Liberia Listens as Election Nears

Prince Weedoru, 24, is a reporter and announcer with Radio Kakata. He hopes to earn a college degree in mass communications. "I like radio because you are disseminating important information to the public." Photo: Dan Sadowsky/Mercy Corps

There's a large billboard on the road between Monrovia and the airport that reads, "To have good leaders, you must first be a good voter."

About 1.35 million of Liberia's 1.5 million voting-age citizens are registered to vote in the country's first fair and free peacetime election on October 11. Twenty-two candidates are vying to become president of this failed state, which is still reeling from a quarter-century of bloodshed and economic misery.

Signs of the impending election are everywhere. Roadside signs exhort people to vote. Candidate flyers are plastered on billboards, utility poles and buildings. And, perhaps most notably, newly established radio stations are filling the airwaves with an unprecedented amount of voter education and political debate.

Radio is by far the most popular mass media in Liberia. Most of the country's three million people cannot read or write, or afford a television set. Historically, however, stations beyond the capital city of Monrovia have been amateur outfits without the resources to transmit a signal farther than a few miles.

But today, on the eve of this historic election, more than 500,000 Liberians outside Monrovia can depend on comprehensive campaign coverage from a network of community-controlled radio stations that broadcast music, news and homegrown programming.

Signaling Change

"We have been very, very important to this campaign," says Chris Kiejouh, 31, the energetic manager of Radio Kakata, a 14-month-old station in one of the country's busiest cities, about a 90-minute drive northeast of Monrovia. "We have been educating people on how to vote and on their role in these elections."

Since late 2003, Mercy Corps has helped launch Radio Kakata and 17 other FM stations. Some existed previously as small, low-wattage stations; others were created from scratch. Each has received around $20,000 worth of transmitters, antennas, laptops, digital voice recorders, studio renovations and trainings.

Mercy Corps also helps them fill airtime by producing two hours of dramas, news shows and public-service announcements each week.

As a result, Liberians are able to better inform one another about the issues critical to the country's development. In the past two months, for example, listeners to Radio Kakata's thrice-weekly election show have had the chance to hear and query two presidential aspirants and all but three of the district's congressional candidates.

The station's six reporters spend the bulk of their time covering campaign rallies, election-related news conferences and candidate visits. These days, political news dominates the station's three daily newscasts, including a 30-minute broadcast at 9 PM, the time slot when listenership is considered highest.

Radio Kakata is run by 25 volunteer editors, programmers, newscasters, reporters, technicians and deejays. One recent morning at the station, located up a flight of stairs in a nondescript building just off the town's main street, 25-year-old Victoria Sati sits at a typewriter revising the morning news report and rehearsing the script. In just a few minutes, she'll open the door to the studio - a small room furnished with a desk, chair, laptop computer, transmitter, stereo and piles of tapes and CDs - and read the five-minute report on the air.

"I love working here because there are things in my community that people don't do that they should, and I feel like I can educate them by reporting on them," says Sati. "Most girls are just loitering around the streets. I find women who are working - teachers, businesswomen, representatives - and put them on the air, so those not doing anything will be encouraged."

Making an Informed Decision

Information, as they say, is power, and today many Liberians see radio as a liberating force for an illiterate society who has been taken advantage of by corrupt and bloodthirsty leaders. In fact, radio's profile in the country rose after civil war erupted in 1990, when Liberians regularly tuned into BBC's daily program "Focus on Africa" to learn the latest on the fighting.

"It was felt that the population never had access to information, so they could never make quote-on-quote informed decisions," explains Teah Doegmah, a radio journalist in Monrovia who now directs Mercy Corps' community radio initiative. "All the stations were based in Monrovia, and as you drive away from Monrovia, the signals fade away."

Today the signals from Radio Kakata are strong enough to reach approximately 100,000 people who live within 45 miles of town. Listeners enjoy a mix of Liberian and American music, talk shows, dramas, call-in discussions and programs produced by a staff trained in all aspects of running a station.

Employees at Radio Kakata are about to learn even more. Mercy Corps is shifting production of feature programs and public-service spots, currently done by professionals at the agency's Monrovia office, to the station, which will receive mobile broadcasting equipment, field recording units and a studio upgrade. Employees there and at four other nearby stations will be trained on how to use the equipment to not only produce Mercy Corps' slate of existing programs, but also to develop new ones tailored to their own communities.

Kiejouh says the capacity to produce local programming will strengthen the bonds between the station and its listeners. Creating a symbiotic relationship is at the heart of the community radio philosophy, says Mercy Corps' Doegmah, and is especially critical in rural areas, where there simply isn't enough commerce to create an advertiser-supported model.

That's why Kiejouh is banking on community support to eventually help the station purchase a second transmitter and move into its own building. For now, though, he's focused on sharing information with listeners that will help them choose Liberia's next president.

The stakes of a Liberian election, and the need for informed voters, have never been greater.