RFI Afrique on 15300 kHz: Radio France Internationale to Africa by day

What you hear

15300 kHz carries RFI's French-language programme for Africa through most of the daylight hours. It is a rolling news and current-affairs channel: bulletins on the hour and half hour, long interviews, debates on African politics, sports, economics and health, and music programmes with African and world artists. The African editions are made with correspondents across francophone Africa, so the news agenda runs from Dakar and Abidjan to Kinshasa and Bamako rather than from Paris. The station identifies as "RFI" with its familiar sonic logo, and time signals mark the hour.

The signal is big. Issoudun runs some of the most powerful transmitters in Europe, and from much of the continent 15300 kHz is as strong as a local station, with wide, clean audio and little fading. If you want to show someone what shortwave broadcasting sounds like at its best, this is a good place to start.

Who transmits and why

Radio France Internationale is France's public international broadcaster, based in Paris. Its shortwave transmissions come from the Issoudun site in the Indre department of central France, a large transmitting centre built in the 1950s and operated for RFI by a transmission company. The French service for Africa is the station's core on shortwave: tens of millions of people in francophone Africa listen to RFI, and while FM relays carry it in most capitals, shortwave still reaches the countryside, the Sahel and the places where governments switch the FM relays off. Alongside French, RFI broadcasts to Africa in Hausa, Swahili, Fulfulde, Mandenkan and Portuguese on other frequencies at set hours.

15300 kHz has been an RFI frequency for many years. Exact blocks change with the seasonal schedules, but the frequency is usually in use from the European morning until the late afternoon.

When and where to listen

The transmission is aimed south, towards West and Central Africa, and the 19 metre band is a daytime band, so the window is roughly from sunrise to late afternoon UTC. In Europe the signal arrives strongly by side lobes and by the sheer power of the transmitter; receivers anywhere in France, Spain, Italy, Germany or the Low Countries will do, and receivers in West Africa hear the beam head-on. In North America the frequency is sometimes audible in the morning, especially on the east coast. In winter, when the band closes early, the afternoon end of the schedule may fade from northern Europe.

The catalogue mode is AM, and the signal rarely needs anything else. If a neighbour on 15295 or 15305 kHz shows up, sideband with a narrow filter keeps the French audio clean.

In ShackDeck

The entry sits under Station catalogue → Shortwave broadcast → RFI Africa 15300. ShackDeck picks a public receiver whose range covers 15300 kHz, tunes it and sets AM from the catalogue, so you need no receiver, antenna or account of your own. On a receiver in western Europe the station appears as one of the thickest stripes on the 19 metre band during the day; if you hear nothing, it is more likely outside the hours than off the air.