We are happy to present you the documents to round up the involvment of Mediaction in the Jimma Mahebereseb Radio project: our annual report and our balance sheet.

Mediaction has no direct plans for new projects on the short term but we are happy to help you with support for Open Source Software in community radio settings. For other questions, support and comments you are still very welcome to email us at: info {at} mediactionfoundation.org .

two short documentaries on Jimma Mahebereseb Radio

Free Media in the Horn of Africa: Four Short Documentaries and a Debate

The Horn of Africa is a particularly difficult area for free media to survive; they're enduring repression but also war, famine and extreme poverty. We want to examine different initiatives who work in Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan. They all have a different approach in creating and supporting free media. We'll have a discussion on different techniques, ways of working with local population and the government under difficult circumstances. But we don't want to restrict ourselves to talking. Some of the initiatives will present themselves in short documentaries so that you'll get a deeper feeling and greater understanding for the local context. We would like to invite you to participate and critically celebrate press freedom.
Press Now, Radio Darfur, Radio Negarit, Mediaction, Ghetto Radio
Language: English
Admission free
Start: 20:30
Location: De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam

Back in the Netherland | Guide is downloadable

After one and a half year we are back in the Netherlands, and we really have to say we are enjoying the fast internet, ice-skating and filled up book stores as much as we are missing Ethiopia for the people and its warmth.

But fortunately there is enough work to do here to keep us running around. The first version of the community radio manual is now available in English by clicking this link, the Amharic version is nearing its completion. We are working with UNESCO and ICTAD to get the printed versions out soon.
The radiostation seems to be doing very well without us. We have almost daily email contact with our technician Gezahegne. There were some minor problems with the state radio station Fana which started its transmission with an incredible 2000 Watt transmission on all FM frequencies. And thus jamming Jimare. Fortunately, the broadcasting authority acted quickly and Fana is of-air for maintenance now and Jimare can be heard again on the known 102 MHZ.We see the coming of Fana as a healthy but also potentially dangerous development for Jimma. One the one hand is a diversity of media very important for a healthy cultural environment, but one the other hand it could deepen the political dichotomy since Fana is still the radio station of the ruling EPDRF party. Weĺl see how it goes. What we now for now is that when Fana was sending on all frequencies, Jimare got a lot of phone calls with complaints about the fact that they were sending religious and political content. Luckily the community is listening well and is taking its responsibility.

In the mean time are busy writing the annual report and finishing the two documentaries that where filmed by John Treffer. Together we are editing the last things and producing the voice overs. The films and the annual report will be made available on this website as soon as they are finished.The next effort will be to simplify the Linux installation for community radios and to create a website with updates for newer Ubuntu versions, since this version in running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. And a good download and community spot for people working in (community-)radio and who are interested in open source.

As you see, there is enough to be done in the year to come.

PS If you´ve downloaded the guide and want to install the computers with Ubuntu, please send us an email and I will send you the necessary CD by mail, or if you have a good internet connect, I will make them available on the internet. Right now we're perfecting the CD.

Training is finished!

Remember: you can, and should, do it yourself! This was the final message for the volunteers before they became the official volunteer journalists for Jimma Mahebereseb Radio. At this very moment, the journalists are crowding in front of large papers on which they can fill in their program groups, their function within the group and, most important, the subject of the program. Of course there are already quite a lot of music programs, a talent show, a edutainment program, and more is not possible for me to read at this moment because everyone is standing in front of the paper.
This week is also the last week for solicitors to apply for the job of full-time journalist or manager. It really feels like we are handing over the studio to the people from Jimma. We hope that maybe one or two of the volunteers will be appointed as staff of the radio station since then they already know about the software and how everything
goes at the radio station. We will see...

Why does everything break?

A question that arises every once a while is ones life. This time time the reason for this throught was the fact that we were getting telephone calls that no-one was receiving the station on their radios. So we rushed to the transmitter to find that the forwarded power by the transmitter was almost zero, while it should be about 700 WATT. We were quite devastated by the fact that a brand new 5000 Euro transmitter broke within six months. The volunteers on the contrary were convinced that 'we will win', so with that spirit we've opened the transmitter but couldn't directly find the problem. We were happy that the end exciters didn't burn out completely. For some time we were thinking it was maybe a problem of too less current on the power net, but this wasn't the case. So we started e-mailing with the manufacturer in Italy. The procedure is like this: we describe what we see/measure, and they email us back with their conclusions and new point to measure. Today we probably found the problem: two broken transistors. But we are waiting for a reaction from Italy...

Tech Talk

Although some earlier posts about computer systems were not
appreciated by all, we are very proud to announce that all community
radio stations in Ethiopia will run on a Ubuntu Linux. To facilitate
this process well, we've packaged installations Cd's that can be
installed and the stations are ready to go: with the network, all the
audio editing and radio automation programs preconfigured. Even the
logging PC which holds the archive of everything that has been
broadcasted, runs completely automatic. It doesn't even need an
monitor. The idea is that the transmitter and this computer are
connected to one power source so that when the transmitter is switched
on, the computer starts to archive immediately. Every hour, the
program content is written to a file with name and date so if the
authorities might come, they can directly access the archive. Of
course this is also very useful for the database of the radio
stations, so that they only have to write in a sheet when there was a
program and about what it was, so it can be re-used if it is actual.
In the mean time also the first posters of the manual are printed and
the results are fabulous. We'll add one as an picture! When everything
is finished and tested, we will put it all online on this website.