African days are radio days. You travel around the continent and from large cities to small villages: you’ll find people tuned in. Radio is accessible and open to input from local communities. It has survived the advent of television and it is more adaptable to the challenges of the internet than newspapers are. It can be live streamed or - more important - bring the resources of the world wide web to the users of the transistor technology. Radio is everywhere – and it remains the future.

The radio engagement of The Media Project Southern Africa – the forerunner of fesmedia Africa - started in the early 90s with Bush Radio in Cape Town, South Africa. These were turbulent times throwing off the oppression of the apartheid regime and as the first community radio project for the New South Africa Bush Radio was at the forefront of it.

When the state authorities refused the issuing of a license, Bush Radio used the FES-donated studio for training South Africa’s future community broadcasters.  In 1994 the National Community Radio Forum (NCRF) was established and operated from the offices of Bush Radio in the former “District Six” of Cape Town.

In June 1995 – seven years after a group of activists had set out to establish a local, non-profit and community owned radio station - Bush Radio went on air. This time it did so legally.

With the ongoing help of FES and other donors Bush Radio has become “The Mother of Community Radio in Africa”: with a fully fledged programme providing information and outside broadcasts to the marginalized black and coloured communities of the Cape Flats; with slots for children and jazz aficionados, for political junkies and just curious citizens in and around Cape Town. You can listen to it on live stream.

After supporting the development of new and inclusive programming formats fesmedia Africa has started to send the experienced staff of Bush Radio to other countries in Southern Africa. In 2008 the Bush-journalists helped in setting up Kharas Community Radio in Keetmanshoop, Namibia, and went on a further training mission to Base FM in Windhoek.

In 2009 there has been an exchange of practices and program ideas between Bush Radio and Radio Dialogue in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. As Radio Dialogue has only been practicing with cassette tapes and local radio shows whilst waiting for the new Zimbabwean government to issue a license, the internships of the Zimbabwean radio activists at Bush Radio prove very valuable.

The idea behind the long term FES-support for new programming formats and the training arm of Bush Radio is not the export of prefabricated formulas into the region, but to encourage a process in which community radio projects in Southern Africa can learn form each other and develop sustainable local radio stations “for the community and by the community”, wherever that might be.

Radio features also in the fesmedia Africa activities for media reform. Particularly the local language services of the state or public broadcaster play an important role in ensuring diversity and informing the multiethnic listenership in matters of politics, health and education.