To mark this year's World Radio Day, UN News spoke with Gabriel Joseph Shadar, a South Sudanese radio producer at Radio Miraya, about the important role the station plays in this young nation as it readjusts to life after the 2018 landmark peace agreement, which formally ended five years of civil war, but remains fragile.
“All South Sudanese will tell you that they love radio, especially those who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, before social media. When the UN peacekeeping mission arrived in the country, I joined Miraya and radio has become my life for the last 15 years.
In South Sudan, much of the population lives in rural areas, where there is poor internet service, newspapers are rarely circulated, and there is no television coverage.
So the easiest way to get information is the radio: you just have to have batteries and there it is. You can listen on your farm, while following your cattle somewhere, and your life goes on. Many of the people in South Sudan cannot read or write, so they rely on hearing what we are broadcasting.
Radio Miraya, by far the largest network in South Sudan, informs, educates and entertains. It's mostly in English, but we also have programming in Arabic, the lingua franca of the streets.
We make sure to include the voices of ordinary people, but we are also making a link and a bridge between officials and citizens, so that the latter receive information and the former obtain feedback from their constituents.
We cover a wide range of topics, including many that other radio stations can't; from politics to lifestyle, youth issues and gender issues. We also have serious discussions every Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment