The Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) is a government body, tasked with providing meteorological information to aid in the better utilization of natural resources. Its interest in community radio stems from the fact that the KMD provides free weather information to commercial and state media, but these do not always air the information. According to the KMD, weather information is a public good, in that it is information that is useful to all members of the public, and therefore stations should not charge to air it. In warning them of
any impending weather conditions that they need to prepare for, timely meteorological information helps the public avoid disaster and loss. The KMD therefore started community radio stations as part of a project known as RANET (RAdio and interNET). As of 2014, the KMD was running four functional radio and weather stations, and had acquired licenses for two more. The KMD does not work in isolation. It partners with organisations such as the United States weather service, the World Meteorological Organisation, and Vodafone, a multinational telecommunications company. Vodafone provided wind-up radios (which do not require batteries, one of the major costs incurred in running a radio) to community listening groups. KMD also works with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) already working in the community, allowing them to provide content, for example on health issues, as explained by the KMD project coordinator: “You know NGOs want to help a particular community in a certain way. Like in Suswa we were in partnership with an NGO that was promoting HIV awareness. So we partnered with them. They provided the space where to put the radio, in one of their rooms, and we work with such people as partners” (Ruirie 2014).
And while weather is a key focus of these stations, it is not the only focus. The programme coordinator clarified during the interview, as the following excerpt shows:
It is not all about weather and climate 24 hours. We encourage them to address issues in the community like diseases, cattle diseases, development issues...[…]…politics and religion is out, because [in airing such] we are polarising the community. If you support a certain political ideology and you bring it onto the radio it will cause conflict. So we have avoided the two. Politics and religion. (Ruirie 2014).
Interviewer:50 And there is no demand from the community to hear about political and religious issues?
No, the community wants to hear about development. Just development. But obviously you know politicians want to come in. So even where we have those radios, there are some interests from politicians [who] want to come in. But we have made it clear it is purely a government tool to enhance climate and weather information… and generally for development issues. (Ruirie 2014)
From the above quote the funding organization views itself as being in a position to judge the kind of content the community wants to listen to, and prefers to focus on ‘safe’ content, which is not linked to politics. Thus, on one hand the station is to ostensibly give the community a voice, but in practice, the voice is curtailed, limited to topics that do not upset the power balance. While this caution is described as being for the good of the community, it is also apparent that this caution is to ensure that the status quo remains. From the above examples,
50 I was the interviewer
the expectation that the KMD radio stations function in a ‘collaborative’ role (Christians et al, 2009) with the government is clearly stated. The KMD, as a state body, envisages the role of the stations as partnering in development promotion through the provision of information to the community. In this case, the state creates the plan, and then expects the media to disseminate it. The media is not expected to exercise autonomy and pursue self-determined goals, but rather, follow pre-determined state goals. Indeed, this mindset is so much the case that the KMD finds it unreasonable that commercial stations would want to charge a fee to air weather information. According to the coordinator, “Weather and climate information is a public good. It is for the benefit of everyone. So why should a radio station charge for that information? They should just relay it.” (Ruirie 2014)
The KMD expects airtime in the media to be freely provided, irrespective of the fact that private media houses are business outfits out to make profits, and not out to implement state information priorities. This approach to the state-media relationship illustrates Alhassan &
Chakravartty’s (2011) argument that in postcolonial nations, “communication resources of the nation are often discussed, not as resources for democracy but as those for ‘development’ in the technical sense of diffusion studies” (Alhassan and Chakravartty 2011, 371). The idea of top-down communication is also apparent here, with the station playing the role of educator, with no contribution by the community. This harks back to the diffusion approach of the 1960s which viewed information as the key to transforming traditional populations into modern ones, thus promoting national development (Rogers, 1962). The diffusion approach, while officially phased out in favour of more participatory approaches to development, is apparently still alive in terms of the ideas circulating in government circles about the role of the media in society.
More so, it sounds like a continuation of Kenya’s post-independence nation-building strategy.
In the post-independence period starting in the 1960s, Kenyan broadcast media were co-opted into the state, with journalists categorised as civil servants tasked with aiding the state to meet its goals (Odhiambo 1991; Ogola 2011).
In the case of Kangema FM, weather content from the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) is an integral part of the station’s content, and is, indeed, the reason for existence of the station in the first place. The station may not be restricted from including diverse content in its programmes, but is required to have specific content depending on the funding source.
While arguably, the programme requirements are actually for the good of the community, this does not negate the fact that these programming priorities are not determined by the
communities that they are meant to serve; rather, they are determined by people from outside the community who happen to have the resources that the stations need to run. It exemplifies the constant sustainability dilemma of community radio stations: ideally, they should be run on community funds so as to enable the community to truly determine the priorities that they would like to address via the stations. However, often, the community is not able or willing to fund the station, and in fact do not see it as their duty to do so, and if anything, expect the station to support them. However, it is not just a matter of the non-station community members’ understanding. Even among the community station producers, there is a distinct top-down approach in how they view themselves in relation to the community; they seek to
‘enlighten’ their fellow community members (thus assuming that they are in a position of knowledge). This idea is further tackled in the examination of the individual stations’
production practices.
While KMD is a meteorological institution with weather as its core business, it stands to reason that KMD has probably found it easier to get licenses for its stations approved because weather is a non-controversial subject.51 This is especially keeping in mind that broadcast frequencies have historically been a tightly controlled resource.52 From the conversation with the coordinator, politics and religion are assumed to be separate from development. It exemplifies the idea that was in vogue until the 1990s in much of post-colonial Africa, Kenya included:
that the media should pursue development goals in collaboration with the state, rather than issues such as democracy or freedom of expression (Ramaprasad 2001; Ogola 2011; Odhiambo 1991; Alhassan and Chakravartty 2011).
As Alhassan & Chakravartty (2011) point out, the rhetoric of ‘development’ has been “as instrumental as political technologies in governmentalizing the Global South in international relations” (Alhassan and Chakravartty 2011, 378). While the authors make this argument in the context of global influences on local media policies, the idea of development as a governmentalizing53 tool is apparent at this local level. The same way the rhetoric of
51 Pierre Bourdieu in ‘On Television’ (p. 44-56) makes an engaging argument about weather as the ideal ‘soft’
subject in commercial television, not only because it is relevant to diverse viewers, but also because it is least likely to offend anyone and therefore not liable to disrupt a station’s market share. This same ‘non-disruptive content’ logic seems to inform the KMD in choosing to adopt a policy of not airing politics or religion.
52 See for example histories of Kenyan media as outlined by Ogenga (2010), Ogola (2011), Nyanjom (2012), Nyabuga & Booker (2013), Wanyama (2015), and Ugangu (2016)
53 I use governmentalizing here in the Foucauldian sense of how the state uses its power to control populations.
See Foucault, M. (1991). 'Governmentality', trans. Rosi Braidotti and revised by Colin Gordon, in Graham
building’ was used to squelch any opposition to the post-independence state (Ogola 2011),
‘development’ is used here as an argument to shut down the possibilities for the community to engage in democratic discussion of overtly political issues. However this does not necessarily mean that forms of political participation do not take place in KMD stations. From the reference to politicians and supporting ‘certain political ideology’, the conceptualisation of the political by the KMD is narrowed down to ‘institutionalized politics’ (Carpentier and Jenkins, 2014). It ignores the possibility of political engagement through activities such as participation in the popular, which constitutes “subtle rather than direct struggle or agitation” (Mudhai 2011, 257). Nevertheless, if one goes by the stated ideas of the founders, this station is designed for top-down development communication, rather than participatory communication which is based on the views of the community.
4.7 Norwegian Church Aid (NCA): Climate Change, Community and Governance