Manly Machines and Homely Objects

Gender, Development and Divergent Radio Technologies in Late-Colonial Ghana and Zambia

Bibliographic Data

ID8979093
AuthorsPeter Brooke (0000-0002-7579-8673, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume66
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853725000143
OpenAlexW4410618374
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited10

This article offers the first gendered history of African radio audiences. It uses a comparative approach to demonstrate that colonial development projects in Ghana and Zambia successfully created mass African audiences for radio between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when most radio sets on the continent were owned by white settlers. However the gendered impact of the projects was uneven. In Zambia the promotion of battery-operated wirelesses inadvertently created a male-dominated audience, while the construction of a wired rediffusion system in Ghana attracted equal numbers of male and female listeners. Ghana’s radio project offers new perspectives on the history of colonial development as a very rare example of a scheme that benefitted women as much as men. Differences in the voice of Ghanaian and Zambian radio also reveal that these early radio schemes had a lasting influence on broadcast content and listening culture in both countries beyond the 1950s

Archaeology · Colonialism · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · ICT Impact and Policies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access