| Type | International public broadcaster |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Founded | 1975 |
| Owner | Government of France |
| Official website | www.rfi.fr |
Radio France Internationale (RFI) was created in 1975 as part of Radio France by the Government of France, and replaced the Poste Colonial (created in 1931), Paris Mondial (1938), Radio Paris (1939), RTF Radio Paris (1945) and ORTF Radio Paris (1965). In 1986 a new law passed by the French Parliament allowed RFI to operate independently of Radio France.
RFI operates under the auspices and primary budget of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. It broadcasts primarily in French, but also in English, Kiswahili, Hausa, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Polish. It also owns Radio Monte Carlo-Middle East, which produces Arabic programmes in Paris, and airs them from a transmitter in Cyprus to audiences across the Middle East and North Africa.
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One of the largest foreign language services is the English Service, aimed mainly at Africa. RFI broadcasts for four hours every morning. All of RFI's English broadcasts are available online and for download on the English service website. Information on frequencies for RFI in English can be found here.
On September 17, 2002, Togolese President Gnassingbé Eyadéma tried to stop the broadcasting of an interview with one of his opponents, Agbéyomé Kodjo, by phoning directly to the Elysée Palace. The interview was not censored by Jean-Paul Cluzel, RFI's CEO at the time, due to the coordinated intervention of the journalists' trade-unions. However, a report raising questions regarding the French secret services responsibilities in the 1995 death of judge Bernard Borrel in Djibouti, which was broadcast on May 17, 2005, was later removed from RFI's website for undisclosed reasons, possibly due to the intervention of Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh.[1]
On 21 October 2003, Jean Hélène was reporting for RFI during the civil war in Ivory Coast when he was killed in Abidjan by police Sergeant Théodore Séry Dago.
RFI offers a daily podcast in simple French, accessible via iTunes, named 'Journal en français facile'. [1]
RFI uses 2 domestic shortwave relay stations in France, and one shortwave relay station in French Guyana. All the stations are owned and operated by the French telecom entity TDF.
ALLISS is a rotatable antenna system for high power shortwave radio broadcasting.
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