Darwin’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion applies as much to humans and tech­nol­o­gy as it does to ani­mals and Nature. But some things are so root­ed in cul­tures, minds and mem­o­ries that their pass­ing seems to bor­der on trav­es­ty, irra­tional though that may be. The demise of the BBC radio’s “Focus on Africa” rep­re­sents that for me.

When I was a neo­phyte for­eign cor­re­spon­dent roam­ing Africa for the Argus Africa News Ser­vice in the lat­ter half of the 1970s’, there were two essen­tial pieces of kit; a trusty portable (in my case Olympia) type­writer, and a small Sony short­wave radio to tune into “The Beeb” every day. The unmiss­able pro­gramme was “Focus”.
In those bygone (and for some of us much-missed) days in Africa, get­ting a phone call through to your news desk was hit and miss at best. There was no Inter­net and no 24-hour news chan­nels run­ning in every hotel room and bar.

The only way to get an up-to-date and rel­e­vant han­dle on what was going on out­side your imme­di­ate range of vision was short wave radio. The sta­t­ic, squeaks, whis­tles and squeals that punc­tu­at­ed recep­tion were only fix­able, if at all, by chang­ing the radio’s loca­tion, which as often as not meant hold­ing it up in the air.
When I for­sook a salary for the free­dom of free­lanc­ing, “Focus on Africa” became the  jew­el of my eight “strings” (pres­tige-wise, not monetary).

After I phoned in my first offer, a pro­duc­er, who by his voice was an old school ‘Beeb’ man, came on the line. The con­ver­sa­tion as I recall it went like this:
“Yes. Good. The con­tent is exact­ly what is required for the BBC.” Pause. “Do you, by any chance, do Amer­i­can radio too?”
“Yes. I string for Mutu­al News.” (Twen­ty-five sec­ond spots, speak as fast as you can and still be coher­ent for $40 a pop.)
“I thought so,” the  pro­duc­er said. “The deliv­ery, you see, is a tad quick for the BBC. Would you mind awful­ly try­ing it again?”
‘Try­ing it again’ was repeat­ed sev­er­al more times, and then: “Yes. That’s it. You’ve got it. For guid­ance, when you’re doing BBC radio, try to imag­ine that on the oth­er side of the micro­phone you’re speak­ing to some­one who may have trou­ble keep­ing up. And giv­en your expe­ri­ence of the last ten min­utes or so, I don’t sup­pose you’ll find that dif­fi­cult, will you?”
A delight­ful man, a won­der­ful les­son. When­ev­er I hear news read­ers and cor­re­spon­dents say­ing “thee” or a hard “a” before a con­so­nant, utter­ing sen­tences with­out verbs and oth­er such ungram­mat­i­cal trav­es­ties, I am acute­ly aware that he has no mod­ern equivalent.
                               THE INDISPENSABLE
 “Focus on Africa” debuted in 1960, the same year 17 African coun­tries gained their inde­pen­dence from colo­nial rule.
In a lament on the demo­tion of “Focus” from sched­uled broad­cast to pod­cast,  mul­ti-award-win­ning Liber­ian jour­nal­ist Rod­ney Sieh not­ed that what began as a week­ly exper­i­ment “would lat­er evolve into arguably the most impor­tant live-radio show in Africa, high­light­ing the good, the bad and the ugly of an emerg­ing continent.”
Every­one who was any­one in African pol­i­tics want­ed to be on “Focus”, espe­cial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers in exile, who realised that whether or not they liked deal­ing with what to many rep­re­sent­ed a “colo­nial pow­er”, it was arguably the most cred­i­ble and wide-rang­ing way to get their side of the sto­ry told.
Press con­fer­ences by Joshua Nko­mo, the cor­pu­lent giant who led the Zim­bab­we African Peo­ples Union (ZAPU) from a base near Lusa­ka, Zam­bia, often began with a ver­sion of this:
NKOMO: “Where is BBC? I will not start with­out them.”
BBC CORRESPONDENT JOHN BORRELL: “Here, Mr Nkomo.”
NKOMO: “Ah. Good. Make sure you tell the truth this time.” And with a bang of his sig­na­ture walk­ing stick for empha­sis, the press­er would offi­cial­ly begin.
                            BAD TIMING
 Pre­dictably, BBC exec­u­tives cit­ed bud­getary con­straints for the fate of “Focus”, and pledged to con­tin­ue to etc.…etc…
Even if they are tak­en at their word – which the cur­rent state of the news busi­ness in gen­er­al  requires a giant leap of faith – I would argue that aban­don­ing an insti­tu­tion­al broad­cast, assum­ing it can be replaced  by slot­ting it into the increas­ing­ly over-crowd­ed world of pod­casts, amounts to an abro­ga­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty to loy­al lis­ten­ers. That’s espe­cial­ly true when that audi­ence is in the part of the world where Inter­net pen­e­tra­tion stands at 43 per­cent, well below the glob­al aver­age of 66 percent.
In his work His­to­ria Nat­u­ralis, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (ad 23–79), wrote; “Africa always brings some­thing new”, a ref­er­ence to hybridiza­tion in the ani­mal population.
Efforts by Rus­sia, Chi­na and the U.S. to win allies and influ­ence in Africa are in effect “hybridiz­ing” the entire con­ti­nent into a bat­tle zone of a new Cold War.
Sad­ly, the focus on their rival­ry and its effects will no longer be as sharp and acces­si­ble as it would have been under “Focus”.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.