — and other post-conflict radio efforts in Somalia, Equatorial Guinea and the former Yugoslavia.
Continue reading this article at
DANDAL KURA SCHEDULE
Haven't heard Dandal Kura Radio yet? All broadcasts are in the Kurani language. This is the current schedule (as at May 31 via the Aoki list):0500 - 0600 on 5960 via Ascension Island relay
0600 - 0700 on 7415 via Ascension Island relay
0700 - 0800 on 13810 via the Woofferton, England relay
1800 - 1900 on 12050 via Dhabayya, UAE relay
1900 - 2100 on 12050 via Woofferton, England relay
The station's website is: http://www.dandalkura.com/
73 and good DX to you all,
Rob Wagner VK3BVW
Subscribe!! Follow @robvk3bvw
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