Mighty Fire (91.5 FM) radio is founded and operated by IGF in northern Uganda. The radio station educates and sensitises the community on peace building, poverty reduction, health, sanitation and hygiene, family planning, Human Rights, and safety and security. Through the radio, the project targets at least 1.5 million listeners across northern Uganda and South Sudan.
The project provides airtime to government technical staff and senior leaders across northern Uganda to discuss sector performance and address other issues of development in their region. Show guests provide technical guidance and appropriate responses to the questions and any clarifications that a listener may need. Mighty Fire also promotes local talent (including the music of former IGF children) and interactive talk radio.
Mighty Fire works to correct various injustices in the community. The radio has been very successful in raising awareness of – and preventing – witchcraft practices, domestic violence, providing information on HIV/AIDS and safe-sex practices and land right issues.
Land access
The communities of northern Uganda were fragmented as a result of nearly 2 million people being confined to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camps over an 8-year period. As a result, elders and children have forgotten their land boundaries. The traditional system of staying together in extended families has collapsed. As a result, there are many cases of cousins, nephews, in-laws and other relatives being ignored and denied access to land. Widows of war are often chased away by the families of their late-husbands, forcing them to abandon their children and fend for themselves in towns. Children then become cheap labour carrying heavy jerry cans of water or smuggling illegal goods like cigarettes and alcohol across borders.
Being denied farmland also subjects families to food crisis. The threat of famine is ever-present, as people are blocked access to their farmlands. Legal structures are overwhelmed in dealing with the backlog of over 5,000 land dispute cases that are pending. IGF’s Mighty Fire radio station runs phone-in programs, which provides a forum for the community to discuss these (and other) problems and find a way forward together.
