Wednesday, November 24, 2004

New fund for African community radio

The AMARC Roundtable on Community Media for Sustainable Development, was held in Marrakech on 21 November 2004 as part of a regional conference on the role of media and the Internet in Africa and the Arab states. The main conclusion of the meeting was to propose a global fund for community radio linked to the idea of a Digital Solidarity Fund proposed last year during the WSIS Summit.

The initiative to create a global fund will "need to find ways to articulate with the Digital Solidarity Fund which is focused on telecoms infrastructure", said Steve Buckley, the President of AMARC. Buckley noted that opportunities existed for community radio to expand its scale in many countries. International development agencies were now ready to mainstream the funding of community radio. He said the fund would "focus on short term investments for long-term sustainability". It would be a catalyst for national policy changes to create the funding to dramatically increase the scale of community radio.

Read more in the report from the Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)