With the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (#UNESCO), Somalia has launched an initiative to digitize and preserve seven decades of Radio Mogadishu, the state-owned station’s historical audio archives.
This initiative aims not only to preserve the rich cultural heritage embedded in these recordings but also to enhance accessibility for researchers, historians, and the general public. By digitizing the archives, Radio Mogadishu hopes to make these historical sound bites available online, allowing individuals both within Somalia and around the world to explore the evolution of Somali media, music, and oral history.
Radio Mogadishu was first established in 1951 during the period when Somalia was under the trusteeship of the United Nations and administered by its former colonial power, Italy. It began broadcasting news in Italian, and Somali programming followed soon afterward.
After more than 70 years of analogue storage in an inadequate environment, the Radio Mogadishu audio archive is being digitized to save it from deterioration and to introduce the unique Somali historical recordings to a new audience.
