Urban areas in South Africa are fortunate enough to have decent online bandwidth, but rural parts of the nation are not be as lucky.

These areas often suffer from low bandwidth restrictions, due to various reasons, but that doesn’t mean that it should be neglected in terms of online content.

To counter this, news organisation Al Jazeera has developed a new audio app the provides live audio streams of Al Jazeera English and Arabic television news broadcasts to give users in low-bandwidth regions access to all the information.

“The launch of our Al Jazeera audio streaming service will give new audiences the ability to listen to the live broadcast of our English and Arabic channels,” said Ibrahim Hamid, director of Enterprise and Digital Platforms at Al Jazeera Media Network. “This service adds to our commitment of developing compelling digital experiences for those in areas with low-bandwidth Internet connections in markets such as Africa and South-East Asia.”

The low-bandwidth audio app actually benefits Al Jazeera in two ways: it can new reach audiences (and grow) in rural areas, and provide existing audiences with a cheaper way of staying up to date with current news.

“We continue to explore new and innovative ways to enhance our content consumption through a variety of ways. This announcement is another opportunity to strengthen our digital footprint and continue in our commitment to bringing access to Al Jazeera content across new platforms,” said Samir Ibrahim, director of Distribution and Sales.

In June last year, Facebook’s Internet.org was also officially launched in South Africa, providing mobile network Cell C’s customers to post and view status updates, comments, see their News Feed, timeline and profiles of other users and use Facebook Messenger for free.