Radio in Africa

Abstract

Frantz Fanon’s essay “This is the Voice of Algeria” is a still-underused text in the study of radio. The book it comes from, A Dying Colonialism, is often regarded as one of Fanon’s weaker works, since its sociological studies of the Algerian revolution are considered to lack the rhetorical mastership and philosophical heft seen in his more famous books. At least in the case of his essay on radio, however, this perception is misguided, as recent literature on the history of radio in Africa shows.