Location, and more about us

Zambia lies within the Tropics between latitudes Eight degrees South (08°S) and Eighteen degrees South (18°) and bounded by Longitudes Thirty-two degrees (32°E) to the east and twenty-two degrees (22°E) to the west.

The RANET Zambia Project falls under the Zambia Meteorological Department within the Ministry of Communications and Transport.

In the year 2000, Zambia was selected to participate in a second phase of RANET.  A National Workshop was held in September at the Mulungushi Conference Centre in Lusaka.  This workshop was the first stage of a consultative process to bring interested stakeholders together to plan the implementation and development of RANET Zambia Project. Thirty participants, who included journalists, agriculturalists, educationists, meteorologists etc, attended the inaugural workshop on 22^nd September 2000. At this workshop a national consortium for the production of content was formed and also devised to initiate a 5-year programme for Zambia. The workshop resolved to have a small subcommittee formed, which would spearhead the implementation of the project. This subcommittee is now called RANET Zambia.

Aims:

The Aim of the RANET ZAMBIA Project is to rise to the challenge of exchanging vital developmental information with the   rural communities by introducing new information and communication technologies to the rural areas.

The Objective:

To enhance the living standards of rural communities by way of increasing their access to vital information on health, agriculture, education, environment, weather, natural calamities and other information needed in order to improve their well being and increase their food security base.

Outputs:

(a)  Facilitate acquisition and installation of radio broadcasting equipment for community radio broadcasting stations and provide solar/windup radios to the communities for the reception of the broadcasts.

(b) Appropriate and timely agricultural, technical and marketing information to the small scale farmers.

(c)  Timely weather and climate information to rural communities.

(d)  Timely warnings about impending natural disasters.

(e)  Monitoring and providing impact assessment on various natural disasters.

(f)  Training of personnel involved in the running of the radio stations.

(g)  Provide a forum for discussion of local issues so that it would lead to the solution of problems.

(h)  Encouraging creativity as a way of promoting self reliance and development.

     (i) Support for the health and education of the communities. 

At the end of the first year of the project it is expected that all four newly established community radio stations would be operational. These stations, along with the two existing stations that will form the initial RANET Zambia Network, will be reaching a listening audience of over 350,405 people.  At the end of the first year, each of the stations will also have a trained station manager, a functioning board of directors, an operating license, and at least 20 hours of educational/informational local language broadcasting weekly.  A total of 1,500 radios will also have been distributed to primarily women and youth groups in the listening areas. Each of the stations will also have been expected to have established an annual operational budget and developed a provisional business plan.

This will result in the improvement of the living conditions of rural communities measured by:
(a) higher total agricultural production of staple food crop

(b) Greater food self-sufficiency (10% of the food bought versus produced)
(c) More varieties plus healthier diet of food consumed per day
(d) Adoption of soil conservation practices by 70% of farmers
(e) Lower rate of malnutrition.

TARGET GROUPS

     The RANET broadcasting project is intended to reach rural communities in isolated areas.  It is these areas that are poor and have no/less access to information.  Communities will be required to significantly involve women in the project. Programming will be targeted to these groups and efforts made to involve them directly in programming and station management. Since many of these targeted beneficiaries do not have access to radios, listening groups will be encouraged and wind-up radios given at a nominal cost to selected groups.

       PARTICIPATION