Stakeholders and community radio: Promoting participatory governance in Ghana

Abstract

This study presents what can be described as a how-to-text on how community radio (CR) can be creatively used to address low civic involvement in policy-making in Ghana’s local governance units. The study employed a qualitative research approach. In-depth interviews were used to collect data from representatives of some key stakeholder institutions in Ghana’s local governance system, CR as well as from a community media expert. The study found that CR in Ghana can serve as effective tools for mobilising people to participate in policy-making in local governance through creative programming. Another finding is that the ability of villagers to contribute to radio content, and to participate in policy-related debates via phone-ins, could be limited by their inability to buy telephone credit due to their poverty status. The study unearthed weak linguistic proficiency on the part of the CR workers, which thwarts their ability to handle local government policies, which are technical in nature. The study concludes that the little evidence on innovative use of CR to promote citizens’ involvement in local governance policy-making processes is an issue, which needs to be addressed to unleash the potentials of CR in local governance. The study recommends that a potential instrument for easing the financial sustainability challenges of CR in Ghana is to ensure that the up-coming broadcasting law provides public funding for community media as pertains in Denmark, France and South Africa. The Ghana Community Radio Broadcast Network (GCRN) needs to institute indigenous languages training sessions in collaboration with local language experts to equip CR workers with language proficiency.