1 Interview with Abdoulaye Dramé, Kayes, 18 Jan. 2018. Interviews were conducted mostly in French and occasionally in Bamanan. All translations are mine.

2 Interview with N'Golo Coulibaly, Bamako, 5 Feb. 2018.

3 Larkin, B., Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham, NC, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the infrastructural turn, see Larkin, B., ‘The politics and poetics of infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 42:1 (2013), 327–434CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Quinn, S. ‘Infrastructure, ethnicity, and political mobilization in Namibia, 1946–87’, The Journal of African History, 61:1 (2020), 45–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von Schnitzler, A., ‘Traveling technologies: infrastructure, ethical regimes, and the materiality of politics in South Africa’, Cultural Anthropology 28:4 (2013), 670–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Serlin, D., ‘Confronting African histories of technology: a conversation with Keith Breckenridge and Gabrielle Hecht’, Radical History Review, 127 (2017), 87–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Spitulnik, D., ‘Mobile machines and fluid audiences: rethinking reception through Zambian radio culture’, in Ginsburg, F., Abu-Lughod, L., and Larkin, B. (eds), Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (Berkeley, 2002), 337–54Google Scholar. Richard Vokes and Katrien Pype have suggestively invited scholars to explore the relationship between information and communication technologies and spatial categories, see Vokes, R. and Pype, K., ‘Chronotopes of media in sub-Saharan Africa’, Ethnos 83:2 (2018), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Though focused on the radio, this paper not only draws on stories about roads, but also considers transport infrastructures (absent or present, derelict or maintained) as key parts of the historical context. Roads and motor transportation are also an emergent topic in African history. See, for example, Freed, L., ‘Networks of (colonial) power: roads in French Central Africa after World War I’, History and Technology 26:3 (2010), 203–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hart, J., Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation (Bloomington, IN, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Mann, G., From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Nongovernmentality (Cambridge, 2014), 172Google Scholar.

9 Chauveau, J.-P., ‘Participation paysanne et populisme bureaucratique: essai d'histoire et de sociologie de la culture du développement’, in Jacob, J.-P. and Delville, P. Lavigne (eds.), Les associations paysannes en Afrique: Organisation et dynamiques (Paris, 1994), 25–60Google Scholar.

10 On audiences in Africa, see the seminal article by Barber, K., ‘Preliminary notes on audiences in Africa’, Africa, 67:3 (1997), 347–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the potential of radio technology to create publics at distinct scales, including transnational, see Gunner, L., Ligaga, D., and Moyo, D. (eds.), Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (Johannesburg, 2011)Google Scholar.

11 Fardon, R. and Furniss, G. (eds.), African Broadcast Cultures: Radio in Transition (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

12 Wasserman, H. (ed.), Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa (London, 2011)Google Scholar; Brisset-Foucault, F., Talkative Polity: Radio, Domination, and Citizenship in Uganda (Athens, OH, 2019)Google Scholar.

13 For an overview, see H. Englund, ‘Radio as a political medium in Africa’, The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Politics, (https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.814), 2019. Recent monographs address the intricate relationships between radio and the state in African history, such as Liz Gunner's demonstration of how Zulu-language radio managed to escape the narrow space the apartheid ideologues assigned it and Marissa Moorman's analysis of the unstable role of radio technology in colonial and postcolonial Angola; see Gunner, L., Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern (Cambridge, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moorman, M., Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931–2002 (Athens, OH, 2019)Google Scholar.

14 C. H. Cutter, ‘Nation-building in Mali: art, radio, and leadership in a pre-literate society’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1971).

15 The de facto monopoly on telecommunications was inscribed in a law promulgated on 18 Jan. 1983. Lake, R., ‘Mali: le pluralisme radiophonique’, in Institut Panos and Union des journalistes de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (eds.), Le pluralisme radiophonique en Afrique de l'Ouest (Paris, 1993), 4Google Scholar.

16 Schulz, D., Perpetuating the Politics of Praise: Jeli Singers, Radios, and Political Mediation in Mali (Köln, 2001)Google Scholar; Diawara, M., L'empire du verbe et l’éloquence du silence: Vers une anthropologie du discours dans les groupes dits dominés au Sahel (Köln, 2003)Google Scholar.

17 RRK is generally treated as an epiphenomenon compared to the development of other stations after 1991, see Myers, M., ‘The promotion of democracy at the grass-roots: the example of radio in Mali’, Democratization, 5:2 (1998), 200–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See, however, the short account in Lake, ‘Mali’, and the mention of RRK as ‘the prototype for local radio stations in Mali’ in C. Tower, ‘Radio ways: society, locality, and FM technology in Koutiala, Mali’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 2008), 120.

18 Schulz, D., ‘“In pursuit of publicity”: talk radio and the imagination of a moral public in urban Mali’, Africa Spectrum, 34:2 (1999), 161–85Google Scholar; Tower, ‘Radio ways’.

19 Such as J. P. Ilboudo, ‘Prospects for rural radio in Africa: strategies to relate audience research to the participatory production of radio programmes’, in Fardon and Furniss, African Broadcast Cultures, 42–71.

20 I have conducted 31 interviews in Kayes, Bamako, Kati, and Paris. Based in Bamako from 2017 to 2019, I regularly travelled to Kayes for research trips. On the occasion of RRK's thirtieth anniversary, I collaborated with the radio team on an illustrated publication, ‘Une histoire de la Radio Rurale de Kayes: récits, photos & documents’ (Bamako, 2019).

21 In addition to the archival material kept at Radio Rurale de Kayes (hereafter ARRK), I have also explored public collections, predominantly the archives of the Gouvernorat de la région de Kayes (hereafter AGRK).

22 Keita, R. N'Diaye, Kayes et Le Haut Sénégal, Volume I (Bamako, 1972), 85–6Google Scholar.

23 ‘Both nations, but particularly Mali, experienced severe economic dislocation. The western region of Mali, centered on Kayes, was devastated by the closure of the railroad and the border with Senegal.’ Clark, A. F., ‘From military dictatorship to democracy: the democratization process in Mali’, Journal of Third World Studies, 12:1 (1995), 209Google Scholar.

24 N'Diaye Keita, Kayes I, 171.

25 Figures from S. Keïta and F. O. Konaté ‘Le Mali et sa population’, in V. Hertrich and S. Keïta (eds.), Questions de population au Mali (Bamako, 2003), 48.

26 Lombard, J., ‘Kayes, ville ouverte’, Autrepart, 47:3 (2008), 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 The term jula refers to Muslim long-distance traders who established their networks between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries as an ‘extension of the trans-Saharan trade network beyond the port towns of the sahel, into the savannas and toward the Atlantic’. Wright, D., ‘Darbo Jula: the role of a Mandinka Jula clan in the long-distance trade of the Gambia River and its hinterland’, African Economic History, 3 (1977), 35Google Scholar. Their origins are generally traced to Soninke clans, see M. Perinbam ‘The Julas in Western Sudanese history: long-distance traders and developers of resources’, in B. K. Swartz and R. E. Dumett (eds.), West African Culture Dynamics: Archeological and Historical Perspectives (The Hague, 1980), 456.

28 Manchuelle, F., Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960 (Athens, OH, 1997)Google Scholar.

29 Manchuelle, Willing Migrants; Whitehouse, B., Migrants and Strangers in an African City. Exile, Dignity, Belonging (Bloomington, IN, 2012)Google Scholar.

30 Rodet, M., Les migrantes ignorées du Haut-Sénégal: 1900–1946 (Paris, 2009)Google Scholar.

31 Manchuelle, Willing Migrants, ch. 6.

32 D. Gary-Tounkara, ‘Quand les migrants demandent la route, Modibo Keïta rétorque: “Retournez à la terre!”: les “Baragnini” et la désertion du “chantier national” (1958–1968)’, Mande Studies 5 (2003), 49–64.

33 Archives Nationales du Mali, Bamako (ANM) fonds documentaire 609, M. Niambélé, ‘Rapport de mission: immigration des travailleurs maliens en France’, Dec. 1963, 9. I thank Greg Mann for sharing his copy of this document.

34 D. Gary-Tounkara, ‘Encadrement et contrôle des migrants par le régime militaire au Mali (1968–1991)’, in S. Dufoix, et al. (eds), Loin des yeux, près du cœur (Paris, 2010), 147–62

35 ANM CMLN/UDPM 284, letter from General Director of Customs, Bamako to T. Bakayoko, Director of the Security Services, 16 Jan. 1972.

36 On the FAI, see P. Bollini and M. R. Reich, ‘The Italian fight against world hunger: a critical analysis of Italian aid for development in the 1980s’, Social Science & Medicine, 39:5 (1994), 611.

37 Mann, Empires to NGOs.

38 On Italian aid to the Sahel, see E. Caputo, ‘Iniziativa italiana di cooperazione con i paesi del CILSS: una valutazione preliminare a tre anni dall'inizio’, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 40:3 (1985), 349–70.

39 On another such project, see B. Rossi, ‘The Keita Project: an anthropological study of international development discourses and practices in Niger’ (unpublished PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2002). The Keita Project also included a rural radio station but Rossi's study does not detail this aspect.

40 Terra Nuova was created in 1968 and oriented towards Latin America before setting foot in Africa in 1975, and in Mali in 1982; see Terra Nuova, Centro per la Solidarietà e la Cooperazione tra i Popoli, ‘Our story’, (http://www.terranuova.org/terra-nuova-en/our-story), 2021.

41 ARRK, ‘Programme de développement rural intégré de la région de Kayes-Nord: rapport de la mission conjointe FAO/Gouvernement Italien’, May 1983.

42 On the German project, see Centre des Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères, La Courneuve 20881 K484, ‘Opérations des périmètres irrigués de la région de Kayes: mission d'examen de la situation’, Oct. 1980, 10. On the American project, see USAID, Projet de développement intégré USAID/OMVS (Dakar, 1983), 64.

43 ARRK, ‘Programme de développement rural intégré de la région de Kayes-Nord: rapport de la mission conjointe FAO/Gouvernement Italien', May 1983.

44 G. Sivini, Resistance to Modernization in Africa: Journey among Peasants and Nomads (New Brunswick, NJ, 2011). On the contribution by academics to the definition of Italian cooperation, see Rossi, ‘The Keita Project’, 111n45.

45 ARRK, survey by FAI, AIC Progetti (Rome), and BECIS (Bamako), ‘Etude pour le développement des cercles de Kayes et de Yélimané: enquête socio-économique’, 1987. This survey comprised 188 items and covered a vast array of themes such as the history of the locality, its demographics, the state of its infrastructure, and an assessment of its ‘needs’ in term of development and of the involvement of its emigrants.

46 ARRK ‘Protocole de mise en application du Programme d'animation et de formation pour le développement rural dans la région de Kayes’, 7 Feb. 1987.

47 Presented as two distinct layers in the program and implemented by separate NGOs, the infrastructure project and the training project were put in place by a group who shared some acquaintances. Thus, when the team working on the radio project required construction works, they called AIC Progetti to build the road from the station to the antenna.

48 Interview with Fily Keïta, Bamako, 6 Dec. 2017.

49 D. Barazzetti, ‘Des émissions à l’écoute des femmes’. Supplement to the French edition of Cooperazione, 14:85 (1989), 26. The journal was published by the Italian ministry of foreign affairs.

50 ‘[The Italians] flew over the region in a small plane . . . Hence, they decided to build communication routes, roads.’ Interview with N'Golo Coulibaly. No regular air service existed between Bamako and Kayes, but the Italians used planes chartered by private firms in Kayes for their expatriates to move around.

51 A. Cavazzani, ‘Une radio rurale à Kayes’. Supplement to the French edition of Cooperazione, 14:85 (1989), 28.

52 Interview with Felice Spingola, Bamako, 6 Feb. 2018. Broadcasts were in Soninke, Khassonke, Bamanan, and Fulfulde — languages that the Italians did not understand. Though occasionally they would ask that a broadcast on a sensitive topic be transcribed and translated, this was not ordinary practice; this meant that, from day to day, the Malian team had a great level of autonomy.

53 Cavazzani, ‘Radio rurale’, 28.

54 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 49.

55 P. J. Imperato and G. H. Imperato, Historical Dictionary of Mali (4th edn, Lanham, MD, 2008), 181; T. Perret, ‘Médias et démocratie au Mali’, Politique africaine, 97:1 (2005), 20.

56 ‘The Italians offered the Malian government a bunch of presents, saying: here is an emergency project for the region. Since the program included RRK, [the Malians] said: no problem, we'll take the project.’ Interview with Fily Keïta.

57 Interview with Felice Spingola.

58 S. Nédelec, ‘Jeunesses, sociétés et État au Mali au XXe siècle’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris Diderot–Paris 7, 1994), 454. While touring the region in October 1988, Ongoïba visited RRK, a visit publicized in L'Essor (Bamako), 3 Nov. 1988.

59 RTM was established in 1983 in replacement of Radio-Mali and was renamed Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision du Mali (ORTM) in 1992, when it gained a more autonomous legal status. In the first elaborations of the FAI program, rural radio was presented as supporting ‘the aims of the Five-Year Plan in terms of the regionalization of Radio Mali’ before GAO came in and insisted on the independence of the project from the RTM. ARRK, ‘Programme de coopération technique’, 1983.

60 Notably in Burkina Faso at the Centre Interafricain d'Etudes en Radio Rurale de Ouagadougou, created in 1979. A. J. Tudesq, L'Afrique parle, l'Afrique écoute: Les radios en Afrique subsaharienne (Paris, 2002), 84. On the exchanges between Burkina Faso's rural radio and RRK, see A. Cavazzani and N. Coulibaly, La Radio rurale au Sahel (1991), a film produced by GAO, RTM, and the University of Calabria (http://www.gaong.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54:19&catid=17&Itemid=138).

61 ARRK, N. Coulibaly, ‘Communication et développement rural: la “radio rurale” au Mali: perspectives de décentralisation et participation’; GAO Cooperazione internationale, Quaderni di GAO, Collana Ricerche 13, 1996.

62 The daily news program was retransmitted more or less regularly (repeated letters from the RTM demanding that it be done suggest a lack of commitment by RRK).

63 The governor of the Kayes region had asked for reinforcements for the regional RTM center ahead of RRK's launch. See AGRK 2W1 285, letter from the Governor to the Minister of Information, 9 June 1988.

64 Interview with Salif Sidibé, Bamako, 31 Jan. 2018.

65 ARRK, minutes of a meeting on the extension of the project at the Ministry of Information, Bamako, 5 Apr. 1989.

66 Interview with Demba Traoré, Kayes, 4 Oct. 2018.

67 Interviews with Ibrahima Traoré, Kayes, 8 Nov. 2017 and Georges Diawara, Bamako, 29 Jan. 2018.

68 Université Paris VIII, established at Vincennes in 1971, had grown out of the experimental Centre universitaire de Vincennes, which in turn was founded in the aftermath of May 1968. A leftist stronghold, it was moved to another Parisian suburb, Saint-Denis, in 1980.

69 Interview with Abdoulaye Dramé. Notably, Dramé had responsibilities in a workers’ trade union in France.

70 Lake acknowledges the material contribution by Italian members of GAO and Terra Nuova to the implementation of Radio Bamakan (the first nonstate radio in Bamako, which started to broadcast in September 1991) but does not mention the involvement of Malian radio actors from Kayes. See Lake, ‘Mali’, 23.

71 Interview with N'Golo Coulibaly.

72 Interview with Georges Diawara.

73 I focus here on the station workers, for whom the road denoted progress. Although not a context for such tragic memories as those studied by Adeline Masquelier regarding the Nigerien N1, roads in the region could still be regarded suspiciously. See A. Masquelier, ‘Road mythographies: space, mobility, and the historical imagination in postcolonial Niger’, American Ethnologist, 29:4 (2002), 829–56. For instance, on special occasions, such as the arrival of a bride, villagers from Sobokou would move onto the side of the road to perform a ritual before crossing one of the bridges on the Kayes-Diboli axis. Author's fieldnotes, Mar. 2019.

74 Larkin, ‘Politics and poetics’; P. Harvey and H. Knox, ‘The enchantments of infrastructure’, Mobilities, 7:4 (2012), 521–36.

75 Diama Djigui was founded in France in 1981 and in Mali in 1982 by villagers and migrants returning from France. AGRK, ‘Emigration: Maliens expatriés’, a declaration of creation of the association Diama Djigui to the Ministry of Interior, 7 Apr. 1982. See also C. Daum, Les associations de maliens en France: Migrations, développement et citoyenneté (Paris, 1998).

76 Among the films produced by the University of Calabria and directed by F. Spingola were Emigrati Maliani in Francia (1985), ‘Diama Djigui’, Speranza di un Popolo (1986), and Ritorno al FLEUVE (1987). Titles quoted in ARRK, ‘Programma logistico d'urgenza nella I° regione della Repubblica del Mali, relazione di sintesi’, 31 July 1986.

77 Interview with Abdoulaye Dramé.

78 Dedieu, J.-P., ‘The rise of the migration-development nexus in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, 1960–2010’, African Studies Review, 61:1 (2018), 83–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Interview with Ibrahima Traoré.

80 On Somankidi-Coura, see Soumaré, S., Après l’émigration le retour à la terre: L'exemple de Somankidi-Koura (Bamako, 2001)Google Scholar.

81 Interview with Ladji Niangané, Bamako, 17 Apr. 2018.

82 Interviews with Dramane Sidibé, Lany, 13 Mar. 2019 and Dioncounda Diabira, Gakoura, 15 Mar. 2019.

83 ARRK, G. Sivini, ‘Les origines de la Radio Rurale de Kayes en tant qu'instrument de développement’ (unpublished paper prepared for the international conference L'avenir des radios rurales en Afrique, Rende, 24–27 Oct. 1991), 3.

84 AGRK, Opération Vallée du Sénégal–Térékolé–Magui, ‘Rapport annuel d'activité, campagne 1983/1984’.

85 Interview with Ladji Niangané.

86 Interview with Oumar Diagouraga, Kayes, 7 Nov. 2017.

87 Interview with Barka Fofana, Kayes, 16 Jan. 2018.

88 ARRK, A. Cavazzani, ‘Note pour la définition du statut de la Radio Rurale de Kayes’, 19 Sept. 1990.

89 When the FAI mandate expired in 1987, new legislation was put in place, but ‘the actual funds committed to bilateral projects greatly exceeded the allocated budget, and in July 1989 all development aid funds were frozen. Small projects conducted by NGOs were severely affected.’ Bollini and Reich, ‘Italian fight’, 612.

90 ‘Tons’ were village associations that were revived under Moussa Traoré.

91 Daum, Les associations, ch. 9.

92 ‘Ordonnance du 15 janvier 1992 portant autorisation de création de services privés de radiodiffusion sonore par voie hertzienne terrestre en modulation de fréquence.’ Lake, ‘Mali’, 23–34. After Radio Bamakan in September, Radio Liberté started broadcasting in October 1991.

93 ARRK, minutes, ‘Table-ronde sur la réinsertion des travailleurs migrants et le développement’, 1991.

94 Interview with Samba Sylla, Paris, 28 Aug. 2017. On the Groupe de recherche et de réalisations pour le développement rural, see Dedieu, J.-P., La parole immigrée: Les migrants africains dans l'espace public en France, 1960–1995 (Paris, 2012)Google Scholar.

95 Transnational links between Kayes and other localities in Senegal and Mauritania had been crucial from the outset, notably through the participation of Adrian Adams on the radio's scientific committee. An anthropologist and specialist in the Soninke language, she had been living in Kounghany, Senegal before her accidental death in 2000.

96 ARRK, letter by the Director of RRK to the Governor, 16 Aug. 1999.

97 ARRK, G. Diawara, ‘Programme d'animation socio-culturelle’, Sept. 1988.

98 Interview with Hawa Bambara, Kati, 3 July 2018.

99 In September 1988, when the team launched a contest to propose a name for the radio station, hundreds of early listeners eagerly came up with a variety of names or phrases, in national languages or in French, to baptize the newcomer. For reasons unknown, no name was chosen and the station continued to be known as RRK, but the letters provide insights into the nature of the first listeners, most of whom were from Kayes, ranging from market fish-sellers to high school teachers.

100 ARRK, letter from Kayes N'Di, 2 Oct. 1989. On the importance of the temporal dimension of media experience, see Vokes and Pype, Chronotopes, 208.

101 Interview with Ibrahima Traoré. Traoré became the first president of the Association des radiodiffuseurs pour le développement rural de Kayes.

102 Informal conversations with Maly Bah, Jan. 2019.

103 Due to the city's outward expansion, Kayes-Plateau airport was closed and the new airport of Dag-Dag, outside the city, was opened in 2002.

104 Daum, Les associations, 57; P. Gonin, ‘D'entre deux territoires: circulations migratoires et développement entre le bassin du fleuve Sénégal et la France’ (unpublished HDR thesis, Université de Lille 1, 1997), 171–6.

105 ARRK, minutes of a meeting to support RRK, Paris, Sept. 1991.

106 Interview with N'Golo Coulibaly.

107 The second nonstate radio station in Kayes, Radio Sahel, was launched in 1997.

108 ARRK, letter from Yélimané, 4 Oct. 1989.

109 Fay, C., Koné, Y. F., and Quiminal, C. (eds.), Décentralisation et pouvoirs en Afrique: En contrepoint, modèles territoriaux français (Marseille, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The names and boundaries of Kayes as a region and of its cercles were unaffected by this process; in the area, the main change was the delineation of the new subdivision of the commune.

110 Lima, S., ‘L’émergence d'une toponymie plurielle au Mali’, L'Espace Politique, 5 (2008)Google Scholar, https://doi.org/10.4000/espacepolitique.1115.

111 ARRK, letters from Diaguily, 2002 and 2005.

112 D. Traoré launched a series of broadcasts about a local philosopher, Madi-Kaama, to whom various proverbs and apologues were attributed. Research on Madi-Kaama evolved into an enterprise of Soninke revival, out of which a Soninke-language writing contest and festival emerged in 1996.

113 In 2018, the Union des radiodiffusions et télévisions libres du Mali's network in the region numbered 26 recognized radio stations. Personal communication with the union's president, Bandiougou Danté, 13 Sept. 2018.