Farm Radio International is a Canadian charity working with more than 500 radio partners in 38 African countries to fight poverty and food insecurity. They support African broadcasters to provide radio services that share knowledge and amplify the voices of small-scale farmers, their families and their communities.
What They Do
They help African radio broadcasters meet the needs of local small-scale farmers and their families in rural communities.
Broadcaster Resources
They develop radio scripts, information packages, a weekly electronic news service, and a special on-line community called Barza, and share them with thousands of African broadcasters. They, in turn, use these resources to research, produce and present relevant and engaging programs for their audience of tens of millions of farmers. These resources are:
aimed at increasing food supplies and improving nutrition and health;
simple, safe, affordable and practical;
ecologically sound and environmentally sustainable;
suitable for communication by radio;
proven useful and transferable within the developing world; and
appropriate to both female and male small-scale farmers.
Broadcaster Training
They provide training services to broadcasters, including direct in-station training, distance education and custom workshops to help them meet a higher standard of farm radio services. All training is directly targeted toward the practical needs and realities of broadcasters – as they do their work. They help radio stations measure the quality of their farm radio services, and take steps to improve them, by appraising their programs against a set of standards they call the V.O.I.C.E. standards.
Impact Programming
They work with partner radio stations to plan and deliver special radio campaigns and programs that have a specific impact on a development challenge such as soil erosion or banana bacterial wilt. Programs such as Participatory Radio Campaigns have been proven to increase farmers knowledge of improved farming practices , help them make decisions about whether to adopt the improvements, and realize the benefits of introducing these practices on their farms.
Gender Policy
Farm Radio International is committed to promoting gender equality in all of their work.
They equally value the contribution of women and men farmers to their families, to agriculture and rural life, and to their societies. They equally value the contribution of men and women broadcasters to rural communities and to broadcasting. In all of their activities they will support both women and men in the pursuit of the equal enjoyment of rights, responsibilities, opportunities, resources and rewards, and they will give equal weight to the perceptions, interests, needs and priorities of both women and men.
