Somalia races to save Radio Mogadishu’s fading archive
Summary
Radio Mogadishu in Somalia holds a large collection of old audio recordings that capture the country's history, culture, and language. Archivists are working to digitize about 400,000 hours of tapes to prevent the material from being lost as the tapes age and degrade.Key Facts
- Radio Mogadishu's archive contains thousands of reel-to-reel tapes dating back to the early 1950s.
- The tapes include news, speeches, music, and other broadcasts in Somali and multiple languages.
- The archive holds around 400,000 hours of recordings, with about 85% still playable.
- Some tapes have been damaged by age, an electrical fire in 2018, and conflicts in the early 1990s.
- Somalia’s information ministry and UNESCO are collaborating to preserve and register the archive with UNESCO’s Memory of the World program.
- The radio station was founded in 1951 during Italian colonial rule and became a key broadcaster in East Africa.
- The archive is considered the largest store of Somali language cultural materials.
- Efforts are underway to eventually make the digital archive accessible to the public.
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