Text of report in English by French state-funded public broadcaster Radio France Internationale on 5 July
[Presenter] Radio France Internationale [RFI] begins broadcasting in Swahili to 10 countries in Africa this morning. The RFI team of 10 people is based in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Programming will contain African and international news as well as press reviews and sports. The new head of RFI’s Africa Service, David Coffey, has more:
[Coffey] In our morning broadcast we have two half-hour slots, the first half-hour slot will be more Africa-centric with international news followed by sports. We have daily magazines programmes which last about 10 minutes, ranging from environment to politics to knowing-your-rights, covering legal issues here in Africa and then for our second programme we are going for more international and then more on Africa. We really want to bring international news, especially as the local radio stations are very very local news. The news is very colloquial and we are trying to bring in an international angle, with our course an East Africa interest to it, but we also have to control the Obama fever that has obviously swept the region which can be [words indistinct] but we are really looking into events that are happening across the globe for our second programme and of course for our afternoon programme at 1500 hrs gmt. So we are really trying to bring the world into the local FM’s here and with our FM relays across the region.
[Presenter] that was our former colleague at the morning service, and new head of the Swahili service in Dar-es-Salaam, David Coffey.
The Swahili service broadcasts are at 0430 and 0530 hrs universal time and in the afternoon from 1500-1600 hrs universal time.
(Source: Radio France Internationale, Paris, in English 0630 gmt 5 Jul 10 via BBC Monitoring)
The broadcasts are available on shortwave via Meyerton, South Africa as follows:
- 0430-0458 UTC on 7360 kHz 500 kW azimuth 005 degrees
- 0530-0558 UTC on 9835 kHz 100 kW azimuth 015 degrees
- 1500-1558 UTC on 12015 kHz 250 kW azimuth 007 degrees
(Source: DX Mix News, Bulgaria 01 July, as of 30 June via World of Radio 1519, DXLD)
The RFI website adds that the broadcasts will be aired on RFI stations in Mombasa (105.5 FM) and Nairobi (89.9FM) in Kenya, Dar Es Salaam (94.6 FM) in Tanzania, Kampala in Uganda (93.7FM), Manga (103.7FM) in Burundi and, eventually, southern Rwanda (92.1FM). Some of the programmes in Kiswahili will also be broadcast in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, southern Sudan, Madagascar and the Comoros. In addition, a corresponding website will be up and running this week at www.rfikiswahili.com.
on Jul 5th, 2010 at 19:13
“We have to control the Obama fever”??? What in world does that mean? It must go down in the annals of international broadcasting as the most bizarre reason for a station to start a new service. Trust the French media to come up with utter nonsense like that.
on Oct 10th, 2010 at 21:47
Good news for RFI. I am in the UK and obviously I can’t get you on the East African frequencies. What programe can I download in order to get you on line? Thank you.