Ask a farmer in Gulu or a trader in Mbarara where they get their news, and the answer still crackles: radio remains the most trusted, most used medium in rural Uganda.
The reasons are structural. Radio needs no data bundle, no literacy, no charging infrastructure beyond a battery — and it speaks every local language daily.
Far from dying, the medium is hybridising: stations stream online, host call-ins via WhatsApp voice notes, and clip their best segments for social media.
For advertisers and public-health campaigns alike, radio’s reach into the last mile remains unmatched by any digital platform.
“In the age of the smartphone, the humble transistor remains the most trusted medium in the countryside. There…”
Predictions of radio’s death have circulated for thirty years. Rural Uganda keeps not reading them.
