Chanco Community Radio

Chanco Community Radio
Zomba, Malawi

On Air
July 2013

Frequency
104.1 MHz

Power
300

Overview

Chanco Community Radio is owned and run by Chancellor College, the main constituent college of the University of Malawi. The radio started broadcasting in on 6th July 2013 but was officially launched on 22nd July 2013 by the then Minister of Environment and Climate Change Management Hon. Halima Daudi, MP. and Mr. Asbjorn Edihammer, the Norwergian Ambassador to Malawi.
The radio station covers the Lake Chilwa basin and its surrounding areas, reaching Zomba, Machinga, Phalombe, Chiradzulu, Mangochi, and Mulanje districts.

About the project

Over the years, Chanco Community Radio has partnered with different government agencies and non-governmental organisations in the implementation of different projects within the Lake Chilwa Basin. These organisations include Leadership for Environment and Development – South East Africa (LEAD-SEA), WorldFish, and Forestry Institute of Malawi (FRIM) through the Lake Chilwa Climate Change Adaptation Programme. Our success story cannot be complete without the mention of organisations with which we have worked in different capacities such as National AIDS Commission (NAC), USAID through SSDI, UNICEF, Save the Children, FMB, NBS Bank, Farm Radio Trust (FRT), Pakachere Institue of Health and Development Communication, JHPIEGO, and PACT Malawi, among many others.
Chanco Community Radio boasts of over 60 percent of its content being dedicated to environmental management and climate change issues. For this special dedication, we are proud to have been recognised as the 2017 Green Media House of the Year by the Association of Environmental Journalists (AEJ). For us the award challenged us to engage extra gears in ensuring that communities within the Lake Chilwa Basin are able to understand and take part in sustainable environmental conservation and employ climate change mitigation measures.

Main Objectives

The main objective of the station is to provide information on climate change adaptation, natural resource management, health, education, and other developmental programmes. This is in line with our vision, we provide capacity building for other community radios and train media students from Chancellor College and other colleges in broadcasting skills. In this regard, the station specifically provides opportunities for students from Chancellor College Department of Language and Communication Studies (LACS) to train in radio journalism. We also have a total of 11 radio listening clubs scattered across Zomba, Phalombe and Machinga Districts. These radio listening clubs were trained in programme production and content gathering and we continue to actively support their activities.
Main Goals include:
To provide information on Climate Change Adaptation, natural resource management and other developmental programs;
To provide capacity building for other community radios
To provide training of Chancellor College students and radio listening clubs in broadcasting skills.

Our Role

Radioactive provided broadcast consultancy in the design of the studios and FM transmission systems

We also provided all of the studio and FM transmission equipment to get the station on air.