By Pamela Kiria, I-Network 2014.

From a distance you can hear the local music blaring from the megaphones of Masese Community radio.

“My dream is to eventually start my own professional radio station,” said Ntale Muzei the owner of Masese Community radio as he shared with us about the daily running of the radio. Masese is a landing site located in Jinja district. Majority of its population engage in fishing for their livelihood. Ntale Muzei has been running the community radio in Masese for the last 2 years. It covers a radius of about 1.5km.

Since August 2013 Health Child, a C4C project partner, has collaborated with Masese Community radio to communicate health information to the people of Masese. This information includes short health messages along with health drama series that are aired on a regular basis. The Community radio also airs local announcements, adverts; Government programmes and plays song requests at a fee. Besides that Ntale Muzei sells music CDs to supplement on his income.

Power black outs and computer viruses are some of the challenges that the Masese Community radio regularly faces. The expense of computer hardware maintenance is also another challenge.

The Masese Community radio operates from 5pm to 11pm during the school term but emergency announcements can be made outside the official time. The surrounding population therefore, are able to always listen in to the different health programmes as they relax in the evenings.