The role of Radio Rwanda as a facilitator of positive youth development: a case study of Kazi Ni Kazi radio programme.

Abstract

The study connects to the role of media and communication and its role in democracy, development and social change broadly in Africa. Its focus is the role of radio in Rwanda as a facilitator of positive youth development and social change. Radio played a significant role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi by encouraging citizens, especially the youth, to participate in the genocide. Today, radio in Rwanda aims to facilitate socioeconomic development. There is limited scholarship that explores these efforts from a rich qualitative approach that includes the voices and insights from both radio personnel and youth audiences. This study thus contributes new knowledge in this area. The study falls within an interpretive paradigm that presents and analyses youths’ perceptions and reception of the Kazi ni Kazi radio programme messaging and its influence on their life experience. To ascertain the predominant messages, radio episodes were selected for analysis and interviews were conducted with one director of Radio Rwanda, one programme producer of Kazi ni Kazi, six contributors to the Kazi ni Kazi programme, two experts who have served on Radio Rwanda and ten directors of youth centres/leaders of Agakiriro market centres. Further, 69 youth participated in focus group discussions. The study was guided by three complementary bodies of knowledge in both its data collection and analysis: Positive Youth Development Theory (Lerner et al., 2005) which demonstrates that if youth can be engaged in development projects, they can become useful citizens; the Participatory Framework for Researching and Evaluating Communication for Development and Social Change (Lennie & Tacchi, 2013) that champions participation in emergent issues that should be examined holistically and critically; and lastly the Participation Paradigm in Audience Research (Livingstone, 2013), which brings to the study’s theoretical framework a guide on the study of audiences not as recipients of information, but as active meaning makers. The study applied the qualitative content analysis and reflexive thematic analysis as suitable methods of data analysis. The qualitative content analysis was applied to the Kazi ni Kazi recorded programmes, while the reflexive thematic analysis was applied to the interview and focus group transcripts. Each method resulted in generating themes that were then interpreted in relation to the theoretical framework The findings of the study reveal the changing role of radio and its impact on development and social change aspirations and issues affecting the Rwanda youths. The predominant Kazi ni Kazi messaging centres on encouraging youth to work for development, breaking what the radio personnel deem a culture of idleness. Finding from the field data analysis revealed that the Kazi ni Kazi radio programme promotes major tenets of development such as communication, competence, character, connection, and caring among the youth in its efforts around shifting mindsets, encouraging innovation and showcasing the potential in different economic sectors.