ISSN 2360-7998
Abstract
The role of women in leadership in the grassroots development in Nigeria is usually unacknowledged but significant. This paper investigates the role of radio broadcasting in women’s informal leadership by synthesising 20 empirical studies, comprising 13 studies conducted in Nigeria and 7 studies from other sub-Saharan African countries across West, East, and Southern Africa.Drawing on participatory communication,social capital, and gender-and-development, the findings demonstrate that community radio enhances access to information by women, agenda-setting and mobilisation, as well as coordination of local initiatives. The paper redefines community radio as a leadership infrastructure and conceptualises the women influence as informal relational leadership where the implication of such research is to inform gender related media policy and grassroots development practice.
Keywords: community radio, informal leadership, women, grassroots development.