Ghetto Radio 89.5Ghetto Radio 89.5

Ghetto Radio went on air in December 2007 from the Security Building on Park Road in Ngara, and did something no Kenyan station had done before it: broadcast in Sheng, the Swahili-English slang the city's estates actually speak. The premise was that people in the slums should be the ones describing them — through music, graffiti, poetry and reporting rather than through somebody else's correspondent — and the newsroom still writes from the informal economy outward, eighteen years on.

Brekko opens the weekday, Hiphop Republik and Selection za Old Skool take the music hours, Jahmrock Doba handles the reggae, and Sunday goes to Ghetto Gospel and Gospel Night Live. The charts run on genge, dancehall and bongo flava — Zuchu, Harmonize, Alikiba, Marioo — and the sister site Thisisafrica.me carries the same reporting in writing, in English.