BBC to launch Amharic service

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) will launch an Amharic program on medium- and short-wave radio next month. This is to enhance its coverage of “parts of the world where there is a democratic deficit in impartial news”. A BBC insider said the British government has given final approval to the public broadcaster’s plan to broadcast news to Ethiopia and has even earmarked a budget. The news program will be produced at the BBC headquarters in London and transmitted via shortwave from locations, covering local and international news in Amharic.
The BBC’s Amharic service will be an addition to two other western broadcasters, the long-established and powerful Voice of America’s Amharic service and Germany’s Deutsche Welle. While Deutsche Welle’s first Amharic radio program went on the air on March 15, 1965, US foreign policy-makers created the Amharic Service of the voice of America in 1982 to counter Mengistu Hailemarim’s monopolistic control of the media and, by extension, Soviet influence in the Horn of Africa.