As part of the Africa Lives on the BBC season, Zeinab Badawi hosts a celebration of the spoken word across Africa, exploring the oral traditions of diverse populations, from village storytellers to urban talk-show hosts, from endangered languages to the spread of the mobile phone. Featuring live performance, interviews, discussions, and reports. Including:
7.30 Peace Talk How reconciliation and radio are going hand-in-hand in Sierra Leone, a country emerging from a bloody civil conflict.
Ade Daramy returns to his home country to find out. And as many African countries undergo an internet, TV and mobile phone revolution, what is the future there for radio?
8.30 The Never-Ending Story
Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe talks to Zeinab Badawi about the influence that oral tradition has on modern African writing. What is the relationship between the written and the spoken word in a continent dedicated to overcoming illiteracy? And South African storyteller Gcina Mhlophe explains how a traditional rural art is being reborn for the urban 21st century.
9.30 Every Word Counts In Uganda, which has over 50 languages but where English remains the official one, Anna Borzello looks at modern stresses on the endangered languages of Africa. Producers Anthony Denselow and Matthew Dodd