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At the start of her podcast series I Will Not Grow Old Here, Mary-Ann Nobele takes listeners on a stroll through the historic Johannesburg township she calls home, warmly saying hello to the people she passes. She apologizes that it’s a “bit of a walk,” but assures us the destination is “totally worth it”: a hilltop cricket field with sweeping views of a suburban skyline, Africa’s richest square mile. Down below lies the crammed, corrugated chaos of Alexandra, or “Alex,” as it’s more commonly known. She says, “When I look around at Alex, it reminds me of a line from a poem by Wally Sarote: ‘Alexandra, I would have long gone from you.’”
Throughout the series, Nobele, twenty-three years old at the time, grapples with a contradiction: her burning desire to escape her community, and her deep love for it. The three-part show emerged from conversations Nobele had with the producers at Radio Workshop, an audio production company and media training organization based in Cape Town. “It wasn’t planned,” she said recently. “But in sharing bits of my life, they realized the story was already in me.”
Radio Workshop is part of a growing network of African podcasting initiatives focused on in-depth, narrative-driven storytelling—often producing stories that are underreported or excluded by traditional media. SemaBox, a Nairobi-based podcasting hub, has supported more than a hundred and fifty creators through studio access and training. Similarly, Develop Audio, the company behind the award-winning investigative series Alibi, runs podcast development labs and mentorship programs, equipping emerging producers with skills in investigative storytelling, sound design, and editing.
Radio Workshop, which was founded in 2006 as a project to train and mentor young people at community radio stations, has trained more than five thousand young reporters across ten countries, and supported the production of award-winning podcasts that have aired on major platforms like the BBC and NPR. One recent series, Uganda’s Hidden Rainbow, drew international recognition for its unflinching depiction of the persecution of LGBTQ+ communities in Uganda. Another, Zambia’s Sacrifice Zone, tells the story of an eighteen-year-old from one of the world’s most toxic towns, who is torn between resisting the local lead mines polluting his home and joining them in order to make a living. My Whistle, My Voice features an Ethiopian activist combating street harassment of women.
That kind of authenticity is central to Radio Workshop’s mission—and represents its greatest challenge. Most Radio Workshop podcasts begin with an open call for pitches from across the continent. Producers then guide applicants, many of whom have no experience in audio journalism, through the process of producing their episodes, with hands-on script work and help with editing. Their goal is to build a new wave of audio journalists who can create long-form narrative stories, even if the results take years. “I see it as planting seeds,” said Mike Rahfaldt, Radio Workshop’s executive producer for podcasts. “When someone in Alexandra hears our podcast, they nod and say, ‘Yes, that’s exactly how it is.’”
Audio has always been a central means for getting news in Africa, and in recent years, podcasting has been surging in popularity—in countries like South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, between 50 and 60 percent of people listen to podcasts, compared with 45 percent in the US and just 30 percent in the UK, according to a recent report. But the technology depends on digital infrastructure and listening habits that aren’t as widespread. According to a 2024 survey by Afrobarometer, an Africa-wide research network, much of the continent is still reliant on the radio: 59 percent of Africans get news from the radio at least a few times a week, compared with 42 percent of Americans. Meanwhile, only 36 percent of Africans access news through the internet or social media—in the US, it’s 86 percent. While platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts are increasingly popular, not everyone has the means or connectivity to access them. Instead, Radio Workshop has relied on partnerships with a mobile carrier to offer free streaming of its podcasts on phones, said Naomi Grewan, the organization’s communications manager—a relationship that brings in more listeners than all other platforms combined. Radio Workshop also adapts episodes for community radio stations, which share five-minute segments of its audio documentaries and direct listeners to where to find the full report. And then there’s the challenge of making the shows themselves: “Access to equipment, to studio spaces and funds, is a major challenge,” Grewan said. “That’s also why we haven’t seen as much of it come out of the continent.”
I Will Not Grow Old Here, which came out in 2022, was the first African podcast nominated for a prestigious Ambies Award. “We wanted to create something that feels real to people who listen to it, something that speaks to their own frustrations, their own dreams,” Nobele said. Over the series’ three episodes, Nobele interviews friends and family members around the township, searching for some deeper connection with the place where she grew up. Her mother describes witnessing the township’s decline, watching it become a place of crumbling infrastructure and limited safety; still, she bemoans that the current generation seems to “want everything for free.” Nobele is surprised when her grandmother, who moved to Alex in the late 1970s, suggests that the brutal period of apartheid had some merits. “Things made more sense back then,” she says. Still, the podcast refuses to collapse into hopelessness. It pulses with music and laughter. When Nobele asks her best friend if she thinks she’ll make it out, she replies, “I don’t think so. I know so.” “African stories are often reduced to trauma,” Nobele said. “We wanted to show the full humanity: struggle, joy, and resilience.”
Today, Nobele is working for Radio Workshop, producing other podcasts, including one about a South African spelling bee champion. She still hopes to eventually leave Alexandra—not to escape it, but to return as someone who can bring change. “We’re just getting started,” she said. “There are so many more stories to tell.”
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