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 Radio and Writing The first radio broadcasts in Sub-Saharan Africa were made in the early 1920's. The earliest recording of a radio broadcast was made in 1923 in South Africa. It was Mendelssohn's "Auf Fluegeln des Gesanges."  Listen
to the first radio broadcast on the continent of Africa - a piano performance
of "Auf Fluegeln Des Gesanges"Kenya had its own radio station in 1927, followed by Mozambique in 1933, and Senegal in 1939. But these were only broadcasting programmes made for expatriates. It wasn't until World War II that radio broadcasting was tailored to the needs of people in Africa. People wanted local news but also information about the theatres of war where their relatives and friends had gone to fight. For the first time there were broadcasts in African languages and dialects. People in Lagos could listen to the news in pidgin. Hear
about war broadcasts in pidgin with Lagos inhabitant Mrs. SawyerThere were broadcasts in Hausa. The distinguished Hausa broadcaster (later Northern politician) Isa Kaita was based in Accra and unusually for that time gave detailed accounts of what was happening in the region, including a description of his own journey from Lagos to Accra under attack from German U-Boats. Hear Isa Kaita's account of broadcasting in the warHear
Harry Tompson talk about the need for war time broadcastingDuring the war the first language service for Africa was set up by the 成人论坛. It was in Afrikaans and aimed to counterbalance the pro-Nazi stands taken by some Afrikaners. After the Second World War radio expanded throughout the continent broadcasting news, music and even drama. The radio became a key tool of government, and in the event of a coup, the radio station was the first stop for the coup makers, where they would then get their message broadcast to the nation. Listen
to Perci Nyayi, chief minister of Gambia, speaking on the inaugural broadcast
of Radio Gambia
BREAKING LINGUISTIC BARRIERS Linguistic barriers began to be broken down as European literature was translated into African languages. Sol Plaatje for example translated Shakespeare into Tswana. There were different forms of creative writing from an African perspective in Ibo, Swahili and Nyanja. In 1911 the Gold Coast thinker Casely Hayford wrote the first substantial imaginative piece of prose in English. Called Ethiopia Unbound it was a collection of reflections on the history of Ethiopia. The first historical novel in English, Mhudi, was written by Sol Plaatje in 1912 and published 1920. Themes of urban life and exploitation of labour were explored by the Senegalese writer Ousman Diop and Rene Maran, an official from Martinique, serving in the French administration in West Africa. Rene Maran's novel Batoula won the top French literary prize, the Prix Goncourt in 1921. The growth in literacy was reflected in the expansion of mail services, in the twenties and thirties.
IMPORTED DRAMA FOR CHILDREN "Many will be pleased to learn that students of King's College Budo are giving a performance of their pantomime, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in the museum grounds at old Kampala鈥 pantomime with one hundred performers is certainly somewhat of a novelty to Kampala and it would seem worth taking opportunity of treating our young folk to an afternoon's entertainment." Uganda Herald, 2 Dec 1936. |
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