A rapid growth in the number of radio and television channels in Africa has spurred global media's interest in the continent, creating new business opportunities in the industry, a new report says.

The liberalisation of the broadcasting market has created an explosion in the number of radio stations with huge economic benefits, says the African Broadcast and Film Markets report published by Balancing Act, an on-line publishing consultancy.

The report says that the hunger for news has grown in tandem with the expansion of the industry and that the level of consumer trust is highest for new private broadcasters or NGO-run radio and TV stations than State-sponsored broadcasters.

This is particularly true in countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, where channels like Al Jazeera attract large audiences.

The report, which covers broadcast, telecoms, Internet and computing in Africa, examined the state of broadcasting in 40 African countries like Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Egypt, and Ghana. Others are Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Besides the traditional media, new channels of communications have come into the market with positive impact on pricing and growth. These include Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) and short text messages.

It mentions Uganda, which has more than 150 radio stations, 69 per cent of which broadcast in 38 different languages.

Out of the 40 Sub-Saharan Africa markets surveyed, nearly half were found to have licensed Free-To-Air TV channels.

"African broadcasting is enjoying a period of steady growth as more countries liberalise and increase the number of channels," the report's author Russell Southwood said in a statement.

InterMedia analyst Allen Cooper says the most striking development in terms of audiences is the rise in radio listenership. "There is a huge appetite for radio music and hunger for entertainment television. Africans are surrounding themselves with music in their cars, public transport vehicles, shops and homes," he says.

Growth in Kenya's media scene has reflected this regional trend with vernacular and community radio stations emerging as the key drivers of growth in the radio market. The country has 14 TV stations and 63 radio stations, the majority of them licensed in the last seven years.

Mr David Campbell, the director of Mediae Company, media research and training firm reckons most of this growth has come from the countryside.

"Ten years ago 36 per cent of people watched TV. This grew to 64 per cent in 2004," he said. "In urban areas, viewership grew from 81 per cent to 85 per cent over the same period."

Mediae Company is also the creator of Makutano Junction, a local TV soap with a large viewership.

Mr George Waititu, the managing director of the Steadman Group, the consumer markets research firm, links the steady growth of TV viewership in rural areas to increased rural electrification and the steep drop in the prices of TV sets.

Mr Campbell reckons this development has made TV a more cost effective channel for advertisers targeting large audiences. This, he says, is because most of the radio stations broadcast in vernacular with sectarian listenership in rural areas.

"Advertising in the radio has become more complicated because one has to use a number of radio stations to reach the entire national audience," he said.

Mr Waititu reckons that the growth of radio has as medium of communication has peaked in Kenya with penetration rate in terms of the number of hours spent listening to it as the remaining battlefront for players.

Experts say that the proliferation of radio stations has not come without its own challenges. People are switching stations more frequently and at the average rate of one new station every 30 minutes posing a new challenge of keeping the audiences.

The report says that the rise of competition in the pay TV market, has had a positive pricing effect with robust growth in the number of subscribers.

More critical is the fact that these channels have improved the quality of TV viewership with a wide range of programmes.