Africa must be able to hear the gospel message in its own languages, attendees were told as Adventist World Radio (AWR) inaugurated its new Africa Region office in the Sandton section of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Benjamin D. Schoun, AWR president, spoke of the tremendous challenge facing the church in reaching the millions of unreached people groups on the continent of Africa. He challenged the AWR Africa office staff to rise to the occasion to ensure the people of Africa hear the gospel message in their own languages. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was performed by Schoun and Percy Peters, communication director for the church in South Africa.

“Our territory is torn with wars and there are some places we cannot go into,” said Geoffrey Mbwana, president of the church in East-Central Africa. “Who will stop the radio waves from going [in]? We are giving real importance to the radio ministry in our division. It will help in nurturing our church members.”

The AWR Africa region office is the headquarters for Samuel Misiani, AWR Africa region director, as well as regional engineer, production studios, and a broadcast operations center. Office staff are responsible for coordinating the production of programs in 14 African languages at eight affiliate studios in Africa. These programs are aired more than 20 hours a day from leased transmitter sites in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Austria. Programs from the studios are collected in the office and relayed to Sentech, a South African government-owned shortwave facility located just outside Johannesburg. The programs, in the form of digital audio files, are also transferred from the Africa region office to the Europe region office via the Internet, where they are uplinked by satellite to broadcast stations in the UAE and Austria and transmitted back into Africa.

Adventist World Radio, an entity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, serves the international broadcast ministry of the church by broadcasting worldwide more than 1,200 hours a week in 55 languages.