The latest ICT-Update from CTA has an interesting feature about podcasting in Africa. One article deals about Pambazuka News and their experiences of podcasting. Besides the potentials…

Podcasting has the potential to enable activists and ordinary citizens engaged in the struggle for social justice, to plan, produce and edit their own ‘broadcasts’ without an interpretive or interfering intermediary, as happens so often in the mainstream media (whether written or broadcast). Given such developments, we felt it was important to encourage and support others in Africa who might either be using, or wanting to use new media, to make their voices heard.

it also describes the challenges to produce and broadcast podcasts in Africa.

When we started, we naively thought that all we needed to do was to have someone read out some of the excellent articles published in Pambazuka News. We published a couple of podcasts of this kind, but the results were lacklustre. It was clear that what is produced for one medium (the written word) cannot be translated into another medium. The requirements of each medium are radically different.

Link to the whole article
Another article is titled: “Extending networks with podcasting in the Caribbean”
Pambazuka’s podcasts

ICT Update (http://ictupdate.cta.int) magazine is producing a special issue to coincide with the Web2forDev conference. We would like to hear from established projects already using web 2.0, particularly when applied to agricultural and rural development in African, Caribbean or Pacific countries. We are especially interested in initiatives using:

• wiki technology
• social bookmarking
• podcasting, RSS or web feeds.

We want to hear why you decided to use web 2.0, about the challenges you met, how you overcame them, what are the benefits of this technology and how you have succeeded.

ICT Update explores innovative uses of ICTs in developing countries. There’s no policy-speak or techno-dreams, the focus is on field reports from projects actually using ICTs. For more information send an email to Jim Dempsey (jim@contactivity.com) including brief details of your project and the relevant web addresses.