RFI increases short-wave broadcasts to West Africa

Radio France Internationale has announced that it is to increase its short-wave broadcasts to West Africa by introducing extra frequencies.
 
The broadcaster declared in a press release that the decision was taken “to offer more listening opportunities to those who cannot receive the RFI signal on FM, in particular in those countries where broadcasts have been suspended”. 

On 15 July Ivory Coast interrupted the RFI signal on Canalsatellite Horizon, received by 25,000 Ivorian households, and on RFI’s three FM relays in Ivory Coast.

In April RFI announced that its FM broadcasts had been suspended in Togo. In the Horn of Africa the local RFI transmitter in Djibouti was switched off in January this year following a programme that fell foul of the local government.

Many international radio analysts have expressed reservations about the gradual reduction or even the abolition, for budgetary reasons, of short-wave broadcasts to certain regions and their replacement by local relays in FM or AM.

These relays can be shut down by the local authorities for political reasons, as seen on numerous occasions over the past few years, in particular in various African countries where FM relays operated by the BBC, RFI and Voice of America have been closed down several times.

RFI operates more than 130 relays around the world.

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