Radio Hekima airs from the diocese of Mbinga, in Tanzania. This is a remote area that, over the years, has shown great need of hearing the word of God and citizens have felt the need to be in touch with their faith.
This was the main reason that pushed Bishop John Ndimbo to ideate Radio Hekima: the first catholic radio station in the area. “We thought of building Radio Hekima in order to bridge the gaps that were observed in evangelization in our diocese,” says Bishop Ndimbo. The work began back in 2013 when they first applied to get the certificates and licenses that were required by the government authorities to have an operating radio station, which they finally got only in 2017.
That was when they approached SIGNIS to receive technical assistance for the whole process of implementing the radio station, which started airing in 2020. In these four years, Radio Hekima has become one of the most important means of communication in the area and not only serves as a source of information but also of formation: people receive education through the programs and they have youth come in and intern at the station. This allows them to develop their skills and build their career in communications.
“A lot has been achieved but also much is desired”, says Bishop Ndimbo. “We are facing some challenges that we are looking to overcome: we wish to complete and equip our audio and video recording unit so that we have a wider scope of recording various events happening in our diocese; and we are looking forward to strengthening our transmission unit by having a more powerful transmitter that will allow us to reach more listeners”. This has been especially challenging as the mountains block the area and difficult the reach of the transmission.
Watch now all that Bishop Ndimbo has to say about Radio Hekima in the third episode dedicated to them within the Inspiring Hope campaign.
Read more about episodes 1 and 2, and watch the full documentary here.
Inspiring hope: a SIGNIS project empowering new voices is a campaign sponsored by SIGNIS with support from the Catholic Communication Campaign aims to share stories of hope that inspire and generate social transformation from new communication resources—a journey through Burundi, Liberia, Belize, Mexico, and Tanzania.