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Donor Funding to Community Radio Stations in Malawi and its Impact on their Performance

Many community radio stations in developing countries rely on donor funding for their sustainability. This raises some questions with regard to how they fulfil their social mission of promoting the participation of the community in the activities of the radio. This article examines how donor funding to community radio stations can affect the performance of the stations, because it has potential to divert the attention of the stations from serving the community to broadcasting externally produced programmes. Based on a case study of Nkhotakota community radio station in Malawi, data were collected through face-to-face interviews with key informants and focus-group discussions with the listeners of the station. The article argues that donor funding, though important for the sustainability of the stations, can erode their identity, because they start concentrating on attracting donors to sponsor programmes. These donors also start to influence the agendas of community radio stations. The article concludes that, overall, the participation of ordinary people in the media is negatively affected.