Christina Engfeldt
Director of the Information Division (GII), FAO
Dear colleagues,
We are once again gathered here with farm radios, at the headquarters of this Organization, and we are happy about such a quick follow-up to the International Workshop on Farm Radio of last February. Indeed, information is “a meal that must always be eaten while hot”, and which must be served promptly to all those who need it in their daily lives, for their development.
We are glad that you have had the opportunity to come to this great centre of development information, namely FAO. You are here, at the very source of the world’s information on agriculture and food, and we hope that when you return to your homes, you will continue to explore it and draw upon it to determine the topics of your local radio broadcasting programmes. However, we are also aware that we ourselves still have a lot to learn from the rural areas that you come from, for you are in constant contact with the beneficiaries of our development projects.
Together, we will be able to better and more precisely identify their needs and convey them to decision-makers, with the constantly evolving communication media.
The right to food is a consequence of the right to information and at the Information Division, we are firmly committed to ensuring fair access to information for all; the unprecedented media coverage in all continents of the activities of the World Food Day last October 16 is indeed evidence of such a commitment.
It is by a globalized awareness of the public opinion, from the rural to the urban environment, from developing countries to industrialized nations and vice-versa, that we will be able to combat hunger in the world, in a spirit of cooperation and international solidarity.
Now you have been able to see our way of working, from technical subjects to media coverage. We therefore count on your new cooperation for the next World Food Summit: five years later, wherever you may be, a crucial step in the struggle against hunger and poverty.
See you in June 2002.
Thank-you.
CLOSING ADDRESS
Dietrich E. Leihner
Director of FAO Research, Extension and Training Division (SDR)
Dear Director of the Information Division of FAO,
Dear Workshop participants,
Dear heads of services of FAO,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
After five days of work, your discussions and exchanges have confirmed the pertinence of a Workshop on Rural Radio and Food Security.
Indeed, with FAO’s concerned technical divisions, you have verified the importance and the role that such a theme might play in your rural radio programmes.
Your uncomplacent diagnosis of the need to adapt our technical contents and to develop intermediary contents calls for a more pragmatic approach in the presentation of the topics which revolve around food security, and which have been the object of intense and insightful reflections.
This Workshop has allowed us to learn many lessons.
First of all, on the situation of rural radios. Whether they be local or community based, they are facing numerous difficulties, in terms of financial and technical as well as human resources.
Social and cultural activities which go beyond mere community information are developing around such community radios; it is often volunteers, who perfectly master local languages, who animate them out of a spontaneous élan, often without any remuneration.
In spite of such financially precarious conditions, rural radio constitutes an area of activity that is likely to bring about some effects in the change of behaviour and mentality which are needed to ensure the actual and lasting participation of populations in the economic, social and cultural development process.
This type of radio broadcasting, which is close to its listeners, remains an alternative to national centralized radio broadcasts, which devote only very little air time to community languages, or which reserve only late hours to them.
Rural radio broadcasters, your expectations and recommendations for more training in quantitative and qualitative terms in the different areas of rural radio (production techniques, equipment use, information gathering and processing, radio management, knowledge of the audience, use of information and communication technologies) will be examined by the competent services of my division, and efforts will be made to find solutions with the cooperation of other partners. With the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CTA), next year we plan to organize two Workshops to train the trainers in rural radio, one for Central and West Africa at the Inter-African Centre for Rural Radio Studies of Ouagadougou (CIERRO), and the other for Southern and East Africa at the Centre of Communication of SADC. As a follow-up to this Rome Workshop, FAO will work with the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) by making available an expert in early warning, to organize next month a training session in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on the drafting and production of rural radio programmes on the subject of food security. Also within the framework of training, which is one of the key mandates of the division for which I am responsible, we shall work with AMARC to develop rural radio training curricula on the one hand, but also to train personnel of the food security information agency, trainers in the exploitation of food security data and information, and finally correspondents of the food security information and early warning system. Therefore, this goes to show that your concerns over training issues have been taken into account by FAO.
Then, as regards in-the-field food security information collection and processing, I can assure you that the information will be provided to our different offices in the member countries, so that they may help you to come into contact with the programmes and projects on site.
Also, intermediary contents will be developed in cooperation with the World Agricultural Information Centre (WAICENT), and we welcome your recommendation to establish a special site for such contents once they are adapted, disseminated, made accessible and made readily usable.
Finally, this will also provide the technical divisions with the opportunity to envisage the creation of a working group to coordinate the work involved in the development of food security contents.
Ladies and Gentlemen and all participants to the Workshop on “Rural Radio and Food Security”, I wish to stress the role that the agreement protocol that my division is about to sign with AMARC will play in our future activities. The different elements making up such a protocol - which especially concern the creation of a food security information and early warning service and the setting up of a rural radio training centre for English-speaking African countries - is the beginning of a collabouration which I hope will be fruitful and rich for the future of local and community rural radios in Africa.
Please also allow me to congratulate the radio broadcasters who provided coverage in sometimes difficult conditions (we had a busy agenda) of the proceedings of the 31st FAO Conference. The scripts being drafted and the interviews that were carried out will be used to produce CD-Roms and audiotapes, which on the one hand will seal the work that you have done, but that will also give many community radios in the world the opportunity to disseminate them. Ladies and gentlemen, please accept my congratulations.
Finally, I wish to express to the Media Relations Branch of FAO (GIIM) my heart-felt thanks for their actual cooperation, and the educational as well as technical support provided to radio broadcasters during the coverage of the conference.
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the other technical divisions that have contributed to the organization and proceedings of this Workshop, I thank you for your participation.
I also wish to express all of my gratitude to AMARC and to the Developing Countries Farm Radio Network for all their initiatives in favour of local and community rural radio.
Have a safe trip home.
I declare closed the Workshop on “Rural Radio and Food Security”.
Thank you.
