Mogadishu, Somalia – Archivist Abdiqadir Geedi Robleh and a small team are digitising about 400,000 hours of audio from roughly 45,000 reel‑to‑reel tapes held at Radio Mogadishu’s archive, seeking to preserve the material before it deteriorates. Radio Mogadishu was founded in 1951 during the Italian colonial period and became Somalia’s primary public broadcaster, reaching listeners across the region with news, music, drama and language programming in Somali and several foreign languages. The station was a key platform for Somali talent and a major conduit for pan‑African and anti‑colonial content, especially under the regime of Siad Barre from 1969 to 1991. After the central government collapsed in 1991, private outlets expanded and the station’s reach diminished, though it continues to operate with limited resources. An assessment in April counted approximately 45,000 tapes representing an estimated 400,000 hours of recordings, of which more than 85 percent are still playable, while about 10 percent show signs of deterioration and more than 5 percent have been destroyed or severely damaged, according to UNESCO. The archive suffered damage in an electrical fire in 2018 and during fighting in 1992, and a police colonel once risked his life to protect it from looting during the civil war. Digitisation efforts began around 2012 but have progressed slowly, with only about 10 percent of the collection converted so far, said Abdi Jeite, the station’s director. He noted that new tools and training have improved the process, but additional support is needed. In June, Somalia’s information ministry and the UNESCO regional office for Eastern Africa organized a workshop in Mogadishu for archivists from across the country, aiming to register the collection with UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme. Guilherme Canela, a senior UNESCO official overseeing the project, said, “Protecting this knowledge isn’t just relevant for Somalia, but it is relevant for everyone.” Historians say Radio Mogadishu shaped a shared public sphere in Somalia, where oral tradition was central, and served as a pipeline for journalists who later worked for the BBC and other international outlets. Former journalists recall the station as the primary source of news for millions, including nomadic herders who followed distant events such as the Vietnam War and the U.S. civil‑rights movement. The preservation effort continues, but the scale of the task and limited resources mean that full digitisation and public access remain unfinished, leaving the future of Somalia’s recorded history dependent on further investment and international collaboration.