Charles Kikoricho is a presenter and producer at Standard Radio FM in Central Tanzania’s Singida Region who has been broadcasting for 12 years, and holds a journalism diploma and a degree in marketing.
Mr. Kikoricho’s great passions include helping his listeners understand how to take care of the environment, grow safe food, and oppose sexualized violence.
He hosts and produces programs on a wide range of topics, including gender equality, women’s economic empowerment, food security, sports, and agriculture. On his program Kilimo na Jamii (Farming and community), he features ecological farming, including how to use manure, local seeds, and ensure food safety.
He learned that the main challenges for his listeners are the lack of a reliable market for ecological crops and the poor availability of local seeds. To address marketing challenges, Mr. Kikoricho worked with the local agricultural officer to find stakeholders who would buy farmers’ ecologically-grown crops. To address seed issues, the radio program covered the national government establishing large fields to produce seeds and its plan to create a seed bank.
Listeners tell Mr. Kikoricho that they like his program because government agricultural experts answer their questions, and because, through Uliza, they get the opportunity both to ask questions and give their opinions. Farm Radio’s Uliza is an interactive voice response system that allows listeners to engage directly with radio programs. Through Uliza, listeners like Mr. Kikoricho’s audience can call in to ask questions and provide their opinions on agricultural topics They say it’s always a great joy to hear their own voices on air.
As well as informing and educating his listeners, he never forgets to entertain his listeners by offering an engaging variety of formats, including traditional songs, poems, and dramas, and vox pops.
Mr. Kikoricho has attended FRI trainings on a variety of subjects, including the VOICES standards, gender equality, collaboration for effective rural communication, and addressing sensitive issues. He says the trainings have equipped him with the skills to prepare quality programs, from crafting scripts to organizing runsheets.
Farm Radio International (FRI) is a Canadian non-profit organization specializing in ICT-enabled extension and communication for reaching rural and remote communities at scale in local languages in sub-Saharan Africa. FRI’s core expertise is collaborative, user-focused co-creation of quality information and advisory services, combining radio and mobile phones, other ICTs and face-to-face interaction