50 years of Hip Hop - Radio edutainment in Kampala

The Ugandan East Africa Radio Service – EARS together with Minibus Media kicked-off in October 2023 a project aiming at enhancing musical culture through the edutainment approach. “Time Travel into Fat beats” celebrated 50 years of the creation of this musical genre. The project successfully concluded December 2024.
With the mandate to accompany the conceptualisation, planning and monitoring of Stem van Afrika (SvA) funded projects, CAMECO has supported EARS in discussing and refining the idea all the way to its implementation.
The Hip Hop themed radio program involved aspiring artists using radio as a platform for discussing socio-economic issues in their communities. It provided a space for listeners to interact live with the radio hosts through music (instrumentals, rap and spoken poetry).
The ambition was to stimulate social and political participation and awareness through music and radio broadcasting.
The managing director of EARS, Mr Douglas Mubiri Mutumba stressed that the project established contact with local Hip Hop networks and accessed more than 200 artists across the country who took part in the radio shows.
A manual on constructive journalism featuring the basic rules of interview techniques & fact checking was produced by Minibus Media and handed out to the radio presenters to apply in their future radio shows.
The project included the training of radio hosts from three partner broadcasting media in Kampala: Radio Sapientia, Galaxy FM and Radio City. Each one of them conceptualised their own Hip Hop programme.