For a few years now, Burkina Faso’s community radios (Radio Vénégré, Radio La Voix du Paysan, Radio Munyu and Radio Tin-Tua) have been developing a series of online tools to respond to the needs of their communities. These include websites, SoundCloud accounts, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, WhatsApp streaming groups, as well as podcast productions.

Content creation through Colmena is essential to feed all these platforms and, at the same time, share content among the network of radio partners. Radio Vénégré, for example, hopes to use Colmena’s “call-in” function with its local correspondents to record interviews and process them for broadcast. Radio La Voix du Paysan is looking to record and broadcast short podcasts via the app.

In a country where computers are not accessible to all, radio stations see the arrival of Colmena as a means to facilitate the work of journalists in the field.

“With Colmena on our phones, we are going to be better able to go out into the field, collect and process information on the ground, instead of having to carry computers all the time,”

explains Alfred Kagambéga, Program Manager at Radio Vénégré.

The greatest satisfaction for the radios is broadcasting their own productions directly through Colmena and getting more listeners to tune in to their content. “It’s innovative and a new experience if we can do it,” says Dieudonné Lankoande, Colmena coordinator in Burkina Faso.

Learn more about Colmena at: https://blog.colmena.media/