Alexis Sinduhije founded the station in 2001 with the goal of encouraging peace between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups in the later years of the Burundi Civil War, hiring ex-combatants of both ethnic groups as reporters. Sinduhije later stated that it was initially hard to find donors for the project, given the regional distrust of public radio after the role that the Rwandan public radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines had played in that nation's recent genocide.