SOUTHERN AFRICA

Most of Africa's infrastructure is so poor that only a few people have access to telephones. Though some Internet projects have been done, many argue Africa will not be able to fully connect to the global village until the connection goes wireless. In the meantime a more viable communication method is making significant inroads throughout Africa: community radio.

Community radio is big throughout the continent -- it is the way most people get information about everything from soccer scores to weather reports, emergencies and social services. In the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, for example, an innovative radio program gives students a daily half-hour English lesson.

But in places where electricity is non-existent and batteries hard to come by, even a simple radio is an impossible luxury.

Enter Freeplay. The company prospered on a device crafted by an English inventor: a hand-cranked radio that uses a spring to generate electrical power. The newer models are even better built -- crank it for 30 seconds and it will play for an hour; some models also have a solar panel.

Though the radios are too expensive for most Africans to afford, new technology has allowed Freeplay to bring the price down, and donations provide funds to put the radios where they are most needed. Various non-governmental organizations have partnered with the company's Freeplay Foundation to put the radios throughout the continent.

In Mozambique, an emergency task force provides radios in flood-devastated villages to help people begin to rebuild their lives. The radios will let people tune into crucial broadcasts in their native Shangane language about health, services and emergency information (such as the location of land mines that might have shifted during the flooding).

Researchers are considering other self-powered methods to ensure Africa will not be left out of the next phase of the Global Village.

		CNN Johannesburg bureau chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Bioa Efraime, a psychologist and head of a non-governmental organization called Rebuilding Hope, comment on the challenges facing Mozambique. Quicktime
		Students in South Africa's Eastern Cape province attend a school that uses donated windup radios as a teaching tool. Quicktime
		Kristine Pearson, head of the Freeplay Foundation, the philanthropic part of a company that makes self-powered radios, explains both the windup and solar panel power aspects of the radio to a group of Mozambiquean women. Quicktime

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