Community radios IN recent years, the government of Zimbabwe, through the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ), has issued broadcasting licences to 14 community radio initiatives in eight provinces that are predominantly rural. While there has been a notable increase in the presence of community radio stations after the opening up of space through the government’s licensing of 14 radio stations, their role on the media landscape has remained quite limited in so far as reach is concerned. This limitation results from many factors, most notably the lack of broadcasting equipment and related facilities. Additionally and by their nature, community radio stations usually have a geographicallybound focus, working either to localise national or global content to specific communities, or conversely projecting local community issues to a wider national or global audience. Most have had to rely on streaming their broadcasts on Facebook and YouTube. Most of them have also remained limited in terms of content. Some of them, like VeMuganga (in Chipinge) and Kasambabezi (in Kariba), are the brainchild of local CBOs who are themselves also dogged by challenges of requisite funding, including capital funding to establish and operate properly. Community radio access by province SURVEY data indicates that usage of community radio stations in Zimbabwe is not that common, as evidenced by 60% of the surveyed population who said they do not use them that often. The major reasons can be traced back to their structural limitations, especially in lacking the broadcasting capacity to be easily accessible via frequency modulation (FM) as other popular radio stations. 10 Most of those who use the community radio stations (24%) indicated that they do so to get an appreciation of what is happening in their localities. Mashonaland Central stands out uniquely as no respondent claimed access to community radio stations. This is followed up by Mashonaland West, where 78% of respondents claim no access to community radios. The survey data also indicates noticeably high numbers in Masvingo, Midlands, Harare, and Matabeleland North, where 68%, 65%, 56% and 54% of the respondents claim to have no access to community radios, respectively. Only Bulawayo (29%), Matabeleland South (38%) and Manicaland (41%) have fewer respondents who claimed to have no access to community radios.