Radio Revolution in Southern Africa, 1940-1990

‘Radio Revolutions’ is the first continental study of the history of radio in Africa. It uses innovative methodological approaches to make a major contribution to the scholarship on the global history of mass media. Radio remains the most popular mass medium on the continent to this day despite the rise of television and digital media, yet little research has addressed its origins and significance over the longue durée. The project explores the ways in which the rapid popularisation of radio in the twentieth-century had a transformative impact on politics, society and culture thanks to the unique combination of authoritarian polities, low rates of literacy and large rural populations.

My research analyses the evolution of radio from an elite luxury to a mass medium beginning in the 1920s and culminating in the 1990s. It has three central themes: first, that radio widened the public sphere dramatically especially in rural and underprivileged communities; second, that it bolstered the authority of late-colonial regimes but tended to undermine repressive postcolonial states; and third, that the experience of listening was gendered in ways that often excluded women.

In my work I use oral history interviews, sound recordings and written archives located in Zambia, Ghana, Ethiopia, UK and France. A major priority of my research is to preserve the testimonies of elderly broadcasters and radio listeners, and to digitise fragile archives including deteriorating reel-to-reel sound tapes and paper archives before they are lost.