When a country gets independence after decades of colonisation, its citizens can dare dream.
This is the spirit demonstrated by the smiling Mang’u High School students as they learnt how to operate the wireless transmitter and receiver radio in the laboratory.
Majority of these boys had just graduated from using two tins tied to a nylon string to imitate a telephone. To come face to face with a new technology that allowed an announcer to communicate with audiences hundreds of miles away, through a short wave or frequent modulation mode was quite a novelty. And now their teachers are like the radio announcers using wireless technology.
When the Covid 19 pandemic gripped the country last year, Mang’u was one of the few schools in the country which established a system where its boys were receiving instruction from their teachers virtually. For nine months, the students attended class, did their homework and were assessed by their teachers virtually while majority of their peers across the country were just loitering at home after their link with their teachers were broken. Radio is no longer a novelty as it used to be in the 1960s and neither does an owner have to pay an annual license to the government as used to happen in the 1970s and 80s.
Radio is so pervasive that each of the 43 million Kenyans who have a phone can access radio from whichever part of the country they are in. Gone are the days the head of a family had to be consulted by his children before they could listen to his Sanyo or Philip radio set. Neither do listeners have to wait specific times of the day to tune in for news.
The same smartphones serving as radio sets and record players rolled up in one are now being used by formal and informal media operators to break news. Every minute and every hour daily.
