Comments on: Liberian Bush Radio Escapades

By: El Oso » Archive » Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Liberia (And More)

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:31:29 +0000

[...] in Liberia need to form alliances with community radio stations. (He also does a nice write-up of how Radio Gbarpola could use SMS to bring in more revenue.) He documents the sad story of the University of Liberia’s non-existant computer science [...]

By: Debra

Debra — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:31:52 +0000

Came across your blog while working on our website for BUVs. Pretty exciting to hear of a “BUV sighting ” off the beaten track in Liberia. They do haul almost anything. Look for a few more BUVs soon to be employed by entrepreneurs in hauling services in Monrovia!

Hash, let us know if you have anymore sightings during your travels. And … Kari, let us know about your BUV need.

By: Radios. Batteries. Solar. Implications | Build it Kenny, and they will come...

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:45:36 +0000

[...] further radio-related information check out White African’s recent post on radio in Liberia, Bill Siemering’s Developing Radio Partners, Farm Radio International and my recent PC World [...]

By: Patrick Meier

Patrick Meier — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:14:37 +0000

Thought this might be of interest: Aaditeshwar Seth, who will be in Boston later this spring is working in India to connect rural community radio stations to the Internet using new software and computer-based FM transmitters. He recently founded Gram-Vaani, a non-profit organization to enable media services using community-radio in rural areas of India. Perhaps something we could use for Liberia?

http://gramvaani.org/technology

By: HASH

HASH — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:00:55 +0000

@Wayan – you’re right, it would be interesting to see some of those guys from Mali in Liberia giving some input and training on how they’ve done things there.

By: savvy

savvy — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:30:39 +0000

so can you tell us how did you resize the pictures?

By: Wayan

Wayan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:03:06 +0000

Again, Geekcorps Mali had fun with radio station income streams, designing CanTV to make money of re-broadcasting TV content and using low-bandwidth B-GAN to open up the web for rural areas. Another idea, which could work up to 30Km distances is BottleNet – wifi links made with local materials.

By: Teddy

Teddy — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:15:43 +0000

Love the escapades. I am a volunteer working in rural parts of kenya and I have been thinking of helping the communities here access information and perhaps you could visit us here in Kenya for more escapades and advice to us. check out my blog. just started blogging though

By: kari

kari — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:16:49 +0000

i want a BUV.

By: kiwanja

kiwanja — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:28:52 +0000

Awesome to read about your continuing adventures in Liberia, Erik. And the strong focus on rural radio is also fascinating (something I’ve been taking a growing interest in over the past couple of months, particularly in relation to the use of SMS in the radio environment).

The income stream issue is an interesting one and, of course, financial sustainability is a key challenge for many grassroots mobile projects and one I get asked about often by FrontlineSMS users. Your post brings back an idea I had last year to create an advertising “module” in the software which allows users to manage and automatically insert short SMS advertisements into outgoing messages – space permitting – and track distribution. This would appear to have legs in rural radio. FrontlineSMS is already being used by a number of TV and radio stations around the world and we’re currently working with Developing Radio Partners – run by Bill Siemering – to implement and develop use further.

I’m happy to talk more with you about all of this, and the good folks at InSTEDD. There is plenty of untapped potential, and Liberia sounds like no exception.

Travel well.