Training in radio production in Africa

August 2003 -

Radio Nederland Training Centre (RNTC) has started trainings for radio producers in Senegal, Sierra Leone and Guinee-Bissau. Volunteers at local stations receive lessons in professional radio production for the local population. The goal of the initiative is to create closer collaboration and the exchange of programs between the participating radio stations. Radio in Africa has a very large audience.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Thematic Co-financing Program will pay for the three-year RNTC project. In his opening speech, the president of Sierra Leone, Alhaji Dr. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, stressed the importance of the media. According to him, local radio in particular played an important role in the reconciliation and rebuilding of the country after the bloody civil war in the nineties.

Since 1968 RNTC has been stimulated the free formation of opinion by providing media trainings to journalists, program producers and teachers from developing countries. RNTC is part of the Word Service (Wereldomroep) that informs millions of Dutch speakers abroad via radio, TV and the Internet about goings-on in the Netherlands. The World Service also attempts to foster the free formation of opinion among people in countries that do not enjoy freedom of the press.