Koch FM: From a Culture of Silence to Kenya’s First Community Radio Station
In 2001, Korogocho couldn’t talk about what was happening to it. Gangs controlled the streets, gender-based violence went unreported, and police and local administration couldn’t safely enter parts of the settlement. A “culture of silence” protected the people doing the harm.
A group of young people responded with something almost absurdly small against that backdrop — a beauty pageant. The first Miss Koch Beauty Pageant, 2001, ran under the rallying cry “Never say Die, Yes We Can.” It wasn’t the pageant that mattered. It was what it proved: that young people in Korogocho could organize, speak publicly, and be heard.
Five years later, that instinct became infrastructure. Koch FM 99.9 launched in 2006 — Kenya’s first community radio station, built specifically to give the urban poor a voice. It is still broadcasting today, nineteen years later.
