On Sunday Feb. 8, 2004, IRRS starts new test broadcasts to North (Mediterranean) and West Africa using a powerful 100 kW beam. These broadcasts are intended to cover a large segment of listeners who live in the large populated areas of North Africa over the Mediterreanean sea, and especially those living in tents and refugee camps in the desert.
Among them over 170,000 people are living in four refugee camps in the harsh southern Algerian desert in West Africa. For the last twenty years these refugees have been forced to live in tents, and Shortwave radio is just about the only communication media able to reach them.
Broadcasts to this area are part of a co-operation project involving several Italian organizations and Regione Emilia Romagna. The goal of the project is to re-enforce communication with the Sarahawi people that to this day use Shortwave radio as one of the most valuable communication media to the outside world.
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