Radio Ntemo

In order to ensure participation from the intended audience, the station has motorcycles to enable the agents to travel outside Mbaza-Ngungu to collect information needed to produce broadcasts and conduct monitoring and evaluations in the field.

The station holds training sessions to enhance not only the technical skills of the Ntemo Radio personnel but also its partner organisations: the agence d'exécution sur terrain du programme d'information et de communication rurale (SNIR), the Service National de vulgarisation (SNV), and the French language stations with which Ntemo Radio has signed a protocol Local Rural Radio agreement. For example, for Ntemo Radio personnel, the project has provided training in participatory and interactive rural radio techniques, collecting and processing local information, using and maintaining the equipment for the radio engineers, and managing the administrative and financial components of the radio station.

Plans are being made to expand the station into Katanga, Kasaï, Equateur, and the Eastern Province. Organisers had envisioned drawing on a participatory methodology involving all the players concerned throughout the whole process. This methodology involves mobilising financial and physical resources, carrying out feasibility studies, sensitising grassroots communities, setting up a local project development committee, undertaking administrative formalities, and drawing up the statutes, requirements, and rules of procedure. The next set of activities are procuring the materials, recruiting the staff, installing the equipment, training the personnel, designing the programme schedule, and lastly commissioning and inaugurating the radio station. Procedures for monitoring and evaluating the radio station must also be put in place.

The project hopes to create a multipurpose community centre at Mbanza-Ngungu which will serve as a knowledge collection centre, a meeting place, and a forum for discussion and communication. Radio will also act as an interface between internet services, such as telemedicine, and the isolated rural communities far away from the centre.

Agriculture.

The station aims to provide information relevant to the needs of rural communities, as well as to create conditions for the proper functioning of the pilot radio station in the province. The project organisers say: "One of the great advantages of Rural Radio, to be used as a development communication tool, is the direct contact it establishes between development workers and the rural population."