As I wrote this article, I heard on radio that bandits had attacked a village in Elgeyo Marakwet County.
I remembered the morning of March 4, 2022 when all the 150 radio stations under the European Broadcasting Union played the song, 'Give peace a chance', by John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The song was heard in 25 countries, including Ukraine.
I also remembered January 4, 2008, when all leading dailies in Kenya had the same headline, 'Save our beloved country'. Most, if not all, radio stations in the country read or quoted verbatim the newspaper editorials on this special day.
Further, I wondered why regional bodies like the European Union, African union and our East African Union are yet to embrace the role of radio in peace initiatives in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Chad, Mozambique, among others.
The 2023 World Radio Day today, hosted by UNESCO, and locally celebrated in Mombasa by Media Council of Kenya, has the theme, 'Radio and peace'. Two key reasons why radio is still the instrument of peace, according to UNESCO are its capacity to shape public opinion across various brackets of society and to frame narratives that can effectively influence domestic and international decision-making processes.
There have been remarkable milestones in use of radio for peace. When in 2020, the entire world was battling Covid-19, Colombia, was walking the path of peace. This country has a lot of radio stations. She has 1,974 stations with 686 categorised as community radio.
However, limited training in content management and high human resource turnover, owed to weak financial status at the institutions, has highly crippled the efforts of trumpeting messages of peace.
In Africa, the challenge remains, lack of sustained use of radio for peace efforts. The 2018 peaceful elections in Mali, can be attributed to radio.
In July of that year, concerted efforts by radio station managers brought together 14 journalists, animators and editors to a command centre at Radio Saghan headquarters in Mopti, Mali. They coordinated fellow 60 journalists for three consecutive days on messages about the need for peace during elections.
The radio broadcasts across most of the radio stations were in seven different languages, mainly spoken by the majority of the ethnic communities in Mali.
However in 2021, as the dissemination of peace messages was not sustainable, the situation got fluid leading to the coup d'etat in which the Malian Army led by Vice President Assimi Goita captured President Bah N'daw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and Minister of Defence Souleymane Doucoure. One wishes that the 2018 tempo of messaging on peace had been maintained.
We need to understandthat, peace is not dictated but negotiated and radio remains a key instrument of negotiation. The earlier we embrace this fact and work towards its realisation, the sooner peace will begin flooding the bandit-swamped areas of Kenya and other places in Africa where violence is part of daily life.
-Mr Ogonda is a media trainer and development communications strategist
