IASA 2018 Annual Conference

Founded in 1998, Radio Vénégré (located in the town of Ziniaré, northeast of Ouagadougou) set itself the goal of informing the local population about such topics as agriculture, livestock farming, ecology, education, health, women’s life, local politics, and news. The radio programmes are broadcast in the Moré, French, and Fulfulde languages. Some shows are pre-produced while others are broadcast live and involve direct interaction with listeners, in particular with members of the Radio Vénégré Listeners Club.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2018, the radio station is currently digitizing some of its earliest programmes, many of which had been saved on audio cassettes. A consultancy organized by the Deutsche Welle has been involved in helping Radio Vénégré develop basic low cost archiving procedures. Training sessions have dealt with the topics of migration to digital formats, safe storage, and back-up routines, as well as metadata schemes and access scenarios.

Standards have also been developed for the archiving and collection management of the digital-born material that Radio Vénégré has been producing since 2010. As part of its anniversary celebrations, the broadcaster is working towards creating an online collection of some of the audio documents produced over the course of the past twenty years. This collection will afford interested listeners in Burkina Faso and worldwide time-independent access to a selection of Radio Vénégre’s most significant radio productions.