The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service has launched an Africa podcast competition that will see Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa as the inaugural participant countries.
The international podcast competition is open to aspiring audio hosts and producers who are not broadcast professionals and don’t have credit for a commercial podcast.
Entries into the contest officially begin January 5 and close on January 22, 2021, from the participating countries, where the overall winner will be turned into a new podcast that will be launched later in the year, in collaboration with a BBC production team.
According to BBC World Service Podcast Commissioning Editor Jon Manel, they are looking forward to unscripted shows mainly highlighting women issues. He also mentioned that they selected the three countries because they record the highest number of podcast downloads.
“Africa is really important to the BBC World Service. We have invested a lot in our journalism, you are aware of the amazing journalism coming out of Africa. We launched the comb as a podcast earlier this year, which is coming through Africa for men's amazing stories once a week. We're about to launch a new daily podcast for Africa and so when it comes to our podcast’s numbers the highest downloads, we are getting tend to be from those three countries from South Africa from Kenya, and from Nigeria, so it made sense to start in those three countries. Opening up the competition to the whole of Africa would have been a good idea, but I think that would have been overly ambitious,” said Jon Manel.
Paula Rogo the founder of Africa Podfest and a judge in the podcast competition, said this will be a great opportunity for all who feel left out of podcasting and storytelling because of different reasons to show what they can do.
“So, I'm expecting really great storytelling to come out of this. I'm expecting new voices that we'd never even considered new ideas and new perspectives,” she said.
To apply, entrants will need to complete an online application form with a summary of their original podcast idea and upload a 2 minute piece of audio in which they describe what makes it distinctive.
Judges in the competition will include; Sharon Machira BBC TV & Radio Presenter (Kenya), Odudu Efe (FayFay) Founder of the Naija Podcast Hub (Nigeria), Jedi Ramalapa, Editor-in-Chief, Sound Africa (South Africa), Paula Rogo Founder of Africa Podfest, Africa’s first podcast festival and Kali Media, an African women-focused podcast network (Kenya), Kim Chakanetsa Host of The Comb, the BBC World Service weekly podcast for audiences in Africa and Jon Manel, BBC World Service Podcast Commissioning Editor.