From Haiti’s historic Independence City, Radio Continentale brings together news, music, culture, conversation, and the voices of our community.
Born in Gonaïves. Connected to the World.
- 99.5 FM
- Gonaïves, Haiti
- “Le Confort D'écoute”
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who proclaimed Haiti’s independence in Gonaïves on January 1, 1804. Statue in Cap-Haïtien.
Our Story
On July 25, 1992, Radio Continentale began in Descahos, in the southeast of Gonaïves, when a group of young people started broadcasting from the roof of a private residence. From that rooftop beginning, the station found its place with listeners in Haiti’s Independence City.
Radio has always been close to daily life here: music in the morning, news through the day, conversation in the evening, and a shared Haitian voice that travels farther than the city limits. Radio Continentale — 99.5 FM — remains a community station from Gonaïves, made for listeners at home and for Haitians who keep the city with them abroad.
The work continues on a modern radio and digital platform. The home is still Gonaïves. The purpose is still the same: to inform, to connect, and to keep Le Confort D’écoute at the center of the signal.
Our Home, Gonaïves
Gonaïves is the capital of Haiti’s Artibonite department and is known across the country as the Cité de l’Indépendance. The city grew from an earlier settlement remembered as Gonaibo. Its public square, Place d’Armes, is the place Haitians associate with the proclamation of independence. Streets, markets, churches, and family life continue around that memory.
The photographs below keep that story in view: the Centennial Palace in Gonaïves, a nineteenth-century plan of the city, and Citadelle Laferrière — a national monument of Haitian independence, in the north of the country.
The City of Independence
Gonaïves holds a central place in Haitian history because Haiti’s independence was proclaimed there on January 1, 1804. At the headquarters in Gonaïves, Jean-Jacques Dessalines gathered his generals and announced that the former colony of Saint-Domingue was a free nation. The new country took the name Hayti, drawn from the island’s Taíno past.
That act made Haiti the second independent country in the Americas, and the first nation born from a successful revolt against slavery. For Haitians, Gonaïves is not only a city on the Artibonite coast. It is the place where a people declared that they would live free. The memory of that day still shapes national identity, Independence Day gatherings, and the city’s name as the Cité de l’Indépendance.
Radio Continentale broadcasts from that same city. The station’s home is bound to a place Haitians remember as the starting point of the nation.
1804
A Nation Declares Its Freedom
On January 1, 1804, the first year of independence, Haiti announced itself to the world from Gonaïves. The date remains the heart of Haitian national memory — marked each year in the Independence City, across the country, and throughout the diaspora.
Gonaïves, Then and Now
The Gonaïves of historic photographs and the Gonaïves of today are the same city: a place of history, culture, community, music, commerce, faith, family, and Haitian identity. Radio Continentale speaks from that living city — not from a closed past, but from a home that still gathers people around news, song, and conversation.
Then
Now
More Than a Radio Station
Radio Continentale is a community radio station. The relationship with listeners is the work: local voices, local news, music, culture, public conversation, and community information. Haitian artists are part of that sound. So are sports, the arts, and the conversations that travel between Gonaïves and the diaspora.
The station does not stand apart from the city. It is one of the ways Gonaïves hears itself — and one of the ways people far from home stay close to it.
- Local voices and public conversation
- News and community information
- Music, Haitian artists, and culture
- Sports and the arts
- A link to the diaspora
From Gonaïves to the World
Our home is Gonaïves. Our community reaches far beyond it. Haitians in the United States, Canada, France, the Caribbean, and other diaspora communities listen for the same things people listen for in the city: news, music, culture, and a familiar voice from home.
United States · Canada · France · Caribbean · Communities farther still
Our Purpose
Inform
News and conversation that help listeners understand Gonaïves, Haiti, and the world.
Connect
A shared signal between Gonaïves, Haiti, and Haitian communities abroad.
Celebrate
Music, artists, and the culture that gives Haitian life its color.
Preserve
Haitian language, memory, and the story of Gonaïves as Independence City.
Entertain
The comfort of listening — music and companionship on 99.5 FM.
The Voice of Our Community Continues
99.5 FM · Gonaïves, Haiti · “Le Confort D’écoute”