‘We’re More Than Just a Radio’: Radio Scout and Its Women’s Listening Associations

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter discusses a ‘bottom-up’ approach to radio broadcasting drawing on the example of a women-only listening association formed in 2018, as a result of the research in this book, in the outskirts of Niamey, Niger’s capital. The chapter draws on concepts of empowering environments to demonstrate how, through collective solidarity or through power with, women have been able to create and develop their own listening associations. This has given members the opportunity, on the one hand, to meet, discuss, and cascade information, improving their lives and those of their families and communities, and, on the other hand, to set up microcredit facilities as part of these associations enabling them to create small businesses and use the income to the benefit of their families, even sending daughters to school and empowering the next generation. The chapter also shows how women, used to being under the domination of men, recognise their capacity to transform their daily lives by participating in community action. In doing so, shifts in women’s critical consciousness emerge in the chapter from perceiving themselves as secondary or incapable of effecting social change.