Vernacular radio as a tool in promoting public participation in county governance in Kirinyaga County, Kenya: the case of Kenya Broadcasting Corporation’s Coro FM, Thandi Radio programme

Abstract

While the Kenya constitution (2010) provides a strong legal framework for public participation, there is a problem on how to make many people use the given tools to make valuable contributions to the governance process. The conventional techniques of public participation like holding public meetings fail to achieve their objectives of public engagement. One of the main reasons is inability of the public to attend due to time and cost constraints. In addition, only those who are vocal get to be heard in these meetings. However, radio has a great potential to reach a wide audience especially with the growth of the FM stations. Against this background, this study examined the role of vernacular radio as one of the tools of enhancing public participation. The focus was to establish the contributions of a political radio programme ‘Thandi’ aired on Coro FM every Sunday between 5pm and 7pm, in promoting public participation in public agenda. Besides, the study sought to find out the routes through which ideas, suggestions and views given by public during the radio show could influence decision making by the county government leaders. The research also sought to establish techniques that could be employed to draw large audience to radio public participation activities. From a relativist perspective, a qualitative approach and case study were employed. In depth interviews, focus group discussions, informal conversations and content analysis were used as the main data generation techniques. Purposive sampling technique was used to select Kirinyaga County government and respondents of committees in the assembly, executives, individual senior government officials and community representatives. A total of 65 respondents participated in the study. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data. The study found that radio was useful in achieving self-efficacy, dialogue, civic education and consensus building which are important elements in actualizing public participation. The study also found that views generated through radio could influence individual policy and law makers, legislative committees and County Budget Economic Forums who participated in the radio programmes. Various techniques used in rallying large audience to the radio programes included formation of listener’s clubs, turnaround of public broadcaster, programming and content reviews, and re-designing a county content generation and dissemination framework. The study contributed to knowledge that will be useful to stakeholders in both national and county governments as well as civil society. It will help them design and implement a framework of using radio to actualize constitutional requirement of public participation in governance. The study recommends use of vernacular radio in actualizing public participation agenda as envisaged in the Kenyan constitution.