In 1963, my friend George Bennett, who has died aged 91, saw an advertisement for a talks writer in the African section of what was then called BBC External Services and is now the World Service. This began his 26-year career in broadcasting to Africa, the last 13 of which he served as head of the BBC’s output to Africa in English, Swahili, Hausa and Somali.
George had many skills. Probably the best of all was his ability to find talented people to make interesting radio programmes. Production staff in the African Service in the 1970s and early 80s were unimpressed by the way that the Bush House newsroom reported on Africa. As a result, its two English language daily news programmes, Focus on Africa and Network Africa, began to recruit their own team of stringers. This practice transformed the output.
The African Service also led the way for the rest of the BBC, which now uses mostly African journalists to report on the continent. In this and many other ways George’s influence lives on.
I had the responsibility, during George’s time leading the African Service, to measure BBC audiences everywhere. The results of the annual survey showed that the African Service had the greatest reach when audience sizes were compared to the populations.
In Africa, a greater proportion of the population listened to BBC radio in an average week than on any other continent, with one exception, the service in Pashto broadcast to Afghanistan. In some parts of northern Nigeria, during some periods, the daily reach of BBC radio was greater than it was anywhere in the UK.
Following early retirement in 1989, George spent more than 20 years on projects in Africa, including overseeing the UN’s press operation in Somalia in 1992; running radio stations in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and providing training for the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Born in Devonport, a suburb of Auckland, he was the son of George, a British naval officer and his wife, Edna, a New Zealand farmer’s daughter. The family travelled to the UK in 1936 and never returned to New Zealand. During the second world war years, George saw his father only rarely and lived with his mother and relatives in Bristol or in rented accommodation. He went to Colston’s school, Bristol (now renamed Collegiate school), won a state scholarship to St Catherine’s College, Oxford, to study English and did his national service with the Royal West African Frontier Force in Nigeria.
In 1966 he married Georgina Codjoe, a Ghanaian GP. They had a son, Jeremy, and divorced in 1976. The following year George married Pramila Ramgulam, a Mauritian sociologist. They had three children, Indrani, Kieran and Jonathan.
Pramila, his four children and eight grandchildren survive him.
