Broadcasting the Future: Airwaves and the Politics of Affinity

Chapter 4 turns to the postwar period which saw the Treasury, hoping to use broadcasting to mitigate the discontent of the African majority, provide money to construct a state-owned radio infrastructure. The urgency of doing so heightened as people started tuning in to Egypt’s Radio Cairo on shortwave receivers. These external concerns articulated with administrative reforms that placed pressure on communities to view ethno-linguistic modes of identification as the surest means of securing their futures. These cross-cutting projects convinced administrators of the need to gain control over the informational worlds of African communities. In this twilight moment, administrators hoped to use broadcasting to shape the social and political worlds available to Africans by generating “intermediate” subjects—beyond “tribe” but before “citizenship.” Listeners seized on this opportunity, conjuring up the anxieties of the colonial state and demanding that the state recognize their linguistic difference and provision them with vernacular-language broadcasts.