Sanyu FM streams today's best music alongside news, sport and lifestyle talk from Kampala, Uganda, mixing local culture with current hits for an English-speaking urban audience. It is free to listen right now, anywhere in the world, no account required.
Uganda's First Private Radio Station
Sanyu FM holds a genuine first in Ugandan broadcasting history. It went on air on December 18, 1993, becoming the country's first ever privately owned radio station, according to reporting from The Monitor's history of FM radio in Uganda. That launch was only possible because the Ugandan government had opened radio and television airwaves to private investment in 1992, ending decades of state-controlled broadcasting. Sanyu's arrival moved fast enough that a second private station, Capital Radio, followed just two weeks later, kicking off a wave of commercial broadcasting that reshaped Ugandan media through the 1990s.
Built by a Kampala Businessman
The station was founded by Thomas I. Katto, a Kampala businessman who had built his career since the 1970s, including a government tender under President Idi Amin to supply white coats to doctors at Mulago Hospital. The station's name, Sanyu, means "joy" in Luganda, the language spoken by the majority in the region, a fitting name for a station built to bring music and entertainment to a market that had only just opened up to private broadcasters.
More Than Three Decades as a Kampala Institution
Sanyu FM describes itself as the leading urban English broadcaster in Uganda, running news, sport, business, current affairs and entertainment alongside its music programming from its Kampala Road studios. More than thirty years after that first 1993 broadcast, it remains a fixture of Kampala's media landscape under the tagline "Today's Best Music, Tune In and Get Hooked."
How to Listen
Sanyu FM streams free on Radio Shuffle. Press play above for music, news and talk from the station that started Uganda's private radio era.