The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has donated equipment to eight local radio stations with the aim of strengthening its partnership with them to ensure the country is better informed.

Minusma’s Office of Communications and Public Information donated a dozen voice recorders to the local radio stations including Issa Ber, Kolol Soboundou, Télé, Djimba, Lac Faguibine, Diri, Barikobé and Binegua.

The stations all broadcast around the regions of Niafounké, Goundam and Diré near the Niger River in the badly ravaged Timbuktu region of Mali.

MINUSMA hopes that the equipment will help the stations inform Malians better, and help in efforts to stabilize the country.

Al-Qaeda took power in Mali’s second city Timbuktu after hijacking an ethnic Tuareg rebellion in the country’s Saharan north in 2012, seizing large swathes of land and threatening the capital, Bamako.

France’s 2013 military intervention and UN peacekeeping mission have since returned control of the region to the Malian government, but Islamist groups continue to operate across the vast desert areas in the north, often crossing in and out the porous borders of neighbouring countries.