Advancing Community Resilience through Community Radio: The Case of EK-FM in Western Kenya ^†

Abstract

Community radio can serve as a crucial channel to disseminate information in rural locations. This is the case of the Ekialo Kiona Community Youth Radio (EK-FM) on Mfangano Island, Kenya. EK-FM has been a platform for communicating health information during the outbreak of COVID-19. Now, over one year into the pandemic, our MDP student team alongside EK-FM staff are assessing community needs and EK-FM’s opportunities and limitations in meeting them. Motivated by the current negative impacts of COVID-19 on less privileged communities, we are developing organizational, financial, social, and strategic routes to enhance the radio’s ability to uphold its community resilience goals. By engaging Mfangano’s communities to understand the context surrounding EK-FM, we facilitate the discovery of community aspirations for the radio to connect Mfangano residents regardless of their location, whether about local Suba culture, health, or ecological issues. We also explore possible social entrepreneurial pathways and partnerships toward EK-FM’s lasting financial viability.

1. Introduction

When unexpected disasters beset a community, the right communication channel and voices are critical. Community radio (CR) can serve as that channel to disseminate information during crises, support programs, and motivate action in rural locations, especially where transportation and face-to-face interactions are challenging. Through broadcasts in local languages, community radio can help to build community resilience and foster development by publicly exploring the complex intersections of solidarity, cultural identity, and community health without relying on transportation to connect people physically. CR can further socioeconomic inclusion by providing communication channels when modern technologies or transportation are not feasible, or language and literacy are barriers. CR also advances inclusion with programming determined and delivered by the community. However, due to its size and vulnerability to economic pressures, CR can face financial obstacles. Consequently, the challenges of financial sustainability, community governance, and audience appeal must be addressed.

This is the case of the Ekialo Kiona Suba Youth Radio (EKFM), a youth-led FM radio station operated out of the Ekialo Kiona Centre (EK) on Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria, Kenya. EK-FM radio acted as a platform for communicating health information and updates during the outbreak of COVID-19, partly substituting for travel to disseminate information among remote islands in the Lake Victoria area. COVID-19 has exacerbated the challenges that Mfangano Island’s 26,000 residents face, but prior to COVID-19, these communities had already faced substantial social, economic, environmental, and health challenges, including a high HIV prevalence [1]. Although the remote location contributes to these challenges, they are a legacy of the invasive Nile Perch fishing industry introduced by British officials during colonial rule, which led to local ecosystem devastation and a high demand among fishermen for sex work [2]. Due to these challenges and historical legacies, EK-FM supports goals of community resilience, solidarity, and cultural and language revitalization for the marginalized Abasuba people, through unique programming in Suba and other local languages [1]. The radio and EK use a 90 km wireless internet connection crossing from Kisumu, over Lake Victoria, to the peak of Mfangano Island, the longest in East Africa. EK-FM broadcasts through this internet connection to the first wind-and-solar-powered 500-watt FM transmitter in Africa, across an 80 km radius, reaching Mfangano Island communities and listeners on other islands throughout Lake Victoria and the Kenya mainland.

EK partnered with Organic Health Response (OHR), a community resilience organization with a focus on public health, as well as with the University of Minnesota (UMN). Via a collaboration between UMN and OHR, UMN Master of Development Practice (MDP) students work with OHR and EK-FM on summer practica evolving with current EK-FM needs. Most recently, UMN student teams focused on radio content and cultural revitalization, developing COVID-19 health and safety radio content in Summer 2020 and compiling community radio effective practices in Spring 2021. Now, EK is in the process of rebranding itself into a new Kenyan community-based organization (CBO) called Abakunta to adopt a more community-led and community-directed model, which includes transitioning its leadership and management from OHR. This process is in line with the previous student team’s recommendations for the radio to tap into the advantages of community ownership of programming. Rebranding requires strategic planning and organizational support. Abakunta envisions growth in three areas, financial sustainability, community engagement, and partnership strengthening, but current staff and volunteer capacity has not allowed them to pursue growth to date. Thus, these areas are the most constructive for our team to support Abakunta. We are working on organizational restructuring centering Abakunta and EK-FM’s viability, building EK-FM’s long-term capacity to operate independently from OHR.

Our role throughout this project has been entirely virtual and therefore facilitative due to the remote nature of the work and to support the capacity of local staff and volunteers as EK transitions to its CBO status as Abakunta. In the Methods and Results Sections, we describe the research, processes, and findings for each of the three areas: community engagement, financial sustainability, and partnership strengthening. The project is ongoing, so results are preliminary and will be expanded in the future.

2. Methods

Across the three project areas, reflexivity is important considering the team is composed of students from the United States, Egypt, and Uganda attending a United States-based academic institution and the clients are Kenyan professionals at a CBO. We periodically reflect upon how our positionalities, identities, and experiences influence our work and our core competencies and weaknesses, in order to help us to understand and combat our biases.

2.1. Community Engagement

The goal was to conduct a pilot community inquiry suited to the current local context. Understanding and preparing for non-internet-based community inquiry in remote settings during COVID-19 required extensive research and finding relevance to EK-FM. We conducted a literature review using keywords including ‘community engagement’, ‘East Africa’, ‘remote’, ‘virtual’, ‘community inquiry’, and ‘community feedback.’ The research presented many community inquiry methods, including paper surveys, SMS and USSD, social media, online surveys, town hall meetings, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. We incorporated findings on the ethical and accessibility considerations that community inquiry methods may encounter. For example, focus groups must be structured with considerations to local social dynamics for both participants and interviewers so that participants are more comfortable expressing themselves [3,4]. There were also gender-based considerations with accessibility, such as conflicts with caretaking and domestic responsibilities [4,11]. These methods and ethical considerations were presented to the production manager at EK-FM, who decided paper surveys would be the most appropriate at present due to cost, access to technology, staff and volunteer time, COVID-19 safety, and accessibility for those with limited literacy. Although paper surveys present a barrier to participants with limited literacy, EK-FM advised they would be easiest for friends or relatives to transcribe on low-literacy participants’ behalf.

Additional methods to support the paper survey were suggested to provide more timely feedback, increase accessibility for community members with low literacy, and provide another method to engage listeners of varying age demographics. These include social media polls and questions requesting written responses (Facebook and WhatsApp), recorded audio clips sent to EK-FM’s email or social media, on-air call-in periods where community members can respond to specific feedback questions on air, and surveys administered on air with responses via Short Message Service (SMS). Because this survey is programmatic, meaning it is being conducted exclusively for the improvement of EK-FM and to understand community needs and data remains with the organization, academic methodologies are not required and data collection tools can be more flexible.

Discussion with the production manager and colleagues identified the most effective and appropriate technology for the context. We agreed on a mixed approach, centering paper surveys as the most effective method to reach the widest audience, with social media and the multiple on-air survey methods as important supplementary methods to engage listeners. The paper survey is important if EK-FM wishes to distinguish responses of the Abasuba community from those of other listeners in the interests of cultural revitalization. The paper survey is also important as it provides a reasonable level of anonymity to respondents and does not require that respondents incur technology expenses. SMS responses to an on-air survey would be anonymous and engage listeners, but require access to one cell phone per respondent. All methods are also chosen to reduce unnecessary risk of COVID-19 transmission, as paper, on-air, and online surveys present much lower risk than in-person meetings, and replace the need for people to travel to give feedback with the opportunity to give feedback remotely. Per survey best practices, questions were checked to ensure that all possible answers were offered in multiple choice questions, double-barreled questions were avoided, attempts were made to avoid “leading” questions, demographics questions were positioned at the end, and questions were grouped by topic [13]. We also wrote multiple phrasings of many questions and sought feedback from EK-FM representatives with the goal of producing appropriately worded questions that would yield sufficient useful information for EK-FM without reaching an excessive length.

Survey administration and data collection are still ongoing, and results analysis will begin after initial survey data are collected. Planned methods include data analysis by demographics breakdowns to analyze potential differences between groups of different age brackets, genders, first languages, and county of residence. Data processing and analysis will be conducted twice: once by us, and separately by appropriate members of EK staff, volunteers, and community leaders [4]. The purpose of this duplication is first to support EK representatives in conducting data analysis themselves, and second to gain multiple perspectives in the data, including from community members [4].

Future inquiry methods would provide additional value when no longer precluded by COVID-19 safety considerations. Surveys are valuable for grouped, predetermined responses, but qualitative methods such as focus groups and interviews provide more nuance and may be more accessible to those with low literacy [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Town halls may also be more accessible for literacy considerations.

2.2. Financial Sustainability

This began with an internal and external assessment of organizational structure and strategy, existing cost and revenue streams, stakeholder and PESTEL(E) analyses (external environment and factors), and value chain mapping. We identified opportunities for growth and sustainability based on the assessment results, while considering potential challenges and risks, followed by a comprehensive and tailored financial sustainability road map. In our internal assessment, we relied on methods including semi-structured interviews and workshops with the client to understand the driving strategy, existing structures and processes, and financial statements. This was followed by a technical analysis where financial ratios were calculated and a numerical analysis was conducted. The lack of historical financial data imposed a challenge and only allowed us to do a snap-shot analysis for the year 2020. Furthermore, we initiated an outreach to experts to refine the general findings of the internal organizational and governance structure. The external assessment employed extensive research and workshopping with the client, and provided a targeted analysis of the legal environment given the radio’s current legal status, socio-cultural nature of the island guided by workshops with the client, and political forces that can potentially influence the radio. Finally, we conducted selective market research based on available market reports [#] to understand the overall radio market in Kenya. This was followed by benchmarking for eight selected radio stations based on the location and content relevance, which identified the social media engagement and potential sponsors.

2.3. Partnership Strengthening

Building and strengthening partnerships between the radio and its strategic partners is especially pivotal to the radio’s success given EK-FM’s ongoing transition to Abakunta CBO ownership. The partnership strengthening aspect utilized stakeholder analysis to determine the radio’s major partners. This was followed by an in-depth review of the existing organization agreements (MOUs and SOWs) with the aim of realigning the critical areas of collaboration between Abakunta and its partners. A case in point here is that Maseno University, with its rich array of programs and a dedicated academic community, presents a huge potential for a mutually beneficial relationship with EK-FM. Solidifying this relationship is currently a work in progress, but is likely to be successful given strong expressed interest from both partners. One of the important activities happening concurrently with the management transition to the new Abakunta CBO is bringing together the interim CBO board and the different relevant departments of Maseno University to discuss potential areas of collaboration.

Strengthening the relationship between Maseno University and EK-FM lies in the desire to build capacity within EK-FM through certificates and diploma programs in media and communication for the radio’s staff, access to interns from the university, and personpower and resources universities can provide. Connecting with a local university offers an opportunity for Abakaunta and EK-FM to build a stronger support network with in-person or technological connections to students and instructors from across the country with various areas of expertise. A strong university connection may also further Abakunta’s goal of community resilience by creating space for university students and staff to work alongside the communities on Mfangano.

There are stand-alone projects Maseno and EK-FM have collaborated on, but EK-FM desires a broader, long-term partnership. Forging sustainable and lasting partnerships between organizations requires time, trust, and setting expectations at the outset [14,15]. The relationship between EK-FM and Maseno University is currently linked through OHR; however, future partnerships will be between Maseno and Abakunta. We reviewed the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and determined which aspects should be carried forward into the new partnership and which aspects were missing. These determinations were based on research about building lasting relationships between NGOs, CBOs, and universities. The findings from this review of the existing literature proposed that value propositions, clear goals and contact people, and mission alignment were critical in ensuring partnerships were sustainable [14,15]. Findings also recommended moving beyond project-based connections to a broader partnership that both parties could rely on [14].

We contacted leaders from Abakunta and department heads at Maseno University to gather information about desired avenues for collaboration, what each party expected from the relationship, and what they could provide. We asked questions about what each party expected from and could offer to the partnership. We also asked how each party expected the partnership would benefit Mfangano communities or Maseno students. These questions are important because they are avenues for aligning expectations from each party and intentions are clear at the outset of the relationship.

3. Results and Findings

This project is ongoing, thus the results presented in this paper are preliminary and the deliverables we are responsible for are in progress.

3.1. Community Engagement

An early community engagement deliverable was a pilot community inquiry survey. Questions were grouped into four sections: General, about the frequency and quality of listeners’ experiences; Content; Presenters, about the radio presenters; and “About you” for age, gender, first language, and region of residence demographics. The final paper survey will be provided in both PDF and Google Forms format so it can be easily printed and so staff and volunteers can easily input data from paper surveys.

A description of the survey, its purpose, its voluntary nature, and assurance of its anonymity precede the paper survey, in non-academic language. Paper surveys will be administered by radio presenters en masse to households, and envelopes will be provided to protect respondents’ privacy. Paper surveys can be returned to dropboxes positioned in strategic locations around Mfangano, such as next to previously set-up handwashing stations, or returned to a health navigator (another OHR program).

Additional mixed methods require fewer questions due to time and character restrictions. To that end, we identified questions that would be more appropriate for social media due to their general quality or translatability to an online poll. We also identified questions to broadcast with the potential for call-ins and/or SMS responses. In particular, separate surveys and feedback will be repeated during multiple programs about four key topics the radio covers (agriculture; health; education; and governance, politics, and leadership). The goal of this repetition is to receive feedback about specific topics from listeners who are known to be engaging with that topic (due to the synchronous nature of the survey).

Further deliverables will consist of a guide for structure and phrasing of community inquiry surveys, focus groups, and interviews to facilitate EK-FM staff and volunteers’ capacities to design and administer surveys independently. This guide will also incorporate the ethical considerations of community feedback methods, namely compensating respondents for their time and resources when possible (especially in the case of interviews or workshops which may require more time and transport); incorporating methods to share grouped feedback results publicly, such as through paper fliers or on-air; and clarifying how and when feedback will be incorporated.

As this is a pilot, the various survey methods will also be assessed for utility and relevance of responses. We anticipate many aspects of the community inquiry methods will be adjusted in response to this pilot, including the data analysis process and survey questions based on the quality of responses in initial surveys. We also anticipate tracking the various methods of response gathering to evaluate and compare the utility of paper surveys, on-air SMS surveys, on-air call-ins, and social media methods. Considerations for COVID-19 safety also necessitate certain limitations on possible methods, so future adjustments may also explore methods such as focus groups, interviews, town halls, and workshops as additional opportunities for feedback, including the utility of their responses. Consistent with the pilot project’s mixed survey methods, we anticipate that community inquiry methods will provide more value to both EK-FM and the community if they continue to utilize varied methods as appropriate for the situation.

3.2. Financial Sustainability

3.2.1. General Operational Findings

The initial analysis of internal EK-FM documents showed that the vision and mission statements can be further developed to reflect EK-FM’s new identity as it becomes independent from OHR. The development of these strategy statements can further guide the financial sustainability strategy and activities that align with the radio’s vision and core values as a new separate entity [16]. Furthermore, the existing organization structure is built around the existing radio workforce, which does not allow for flexibility in growth. To address this issue, we developed a recommended functional organization structure where personnel can be allocated to one function or more as the radio team grows organically, as shown in Figure 1.

In Figure 1, solid lines signify direct reporting lines, while dashed lines signify communication channels. We recommended including a Human Resources (HR) department that can coordinate interns from Maseno. This shows the interconnectedness of the three components of this project as working with Maseno interns is a key component of partnership strengthening. The HR department should also be responsible for complaint handling and report directly to the radio manager. To ensure sensitive complaints are handled, we suggest having a complaint box to accept anonymous and non-anonymous complaints. A Complaint M&E team would monitor HR’s handling of complaints through focus groups, surveys, or interviews, and report to management directly. We suggested someone from the EK Community Council with relevant experience to perform HR department audits when applicable. We also recommended the radio team revise all job descriptions based on the recommended functional organization structure, avoid the use of unquantifiable action verbs such as “take care”, and develop Key Performance Indicator(s) with quantifiable metrics.

3.2.2. Cost and Revenue Stream Analysis

A cost stream analysis for 2020 showed spikes in expenditure associated with bonus payments, generator repairs and fuel, and licensing and royalties. A total of 73% of licensing fees, royalties and copyrights cost went to music and other copyrights fees. This highlighted the importance of optimizing royalties’ payments. The total cost for running the generator over 6 months, including fuel and repairs, was near 180 k KES. We recommend looking for more resilient and additional economic options, especially considering fuel may not be easily accessible in emergency and isolation disasters.

Regarding revenue, our analysis showed only 42% of 2020 spending has been financed by radio-generated income, 58% of revenue is from grants, and only 1% is generated from advertisements. Our recommendations highlighted the importance of pursuing other revenue streams because grants constitute more than half of revenue and they are not as sustainable as other revenue sources. Additionally, one sponsoring NGO contributed 59% of the income generated by sponsorships. This should guide the targeting approach and push for an agreement with this organization, if applicable.

The Kenyan radio market is fragmented with small players holding over 30% of the market, and the four biggest players holding around 41% of the market [17]. EK-FM is a niche community radio; therefore, big market players are not a threat. However, low barriers to entry should be considered a threat and ad pricing can be set and manipulated by the big players. The eight radio stations used for benchmarking indicate social media reach is important; for example, each of the eight radios has hundreds of thousands of Facebook likes compared to EK-FM’s likes of around 4000. Benchmarking analysis showed the main sectors using radio ads and sponsorship are the government, NGOs, banks, corporations, sports brands, and religious entities.

3.2.3. Recommendations

Our first recommendation was to allocate more resources to secure more sponsorships and advertisements to gradually fill in the gap between revenues and costs in the absence of future grants.

Table 1. Initiatives for capitalizing on the advertisements and sponsorships as a potential revenue stream.

Initiative	Key Metrics	Potential Risks/Bottlenecks	Relevant Findings
Identify targeted sectors to promote EK-FM capacity for advertisements	# of sectors; Month to month change in # of meetings w/potential sponsors	Mis-categorize sectors’ perception of EK-FM	Telecom industry, local vendors, governments, NGOs and hotels
Assemble a business development (BD) team	Status of BD team; # of personnel w/BD activities	Budget constraints; skilled personnel scarcity; no direction	Function is included in the recommended organizational chart
Develop promotion and advertisement packages and pricing (Rate Cards)	Availability of the rate card; percent growth of distribution channels of rate card	Lack of personnel; lack of market pricing awareness	Sample rate cards identified. Card value guided by market rates
Engagement with previous EK-FM sponsors/clients and formalizing agreements	percent of clients contacted; # of agreements formalized; percent of radio revenue pledged	Previous sponsors change policy and exclude radio sponsorships	EK-FM has experiences with NGOs to be capitalized on as potential quick wins
Approach identified clients systematically	Monthly change in # of meetings w/ prospects; percent of meetings leading to revenue	Lack of motivation; relevance of unique EK-FM selling points	Social media is important; top 8 radios have 100,000 s Facebook likes, EK-FM, 4000
Increase social media engagement	Month to month change in the # of Facebook page likes; frequency of Facebook posts	Internet accessibility on island; capacity shortage; content relevance	EK-FM uses Facebook for outreach. More posts and active marketing is possible

presents potential revenue streams.

Our second recommendation focused on using the unique opportunity EK-FM has given its unique structure and access to resources as the sole program under the Abakunta CBO. This can allow for two potential revenue generation models:

• Abakunta can start a money generating program that also provides job opportunities, and use income generated from this program to support EK-FM activities. We have been informed EK has operated an organic farm with two main objectives: providing the community with healthy food and generating income for EK.
• Utilize the radio as a marketing channel for local vendors’ open days, where EK-FM uses rent-free land it operates to provide a market space for vendors for a fee. Vendors obtain space and higher market penetration due to the radio’s systematic activities of promoting the event, vendors, and location.

3.3. Partnership Strengthening

The partnership strengthening aspect of the project is in its early stages, thus the deliverables for this process are in their preliminary forms. At the moment, verbal commitments have been made and both parties are working on their value proposition, which will then be formalized into more detailed, action-based agreements (MOUs and SOWs) that explicitly reflect the needs of the radio than the previous ones. Additionally, after conducting research on sustainable partnerships between CBOs and universities, a report was compiled and presented to the Abakunta board. This report included recommendations for Abakunta to follow when working with Maseno University. Recommendations included designating a certain person at the CBO to manage the partnership (as mentioned earlier, this should be managed under the HR position in the recommended organizational chart), locating multiple people at Maseno to connect and build relationships with, creating a knowledge documentation system both parties have access to which will allow the two-way transfer of information, and creating a separate financial account for this partnership. Potential areas of collaboration were also presented and recommended to actors on both sides of the prospective partnership for consideration, including radio listener base identification; Maseno interns at EK-FM for various projects; training and capacity building certificates and diplomas from various Maseno departments for EK-FM staff; training, research and learning opportunities to Maseno University scholars at EK-FM.

4. Conclusions

This is a specific case of CBO strengthening in western Kenya using the strategies within three project areas. Community engagement and inquiries ensure the CBO is working for the people it serves and considers their needs and desires while expanding. Financial sustainability activities, including the systemic assessment of the radio combined with benchmarking activities of the Kenyan radio market, allowed for the identification of areas of improvement and optimization on both strategic and financial levels. For EK-FM, capitalizing on the vibrant Kenyan radio advertisements market and taking advantage of the radio governance structure to build revenue-generating business units suggests promising approaches to achieve financial sustainability. Partnership strengthening can lead to more personpower and resources, which in turn can assist in Abakunta’s vision of community resilience. Although these pathways are applicable for Abakunta and EK-FM, there are other routes available to other CBOs looking to expand or step away from a parent organization. Additionally, the entirely virtual role of our team presents advantages for Abakunta as they expand as a Kenyan-led and -operated organization because the neocolonial OR hegemonic influence of US institutions leading development interventions is further removed and it is easier for them to claim ownership over project processes. Finally, our endeavors demonstrated that certain projects as this one can be conducted completely virtually. The onslaught of videoconferencing and other technological advancements make community development projects doable from any location, replacing the need to travel to work physically alongside community and organizational leaders.