13/02/2026
This year’s World Radio Day theme is Radio and AI. I’ve been thinking about it and through a very specific lens. If rural women are not deliberately centred, they will not be accidentally included.
So when people speak about what artificial intelligence, I think of what it could mean for them. My answer carries both hope and caution.
There is real promise.
AI could help translate health advice, agricultural guidance and small business information into local languages and deliver it via radio or basic phones. Information only matters if it is understood.
It could strengthen radio rather than replace it. Local stations could analyse what listeners respond to and research, edit and create more relevant programming. Radio remains the most trusted and accessible medium for rural African women.
And it could support practical messaging like early climate warnings, health advice and market prices all presented by humans, not AI. These are not abstract use cases. They are everyday realities.
But here is the concern.
Most AI tools assume smartphones, constant connectivity, literacy and reliable electricity. Many rural women have none of these. Some share a basic phone across a household.
AI is mainly built for the already connected, and it will widen the gap between those who have access and those who do not. We have seen this before with technologies, like smartphones, that promised inclusion yet often quietly excluded the very women who needed them most.
The real test of AI will not be how advanced it becomes, but who it reaches.
Written by Kristine Pearson
