ABSTRACT
COVID-19 closed schools worldwide and left education systems scrambling to provide alternative access to learning opportunities. Broadcast radio, once a staple of distance education, had a resurgence in popularity; in countries without affordable broadband internet, widespread television adoption, or an efficient postal distribution system, radio was the only way to get daily content out to learners. This chapter explores lessons learned in using a particular, research-based form of educational radio – Interactive Audio Instruction (IAI) – to support early learning during the pandemic in two countries: Mali, which adapted existing early-grade classroom audio programming for at-home use, and Zambia, which streamlined the traditional production process to create new audio resources for young learners. These contrasting cases illustrate how radio programs, a longstanding and now reinvigorated mode of distance education, can be produced, adapted, and scaled rapidly, and may be one of the most effective ways to reach young children in the Global South during crises such as COVID-19 and other humanitarian emergencies.
