Did You Know?-Uganda has over 290 authorized radio stations and only seven of these are community broadcasters! Equally, the female listenership of radio is still low despite the medium easier accessibility and affordability. According to a 2019 Media Landscape Report of Uganda by BBC Media Action, there is only a 68.7% female listenership to radio compared to the medium popularity and 90.5% listenership of males.
Radio as broadcast Media in Uganda has evolved over time from simply state dominance to privatized and communal owned outlets. This has ushered in pluralism, diversity and a debatable extent of media freedoms.
In 1954, radio was birthed in Uganda with Radio Uganda, a state owned medium as the ‘melody’ for listenership till the early 1990s. Content and programming on airwaves was largely shaped by the ‘state’. This monotony thrived until 1993 when independent radio stations like Sanyu and Capital FM were licensed.
The journey of a pluralistic radio industry thus blossomed and brought along diverse content, programming and representation. Timothy Kalyegira in his 2013 media analysis of “20years of FM radio stations in Uganda” relates that “Ugandans who in recent years had resigned themselves to an increasingly stale Radio Uganda, with its programming dominated by politicians, politics and policy, were treated to a breath of fresh air”.
Indeed it was a ‘banquet’, 67years later, over 290 radio stations are licensed and operational. Herein, with the growing private radio, a marginalized section of people were created. These were the rural, women, People Living with Disabilities, among others at the margins of increasing competition between the private ownership and state media for audience.
Realization of this imbalance bore in late 1990s community broadcast, media that would be owned, controlled and participated in by the people in addition to it acting as platform to the voiceless in mainstream. The birth and later evolution of radio was a road to developed media and the public good of information in a state barely independent from colonial rule.
Indeed, nine years after radio existence, Uganda television beamed the sight of Ugandans in black and white graphics. This widened the media scape of broadcast but also later the internet to now the vast broadcast, print and online media.
Expansion and development of the industry created necessity of regulation to ensure diversity, frequency spectrum, balanced and authentic information and representation. In 2013, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) was established to regulate the grown communications infrastructure in the country but also enforce the UCC Act, amended 2017. Hence, media regulation composes of the statutory and self-regulation.
Down the road, the growth and development witnessed in radio and media at large draws questions of; what have been the freedoms and independence to this industry? To what extent have they been achieved? Has information in the trenches of its dissemination been a public good?
Annually, UNESCO celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world; to defend the media from attacks on their independence; and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.
This and more to epitomize 2021 World Press Freedom Day (WPFD), let’s talk and walk it on May 3rd 2021! August 24th 2021, Mama FM will be reflecting and celebrating its 20th anniversary too, your being part of Mama@20 is a celebration added.
By Brenda Namata
