Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa: Systems, Practices and Identities 3030993981, 9783030993986
This book provides a comprehensive approach of the media, journalism and politics in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa. The
127 28 5MB
English Pages 374 [368] Year 2022
Preface
References
Contents
Acronyms
List of Tables
1 Introduction
1 Francophone/Anglophone Peculiarities
2 What Is “Francophone” Sub-Saharan Africa and Why Should We Look at Its Media?
3 On Using the Notion of “Media Systems”
4 Traps to Be Avoided
5 The Structure of the Book
6 About Sources and References
Bibliography
2 The Emergence of Modern Media and Politics in Africa
1 Media and Political Communication in Pre-colonial Africa
1.1 Speech Professionals in Societies Based on Orality
1.2 Musical Instruments
1.3 Africa’s History of the Written Word
2 The Creation of the Press on the African Continent
2.1 A “Black” Privately Owned Press
2.2 The Francophone Press: Several Decades Later
2.3 On the Eve of First World War: Contrasting Scenarios
3 Between the Wars: Colonial and Anticolonial Media
3.1 A Critical Francophone Press
3.2 An Emerging Market
3.3 The Belgian Colonies: African News (Almost) Without Africans
3.4 The “Free-Market” Approach of the English-Speaking Press
3.5 Radio Begins on the African Continent
4 After 1945: The Media and the Path to Independence
4.1 Political and Press Freedoms in French Africa
4.2 The Late Awakening of the Belgian Colonies
4.3 The Development of Broadcasting in the Colonies
4.4 Different Colonial Powers, Different Media Systems
5 Conclusion
Bibliography
3 Media, Journalists, and Ideologies in Independent Africa
1 Independence and “National Unity Journalism”
1.1 Two Tools to Silence the Media
1.2 “National Unity” Journalism
1.3 Questioning the Practice of “National Unity Journalism”
2 The Theory of Modernization and “Development Journalism”
2.1 The Media and the Diffusion of Innovations
2.2 Development Journalism and Rural Journalism
2.3 Critiques of Development Journalism
3 Dependency Theory and the New World Information Order
3.1 Imbalanced Information Flows and the Vision of a New World Information Order
3.2 Authentically African Media Systems
3.3 The Failure of the New World Information Order Debate
4 Bypassing State Monopolies: “Politics from Below”
4.1 Circumventing Public Censorship
4.2 New Paradigms: “Politics from Below” and “Appropriation”
5 Conclusion
Bibliography
4 Democratic Transitions and the Emergence of Pluralist Media
1 Democratic and Media Openings
1.1 The First Steps Towards Media Pluralism
1.2 A Mixed Political Record
2 The New Independent Press: Achievements and Constraints
2.1 New Roles, New Content, New Aims
2.2 Economic Constraints to the Development of the Press
2.3 Socio-Cultural, Geographical, Professional, and Political Obstacles
3 Liberalized Radio Sector: Political Sensitivities and Challenges
3.1 Licensing Independent FM Radio: A Sensitive Political Issue
3.2 The Power of Radio
3.3 Radio Pluralism and the Fight for Survival
4 Television: From an Elite to a Popular Medium
4.1 The Gradual Development of Local TV Outlets
4.2 Cost Issues in TV
5 The Digital Era: Internet and Mobile Telephony
5.1 The Internet: Slow to Impact Media in French-Speaking Africa
5.2 The Rapid Expansion of Mobile Telephony
5.3 Connected African Journalists
6 Conclusion
Bibliography
5 The Media and the State in French-Speaking Africa
1 Freedom of the Press: French-Speaking Africa Measured Against International Standards
1.1 A Widened Public Sphere
1.2 Assessing Freedom of Expression in French-Speaking Africa
2 Changes in Legal Frameworks: Reflections of the Evolution of the African State
2.1 A Flood of Legal Changes
2.2 Significant Restrictions Still in Place
2.3 Journalists’ Legal Battles
2.4 Media Regulators: Independent Adjudicators?
2.5 The Mission of Media Regulators
2.6 Questionable Efficiency and Credibility
2.7 The Achievements and Challenges of Regulation
3 State Media or Public Media—An Unlikely Transformation
3.1 A Three-Pronged Revolution
3.2 Reasons for Failure
3.3 Steady Audience Numbers
4 State Funding of Private Media
4.1 No Shortage of Disputes
5 New Forms of Control and Institutional Pressure
5.1 “Democratically Correct” Instruments of Repression
5.2 “Pluralist Authoritarian” or “Liberal Authoritarian” Media Systems?
6 Conclusion
Bibliography
6 Journalism and Changing Professional Identities
1 Journalism: A Multi-faceted Job and a Blurred Identity
2 A Formalized Professional Code of Ethics
2.1 General Principles and Local Variances
2.2 Debates Around an African Set of Ethics
2.3 Contextualized Personal Ethics
2.4 The Cost of a Professional Code of Ethics
3 Press Councils: The Challenges of Self-Regulation
3.1 The Expansion of Self-Regulating Bodies
3.2 The Failure of Self-Regulation
4 The Flourishing of Professional Organizations
4.1 A Unique Type of Organization: “Maisons de la Presse” or Press Centers
4.2 Obstacles Facing Professional Associations
5 Journalist Training in French-Speaking Africa
5.1 A Growing Number of Training Possibilities
5.2 A Training Sector in Crisis
5.3 The Challenge of “Africanizing” Journalism Training
6 The Search for a Status for Journalists
6.1 Three Problematic Elements: The Contract, the Salary, and the Business
6.2 The (Re)Birth of Unions
6.3 Two Important Issues: Press Cards (Known as Press Passes) and Collective Agreements
7 Conclusion
Bibliography
7 The Media Economy in Francophone Africa
1 Media Businesses in a State of Flux
2 Lower Production Costs That Come at a Price
2.1 An Interchangeable and Adaptable Workforce
2.2 Rudimentary Production Infrastructure
2.3 News as a Commodity in Failing Economies
3 The Dissemination of Media: What Audience? Which Consumers?
3.1 The Press: An Expensive Commodity with Very Low Circulation
3.2 Online Press and News Websites
3.3 Radio: Africa’s Premier Medium with a Scattered and Undefined Audience
3.4 The Limited Scope but High Popularity of Television
4 The Widespread Opacity of Finance: The Dark Side of the Media?
4.1 Seed Money: The Unsaid and the Reckonings
4.2 Publicity and Advertising: A Poorly Structured and Highly Politicized Market
4.3 Sponsored Features and Programs
4.4 Individual Revenue: “gombo” and Its Many Aliases
5 Foreign Aid, the Imported Revenue Stream of the Media Economy
5.1 Thirty Years of Various Media Projects
5.2 A Mixed Assessment
6 Conclusion
Bibliography
8 The Audience and the Media in French-Speaking Africa
1 Where is the Research on African Media Consumers?
1.1 Consumer and Opinion Surveys
1.2 Impact Studies
1.3 The Anthropological Approach to Media Consumption
2 Communication for Social Change
2.1 Community Radio: From Myth to Reality
2.2 Internet and Cell Phones: The Latest Utopias
3 Audiences as Active Citizens
3.1 The Role of News
3.2 The Function of Participation
3.3 The Function of Representation
4 An Easily Influenced and Manipulated Audience
4.1 Hate Media: A Phenomenon Difficult to Define
4.2 Direct Incitement to Commit Crimes Against Humanity and Its Consequences
4.3 Peace Journalism as an Antidote?
5 Conclusion
Bibliography
General Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
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Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa Systems, Practices and Identities Marie-Soleil Frère
Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa
Marie-Soleil Frère
Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa Systems, Practices and Identities
Marie-Soleil Frère (Deceased) Université Libre de Bruxelles Brussels, Belgium
ISBN 978-3-030-99398-6 ISBN 978-3-030-99399-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
This book is the fruit of a lifelong dedication to rigorous intellectual work, a deep compassion for fellow human beings, an unflinching commitment, and an unparalleled knowledge of African media issues, mechanisms, significant events, and actors. Its author, Marie-Soleil Frère, was driven by, not to say obsessed with, this book. She strived to finish it with the ardor that characterized her through and through. The groundwork for this project was laid in her 2016 book, Journalismes d’Afrique, which was updated, revised, and translated to become Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa. She long promoted a freer flow of knowledge between Francophone and Anglophone research communities to decompartmentalize and promote the study of African journalism and media. This book keeps that wish of hers alive—it opens up the vast world of the media in Francophone Africa to scholars the world over with great insight, precision, and contemporary relevance. Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa is the product of Frère’s long intellectual and research history excoriating the entanglements of media and political systems. Her doctoral thesis, published in 2000, explored the place, role, and challenges of the media of African nations during democratic transition periods. She went on to analyze media activity and behavior during elections (2011) and at the heart of conflicts (2007). Marie-Soleil Frère was above all a field researcher— she knew intimately the people, places, and cultures of the societies she studied. She conducted research in Rwanda, Burundi, and Eastern v
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PREFACE
Congo, not to mention Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon. In fact, she was the only French-speaking researcher specialized in the world of journalists and the media in 17 sub-Saharan African countries (2016). But this book is not just the work of a committed researcher. It is also the legacy of a teacher and trailblazer deeply invested in promoting media and journalism training in Africa. Frère played a crucial role in establishing a journalism training course in Ouagadougou, welcomed and trained young researchers of contemporary African media in Brussels, and set up a complementary Master’s degree in journalism in Bujumbura. She also played a vital role in establishing cooperative projects to study the role of the media in Africa and take a deep dive into the political, economic, professional, and cultural conditions that contextualize this journalism— so fragile... and so dear to her heart. This book is also a testimony to the way the tendrils of a life committed to research can touch so many in the real world and help coalesce research, cooperation and commitment into a consequential whole. It is a testimony to the meaning Marie-Soleil Frère gave to her life. She inspired many. A small group of friends have carried on her work in her absence and have completed this book to help her fulfil her ultimate dream. Étienne Minoungou, Florence Le Cam, Christine Deslaurier, Mary Meyers, Helmut Obermeir, Guy Berger, Pierre Englebert, Anke Fiedler, and Marie Fierens. Brussels, Belgium
Marie-Soleil Frère
References Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2000. Presse et démocratie en Afrique francophone : Les mots et les maux de la transition au Bénin et au Niger. Paris: Karthala. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2007. The Media and Conflicts in Central Africa. Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2011. Elections and the Media in Post-Conflict Africa. Votes and Voices for Peace? London: Zed Books. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2016. Journalismes d’Afrique. Bruxelles: De Boeck.
Contents
1
2
Introduction 1 Francophone/Anglophone Peculiarities 2 What Is “Francophone” Sub-Saharan Africa and Why Should We Look at Its Media? 3 On Using the Notion of “Media Systems” 4 Traps to Be Avoided 5 The Structure of the Book 6 About Sources and References Bibliography The Emergence of Modern Media and Politics in Africa 1 Media and Political Communication in Pre-colonial Africa 1.1 Speech Professionals in Societies Based on Orality 1.2 Musical Instruments 1.3 Africa’s History of the Written Word 2 The Creation of the Press on the African Continent 2.1 A “Black” Privately Owned Press 2.2 The Francophone Press: Several Decades Later 2.3 On the Eve of First World War: Contrasting Scenarios 3 Between the Wars: Colonial and Anticolonial Media 3.1 A Critical Francophone Press 3.2 An Emerging Market
1 4 6 8 12 14 17 23 29 30 30 31 32 32 33 36 38 39 40 42 vii
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CONTENTS
3.3
The Belgian Colonies: African News (Almost) Without Africans 3.4 The “Free-Market” Approach of the English-Speaking Press 3.5 Radio Begins on the African Continent 4 After 1945: The Media and the Path to Independence 4.1 Political and Press Freedoms in French Africa 4.2 The Late Awakening of the Belgian Colonies 4.3 The Development of Broadcasting in the Colonies 4.4 Different Colonial Powers, Different Media Systems 5 Conclusion Bibliography 3
Media, Journalists, and Ideologies in Independent Africa 1 Independence and “National Unity Journalism” 1.1 Two Tools to Silence the Media 1.2 “National Unity” Journalism 1.3 Questioning the Practice of “National Unity Journalism” 2 The Theory of Modernization and “Development Journalism” 2.1 The Media and the Diffusion of Innovations 2.2 Development Journalism and Rural Journalism 2.3 Critiques of Development Journalism 3 Dependency Theory and the New World Information Order 3.1 Imbalanced Information Flows and the Vision of a New World Information Order 3.2 Authentically African Media Systems 3.3 The Failure of the New World Information Order Debate 4 Bypassing State Monopolies: “Politics from Below” 4.1 Circumventing Public Censorship 4.2 New Paradigms: “Politics from Below” and “Appropriation” 5 Conclusion Bibliography
43 45 47 48 49 53 57 58 62 63 67 68 69 70 72 74 75 77 80 82 86 88 90 92 93 95 97 98
CONTENTS
4
5
Democratic Transitions and the Emergence of Pluralist Media 1 Democratic and Media Openings 1.1 The First Steps Towards Media Pluralism 1.2 A Mixed Political Record 2 The New Independent Press: Achievements and Constraints 2.1 New Roles, New Content, New Aims 2.2 Economic Constraints to the Development of the Press 2.3 Socio-Cultural, Geographical, Professional, and Political Obstacles 3 Liberalized Radio Sector: Political Sensitivities and Challenges 3.1 Licensing Independent FM Radio: A Sensitive Political Issue 3.2 The Power of Radio 3.3 Radio Pluralism and the Fight for Survival 4 Television: From an Elite to a Popular Medium 4.1 The Gradual Development of Local TV Outlets 4.2 Cost Issues in TV 5 The Digital Era: Internet and Mobile Telephony 5.1 The Internet: Slow to Impact Media in French-Speaking Africa 5.2 The Rapid Expansion of Mobile Telephony 5.3 Connected African Journalists 6 Conclusion Bibliography The Media and the State in French-Speaking Africa 1 Freedom of the Press: French-Speaking Africa Measured Against International Standards 1.1 A Widened Public Sphere 1.2 Assessing Freedom of Expression in French-Speaking Africa 2 Changes in Legal Frameworks: Reflections of the Evolution of the African State 2.1 A Flood of Legal Changes 2.2 Significant Restrictions Still in Place
ix
103 104 105 106 108 109 111 113 115 116 118 122 124 125 128 131 133 136 137 141 142 149 150 150 153 158 158 159
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6
CONTENTS
2.3 Journalists’ Legal Battles 2.4 Media Regulators: Independent Adjudicators? 2.5 The Mission of Media Regulators 2.6 Questionable Efficiency and Credibility 2.7 The Achievements and Challenges of Regulation 3 State Media or Public Media—An Unlikely Transformation 3.1 A Three-Pronged Revolution 3.2 Reasons for Failure 3.3 Steady Audience Numbers 4 State Funding of Private Media 4.1 No Shortage of Disputes 5 New Forms of Control and Institutional Pressure 5.1 “Democratically Correct” Instruments of Repression 5.2 “Pluralist Authoritarian” or “Liberal Authoritarian” Media Systems? 6 Conclusion Bibliography
163 165 166 169 172
Journalism and Changing Professional Identities 1 Journalism: A Multi-faceted Job and a Blurred Identity 2 A Formalized Professional Code of Ethics 2.1 General Principles and Local Variances 2.2 Debates Around an African Set of Ethics 2.3 Contextualized Personal Ethics 2.4 The Cost of a Professional Code of Ethics 3 Press Councils: The Challenges of Self-Regulation 3.1 The Expansion of Self-Regulating Bodies 3.2 The Failure of Self-Regulation 4 The Flourishing of Professional Organizations 4.1 A Unique Type of Organization: “Maisons de la Presse” or Press Centers 4.2 Obstacles Facing Professional Associations 5 Journalist Training in French-Speaking Africa 5.1 A Growing Number of Training Possibilities 5.2 A Training Sector in Crisis 5.3 The Challenge of “Africanizing” Journalism Training 6 The Search for a Status for Journalists
205 206 211 212 213 215 217 218 219 220 224
173 174 176 180 181 189 191 192 195 197 198
225 226 228 228 230 232 233
CONTENTS
Three Problematic Elements: The Contract, the Salary, and the Business 6.2 The (Re)Birth of Unions 6.3 Two Important Issues: Press Cards (Known as Press Passes) and Collective Agreements 7 Conclusion Bibliography
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6.1
7
8
234 236 237 239 240
The Media Economy in Francophone Africa 1 Media Businesses in a State of Flux 2 Lower Production Costs That Come at a Price 2.1 An Interchangeable and Adaptable Workforce 2.2 Rudimentary Production Infrastructure 2.3 News as a Commodity in Failing Economies 3 The Dissemination of Media: What Audience? Which Consumers? 3.1 The Press: An Expensive Commodity with Very Low Circulation 3.2 Online Press and News Websites 3.3 Radio: Africa’s Premier Medium with a Scattered and Undefined Audience 3.4 The Limited Scope but High Popularity of Television 4 The Widespread Opacity of Finance: The Dark Side of the Media? 4.1 Seed Money: The Unsaid and the Reckonings 4.2 Publicity and Advertising: A Poorly Structured and Highly Politicized Market 4.3 Sponsored Features and Programs 4.4 Individual Revenue: “gombo” and Its Many Aliases 5 Foreign Aid, the Imported Revenue Stream of the Media Economy 5.1 Thirty Years of Various Media Projects 5.2 A Mixed Assessment 6 Conclusion Bibliography
245 247 252 252 256 259
The Audience and the Media in French-Speaking Africa 1 Where is the Research on African Media Consumers? 1.1 Consumer and Opinion Surveys
297 298 299
261 262 265 267 269 270 271 272 275 277 281 282 287 290 291
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CONTENTS
1.2 1.3
Impact Studies The Anthropological Approach to Media Consumption 2 Communication for Social Change 2.1 Community Radio: From Myth to Reality 2.2 Internet and Cell Phones: The Latest Utopias 3 Audiences as Active Citizens 3.1 The Role of News 3.2 The Function of Participation 3.3 The Function of Representation 4 An Easily Influenced and Manipulated Audience 4.1 Hate Media: A Phenomenon Difficult to Define 4.2 Direct Incitement to Commit Crimes Against Humanity and Its Consequences 4.3 Peace Journalism as an Antidote? 5 Conclusion Bibliography
300 301 303 304 306 307 309 310 314 315 316 317 319 322 323
General Conclusion
329
Appendix
333
Index
337
Acronyms
ABJ ABP ABR ACAP ACCT ACEPI
ACI ACP ADG ADH AEPT AFDL
AFP AIF
Association burundaise des journalistes/Burundi Journalists’ Association Agence burundaise de presse/Burundi Press Agency Association burundaise des radiodiffuseurs/Burundi Broadcasters’ Association Agence centrafricaine de presse/Central African Press Agency Agence de coopération culturelle et technique/Agency of Cultural and Technical Cooperation Association centrafricaine des éditeurs de la presse indépendante/Central African Independent Press Publishers’ Association Agence congolaise d’information/Congo Information Agency Agence congolaise de presse/Congo Press Agency Administrateur délégué général/Managing Director Associations de défense des droits de l’homme/Associations for Human Rights Association des éditeurs de la presse privée tchadienne/Chadian Association of Private Press Publishers Alliance des forces démocratiques de libération du Congo/Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Agence France Presse Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie/Intergovernmental Agency for the French-Speaking Community xiii
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ACRONYMS
AMJ ANEAP
ANECO
ANR APA APEFE
APR APRODH
ARCO
ARCT
ARI ARJ ATP BAD BBC BONUCA
CADHP CAPE CASPROM
Association mondiale des journaux/World Association of Newspapers (WAN) Association nationale des entreprises audiovisuelles privées/National Association of Private Broadcasting Corporations Association nationale des éditeurs de journaux du Congo/National Association of Newspaper Publishers in the Congo Agence nationale de renseignements/National Intelligence Agency Agence de presse associée/Associated Press Agency Association pour la promotion de l’éducation et de la formation à l’étranger/Association for the Promotion of Education and Training Abroad Armée patriotique rwandaise/Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) Association pour la protection des droits humains et des personnes détenues/Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detainees (Burundi) Association des radios communautaires du Congo/Association of Community Radios of the Congo Agence de régulation et de contrôle des télécommunications/Agency for the Control and Regulation of Telecommunications Agence rwandaise d’information/Rwanda News Agency (RNA) Association rwandaise des journalistes/Rwanda Association of Journalists (RAJ) Agence tchadienne de presse/Chad Press Agency Banque africaine de développement/African Development Bank (AfDB) British Broadcasting Corporation Bureau des Nations unies pour la consolidation de la paix en République centrafricaine/UN Peace-Building Support Office in the Central African Republic Charte africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples/African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Cellule d’appui au processus électoral/Electoral Process Support Unit Caisse d’assistance et solidarité pour les professionnels des médias/Assistance and Solidarity Fund for Media Professionals
ACRONYMS
CCIB CCTV CDR CECI
CECI CEEAC
CEI CEMAC
CEMI CEMPC
CEN CENADEP
CENAP CENI CEPI CFI CIAT
CNAC
CNC
xv
Chambre de commerce et d’industrie du Burundi/Burundi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Canal Congo Télévision Coalition pour la défense de la République/Coalition for the Defence of the Republic Centre canadien d’études et de coopération internationale/Centre for International Studies and Cooperation Commission électorale communale indépendante/Independent Communal Electoral Commission Communauté économique des États d’Afrique centrale/Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) Commission électorale indépendante/Independent Electoral Commission Communauté économique et monétaire d’Afrique centrale/Central African Economic and Monetary Community Commission électorale mixte indépendante/Mixed Independent Electoral Commission Centre d’écoute et de monitoring de la presse congolaise/Congolese Press and Broadcasting Monitoring Center Commission électorale nationale/National Electoral Commission Centre national d’appui au développement et à la participation populaire/National Support Center for Development and Popular Participation Centre d’alerte et de prévention des conflits/Center for Early-warning and Prevention of Conflict (Burundi) Commission électorale nationale indépendante/National Independent Electoral Commission Commissions électorales provinciales indépendantes/Provincial Independent Electoral Commissions Canal France International Comité international d’appui à la transition/International Committee for Transitional Support Conseil national de l’audiovisuel et de la communication/National Audiovisual and Communications Council Conseil national de la communication/National Communications Council
xvi
ACRONYMS
CNDD-FDD
CNR CNRE
CNS COGONEPT
CONEL COSOME CPI CPJ CRP CRTV CSC CSLC CVEM
DDC DIA DRC DRTV EISA EUFOR
F.Bu
Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie— Forces de défense de la démocratie/National Council for the Defence of Democracy—Forces for the Defence of Democracy (Burundi) Conseil national des Républicains/National Republican Council Commission nationale de recensement des électeurs/National Commission for the Census of Electors Conférence nationale souveraine/Sovereign National Conference Coordination générale des observateurs nationaux des élections présidentielles au Tchad/Office of National Observers of Presidential Elections in Chad Commission nationale d’organisation des élections/National Commission for Elections Coalition de la société civile pour le monitoring électoral/Coalition of Civil Society for Elections Monitoring Cour pénale internationale/International Criminal Court (ICC) Committee to Protect Journalists Centre de ressources pour la presse/Press Resource Centre Radiodiffusion-télévision du Cameroun/Cameroon Radio and Television Conseil supérieur de la communication/High Council for Communications Conseil supérieur de la liberté de la communication/High Council for Freedom of Communication Commission de vigilance et d’éthique électorale dans les médias/Commission for Vigilance and Electoral Ethics in the Media Direction du développement et de la coopération/Department of Development and Cooperation Documentation et information pour l’Afrique/Documentation and Information for Africa Democratic Republic of Congo Digital radio et télévision/Digital Radio and Television Electoral Institute of Southern Africa Force européenne en République démocratique du Congo/European Union force to support the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo Burundian franc
ACRONYMS
FACA FAR FARDC
FCK FDP FDU FIDH FIJ FMI FODEM FOMUC FOSOCEL
FPR FRODEBU FROLINAT GEPPIC
GIBM GRET
HAAC
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Forces armées centrafricaines/Central African Armed Forces Forces armées rwandaises/Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo/Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo Facultés catholiques de Kinshasa/Catholic Faculty of Kinshasa Forces démocratiques patriotiques/Democratic and Patriotic Forces Forces démocratiques unifiées/Union of Democratic Forces Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme/International Federation for Human Rights Fédération internationale des journalistes—International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Fonds monétaire international/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Forum démocratique pour la modernité/Democratic Forum for Modernity Force multinationale en Centrafrique/Multinational Force in the Central African Republic Forum de la société civile pour les élections libres et transparentes/Civil Society Forum for Free and Fair Elections Front patriotique rwandais/Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) Front pour la démocratie au Burundi/Front for Democracy in Burundi Front de libération nationale du Tchad/National Liberation Front of Chad Groupement des éditeurs de la presse privée indépendante de Centrafrique/Group of Editors of the Central African Independent Private Press Groupe inter-bailleurs sur les médias/Media Donors’ Group Groupe de recherche et d’échanges technologiques/Research and Technological Exchange Group Haute Autorité de l’audiovisuel et de la communication/High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication (Benin)
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ACRONYMS
HAM HCC HCM HCP ICA ICM IDT IFASIC
IFES IFEX IMS IPP JDC JED LCDH LDGL MCDDI
MDD MDJT MDR MHC MINALOC
MINURCA
MISAB
MISAT
Haute Autorité des médias/High Media Authority Haut Conseil de la communication/High Communications Council Haut Conseil des médias/Media High Council Haut Conseil de la presse/High Council of the Press Institut congolais de l’audiovisuel/Congo Audiovisual Institute InterCongo Média Imprimerie du Tchad/Chad Printing Press Institut facultaire des Sciences de l’information et de la communication/Institute for Information and Communications Sciences International Foundation for Electoral Systems International Freedom of Expression Exchange International Media Support Institut Panos Paris/Panos Institute, Paris Journal du citoyen/The Citizen’s Newspaper Journaliste en danger/Journalist in Danger Ligue centrafricaine des droits de l’homme/Central African Human Rights League Ligue des droits de la personne dans la région des Grands Lacs/Great Lakes Human Rights League Mouvement congolais pour la démocratie et le développement intégral/Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development Mouvement pour la démocratie et le développement/Movement for Democracy and Development Mouvement pour la démocratie et la justice au Tchad/Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad Mouvement démocratique républicain/Democratic Republican Movement Media High Council Ministère de l’administration locale, de l’Information et des Affaires sociales/Ministry of Local Administration, Information and Social Affairs Mission des Nations unies en République centrafricaine/United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic Mission interafricaine de surveillance des Accords de Bangui/Pan-African Force for Monitoring the Bangui Agreement Ministère de l’Intérieur, de la Sécurité et de l’Administration territoriale/Ministry of the Interior, Security and Territorial Administration
ACRONYMS
MLC MLPC
MMP MOESC MOE-UE
MOMO
MONUC
MORENA MPR MPS MRC MRND
MSI NDI NEPAD NIZA OCM ODEM ODEMET
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Mouvement de libération du Congo/Movement for the Liberation of Congo Mouvement pour la Libération du Peuple Centrafricain/Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People Media Monitoring Project Mission d’observation électorale de la société civile/Civil Society Election Observation Mission Mission d’observation électorale de l’Union européenne/European Union Election Observation Mission Monitoring des médias de l’Organisation des médias d’Afrique centrale/Media monitoring unit of the Central African Media Organization Mission de l’Organisation des Nations unies en République démocratique du Congo/Mission of the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (subsequently MONUSCO) Mouvement de redressement national/Movement for National Recovery Mouvement populaire de la révolution/Popular Movement of the Revolution Mouvement patriotique du salut/Movement for Patriotic Salvation Mouvement pour la réhabilitation du citoyen/Movement for the Rehabilitation of Citizens Mouvement révolutionnaire national pour le développement (1975–1991)—Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement (1991–) /National Revolutionary Movement for Development (1975–1991)—National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (1991–) Media Sustainability Index National Democratic Institute New Partnership for Africa’s Development Nederland Instituut voor Zuidelijk Afrika/Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa Observatoire congolais des médias/Congo Media Council (Republic of Congo) Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias/Council for Media Standards and Ethics Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique des médias du Tchad/Chad Council for Media Standards and Ethics
xx
ACRONYMS
OIF
OLPCA
OMAC OMCA OMEC ONIPED
ONRTV ONUB OPB ORINFOR ORTB ORTCA OUA PADCO PALIPEHUTU-FNL
PALU PARENA PCT PIDC
PL
Organisation internationale de la francophonie/International Organization of the Francophonie Observatoire de la liberté de la presse en Centrafrique/Council for Press Freedom in Central Africa Organisation des médias d’Afrique centrale/Central Africa Media Organization Observatoire des médias de Centrafrique/Central Africa Media Council Observatoire des médias congolais/Congo Media Council (DRC) Observatoire national indépendant de suivi des processus électoraux et de la démocratie/Independent National Observatory for Monitoring Electoral Processes and Democracy Office national de radiodiffusion et de télévision du Tchad/Chad National Radio and Television Opération des Nations unies au Burundi/United Nations Operation in Burundi Observatoire de la Presse burundaise/Burundi Press Council Office rwandais de l’information/Rwanda Broadcasting Agency Office de radiodiffusion et télévision du Bénin/Benin Radio and Television Broadcasting Agency Office de radio-télévision de Centrafrique/Central Africa Radio and Television Agency Organisation de l’unité africaine/Organization of African Unity (OAU) Planning and Development Collaborative International Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu—Front national de Libération/Party for the Liberation of Hutu People—National Liberation Front Parti lumumbiste unifié/United Lubumba Party Parti pour le redressement national/Party for National Recovery Parti congolais du travail/Congolese Labour Party Programme international pour le développement de la communication/International Program for Development and Communication Parti libéral/Liberal Party
ACRONYMS
PNUD
POER PPC PPRD
PRP PSD PTN PUN PUP RATECO
RCA RCD RCK RDC RDC RDP RDR REFRAM RFI RIARC
RITA RMEC RNT
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Programme des Nations unies pour le développement/United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Programme d’observation des élections au Rwanda/Electoral Observation Programme of Rwanda Parti du progrès et de la concorde/Party of Progress and Concord Parti du peuple pour la reconstruction et la démocratie/People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy Parti pour la réconciliation du peuple/People’s Reconciliation Party Parti social démocrate/Social Democratic Party Peace Tree Network Parti de l’unité nationale/National Unity Party Parti pour l’unité du peuple/People’s Unity Party Réseau des radios et télévisions communautaires de l’Est du Congo/Network of Community Radio and Television in the Eastern DRC République centrafricaine/Central African Republic (CAR) Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie/Congolese Rally for Democracy Radio communautaire du Katanga/Katanga Community Radio Rassemblement démocratique centrafricain/Central African Rally for Democracy République démocratique du Congo/Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Rassemblement pour la démocratie et le progrès/Rally for Democracy and Progress Rassemblement républicain pour la démocratie au Rwanda/Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda Réseau francophone des régulateurs des médias/Francophone Network of Media Regulators Radio France Internationale Réseau des instances africaines de régulation de la communication/African Communication Regulation Authorities Network (ACRAN) Rwanda Information Technology Authority Rwanda Media Ethics Commission Radiodiffusion nationale du Tchad/Chad National Broadcasting
xxii
ACRONYMS
RPA RSF RTAE RTDK RTGA RTLM RTMV RTNB RTNC RTOP RTS SFCG TNB TPIR
TVT UCOFEM UDEMO UDPS UDR UDR-Mwinda UE-ACP
UFDR
Radio publique africaine/African Public Radio Reporters sans frontières/Reporters Without Borders Radio-télévision armée de l’Eternel/Radio Television ‘Army of the Lord’ Radio-télévision debout Kasaï/Radio Television ‘Standup Kasai’ Radio-télévision du groupe L’Avenir/Radio Television ‘Futures Group’ Radio-télévision libre des mille collines/‘Free Radio Television of a Thousand Hills’ Radio-télévision Message de vie/Radio Television ‘Message of Life’ Radio-télévision nationale du Burundi/Burundi National Radio and Television Radio-télévision nationale congolaise/Democratic Republic of Congo Radio and Television Radio-télévision Océan Pacifique/Radio Television ‘Pacific Ocean’ Radiodiffusion-télévision sénégalaise/Senegal Radio and Television Search for Common Ground Radiodiffusion-télévision du Burkina Faso/Burkina Faso Radio and Television Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda/International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Télévision nationale Tchadienne/Chad National Television Union congolaise des femmes des médias/Congolese Union of Women in the Media Union des démocrates mobutistes/Union of Democrats of Mobuto Union pour la démocratie et le progrès social/Union for Democracy and Social Progress Union pour la démocratie et la république/Union of Democracy and the Republic Union pour la démocratie et la république/The Union for Democracy and the Republic Union européenne—Afrique, Caraïbes, Pacifique/European Union—Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (EU-ACP) Union des forces démocratiques rwandaises/Union of Rwandese Democratic Forces
ACRONYMS
UFVN UJAO UJCA UJT UNDP UNDR UNIKIN UNPC UPADS UPRONA URD URPT UST VOA WANF-IFRA WHO
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Union des forces vives de la nation/Union of Active Forces of the Nation Union des journalistes d’Afrique de l’Ouest/West African Journalists’ Association Union des journalistes centrafricains/Union of Central African Journalists Union des journalistes tchadiens/Union of Chadian Journalists Union nationale pour la démocratie et le progrès/National Union for Democracy and Progress Union nationale pour le développement et le renouveau/National Union for Development and Renewal Université de Kinshasa/University of Kinshasa Union nationale de la presse congolaise/Congolese National Press Union Union panafricaine pour la démocratie sociale/Panafrican Union for Social Democracy Union pour le progrès national/Union for National Progress (Burundi) Union pour le renouveau et la démocratie/Union of Renewal and Democracy Union des radios privées du Tchad/Chad Union of Privately-Owned Radio Stations Union des syndicats du Tchad/Union of Trade Unions of Chad Voice Of America World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers World Health Organization
List of Tables
Chapter 3 Table 1
The national media in French-speaking Africa
83
Chapter 5 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4
Press freedom and media development scores of Francophone African states Initial press legislation adopted in the 1990s in Francophone Africa Media regulatory bodies in Francophone Africa Public funding of the private press (official figures reported up to 2014)
156 160 167 183
Chapter 6 Table 1
Self-regulating bodies in Francophone Africa
221
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
What do the research community, Anglophone journalists, or students in African and Media Studies in Anglophone universities know about the media and more specifically about journalism in Francophone Africa? What kind of access do they have to research produced by Frenchspeaking scholars about the media environment and the news-producing dynamics in that part of Africa where French remains the main language used by the press, and (along with local languages) by radio and television stations? Do they question the terms “Francophone” or “French-speaking Africa”, which like their English counterparts, may well connote a false image of the extent to which the dominant language and cultural framing are spread across different societies? After 25 years of research about journalism practices and media landscapes in Francophone Africa, I am witnessing a form of blindness, among English-speaking media scholars and political scientists, about how journalists operate and about how the news circulates in countries that include one-third of the population of the continent (431 million out of 1.3 billion). Very few books focus on journalism in Africa, and most of them are edited volumes, presenting collections of papers on specific countries, without a general overview or analysis (Mabweazara 2018; Mabweazara
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M.-S. Frére, Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3_8
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et al. 2014). Very few of them devote even a chapter to any Frenchspeaking countries.1 Only two often quoted monographs include some data about a couple of Francophone countries (Nyamnjoh 2005; Bourgault 1995), but the first one focuses largely on Cameroon and the second is somewhat outdated. Although there is now more research published in English about the media in Francophone Africa than two decades ago, this research regularly ignores the peculiarities of the African Francophone media environment, be it from a historical, economic, legal, professional, or political point of view; and it does not mention sources or references in French. Would we see that in research about any other continent? Would any researcher publish findings about the Chinese media without consulting the academic literature in Chinese available on the topic? Would anyone write about the media in Brazil without quoting local research in Portuguese? Would any scholar analyze journalistic practices in an Arab country with no regard for the local peculiarities of the media landscape, related to historical, political, or economic changes, and how they might have been described, in Arabic, by local researchers? This book has two aims. The first one is to show that, even though each national or local media landscape is different, there are common features that the media and the journalists share in the countries of Francophone Africa; and these make the local media systems different from those in neighboring English-speaking countries, and in the rest of the world.2 Media systems are not universal: they reflect the social and political structures and dynamics within which they operate. The study of the media in French-speaking Africa has not only to be “de-Westernized”3 1 Editors’ note: An exception is 50 Years of African Journalism. African media since Ghana’s independence (Barratt and Berger 2007), which has a chapter by this author, and five case studies. There are also specific sections and chapters on Central, North, East, and West (Anglophone) Africa. 2 Note that while this book uses terms of “French-speaking” and “English-speaking” Africa as an alternative to Francophone and Anglophone, all such wording should not be understood by the reader as implying that the majority of people in the countries covered are indeed fluent in these colonial languages, and nor that much of their media (especially local radio), is delivered through these tongues notwithstanding their political dominance. 3 Media studies has, for the past sixty years or so, tried to establish itself as a discipline,
but has developed mainly on the basis of studies of Western situations. Most communication theories and media sociology work are based on examples and experiences from the United States, and sometimes Europe. In recent years, initiatives have emerged that aim to “de-Westernize” this field and challenge the universality of frameworks developed in the West (Mutsvairo 2018; Chiumbu and Iqani 2019).
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INTRODUCTION
3
(Curran and Park 2000; Willems 2014; Mutsvairo, 2018; Chiumbu and Iqani 2019), but also to step out of general overviews that consider “African media” as a whole, while based only on examples and research from a few Anglophone countries. This book is an attempt to show the historical, political, economic, and sociological characteristics of the media systems of French-speaking countries of Sub-Saharan Africa,4 in order to help an English-speaking readership, acknowledge and understand their peculiarities. The second aim is to give visibility to the research that has been produced in French about the media in Francophone Africa. Because of the language barrier, the works from well-known media scholars on Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, or Cameroon, be they on the African continent or in Western French-speaking academic institutions (mainly in France, Belgium, and Quebec), go unnoticed in the global environment of media research (Agbobli and Frère 2018). It is a fact that research on African media remains relatively limited to date (Tomaselli 2009a, 2009b). But the four scientific journals specializing in the field of communication (Journal of African Media Studies, African Journalism Studies, Africa Media Review, African Communication Research—two of which are irregular) are all in English.5 From a quantitative point of view, there is clearly a significant disparity between the research produced in and about English-speaking countries (in particular South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Tanzania) and the less abundant research produced in and about French-speaking ones. But there is also a problem of recognition and acknowledgment of the work done by French-speaking researchers who do not publish in English. A bridge needs to be built between these two “Africas”, and this book aims to make a small contribution to that bridge.6 4 According to the Organisation internationale de la francophonie (OIF—International Organization of the Francophonie), 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are usually considered “Francophone” because French remains the official or co-official language (co-existing with one or more other tongues). 5 There have been a few attempts to establish French-speaking journals about communication and media issues launched by journalism schools in the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Senegal, but most of them appear very rarely, remain focused on their own countries, and do not circulate at all in other countries. 6 In 2012, I initiated a project aiming at engaging this dialogue. I coordinated the publication of a special issue of the French journal Afrique contemporaine, translating and presenting six essays by authors working on media from the English-language zone. Then,
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1
Francophone/Anglophone Peculiarities
Gabriel Baglo oversaw the Africa head office of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) for more than 20 years. One of our regular topics of discussion over the past 20 years, has been the major differences between the ways journalists view their work and how the media companies position themselves in the political and economic environment in French-speaking vs. English-speaking African countries. Baglo knows a lot about it: dialogue and joint decisions among his members have not always been easy, due to these divergent views. For instance: the issue of state support to commercial media companies, which is claimed and implemented in most Francophone African countries, is perceived as a dangerous tool, and even as nonsense in Anglophone countries. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the State of Senegal provided financial support to commercial media companies to compensate for their losses; something media companies in Anglophone countries have refused. Furthermore, the business models of media companies are different in these two areas of Africa. Media companies are generally rooted in commercial business practices in Anglophone countries, whereas media in Francophone Africa remain economically fragile and struggle even to develop simple annual business plans. Legal frameworks are also quite different, as they reflect different views (and different colonial legacies, as we shall see) on the extent to which the state should interfere in media content and through which institutions. There are even differences in the way journalistic content is produced. In a pioneering study comparing newspaper content in Burkina Faso and Kenya, Brice Rambaud (2009) has shown how the former country is inspired by practice “à la française”, which mixes opinion and facts, while the latter has a form of journalism much more inspired by the Anglo-Saxon model, which separates fact from comment.7 So, we are definitely confronted by different models. While the perspective of the press as a “fourth estate” governs the English-speaking
we edited a special issue of African Journalism Studies making papers emanating from French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa available to English-speaking readers. Unfortunately, it was a one-off experiment, and has not since been repeated. 7 On the differences between French and Anglo-Saxon journalism practice, see Chalaby (1996).
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INTRODUCTION
5
space, the idea of privately owned media providing a “public service” (and therefore deserving public support) is the one that dominates Francophone tradition. Some authors may argue that the colonial past (and its postcolonial legacy) should not direct the analysis of African media today (Stremlau 2018, 24), but I am convinced that the legacy of the way the press was managed by former colonial powers, and the way African journalists have maintained these traditions after independence are of importance. Different types of media economics, relations with the state, and professional practices are rooted in history. News circulated in Africa many years prior to colonization, but the emergence of “modern” media dates back to colonial times, when the press was born in areas that were under distinct types of colonial rule. These distinct media traditions and practices have persisted to the present day, because of continuing linguistic divides that lead African journalists to be trained by different organizations (based in Northern Francophone or Anglophone countries), with reference to different literatures, training material, and resources, and because of different ideals about what the press is for. Recalling these distinctions can shed light on some of the misunderstandings between English- and French-speaking journalists within the IFJ, or more generally within African organizations supporting media freedom and media development in Africa today. I have discussed these differences at length in a previous paper (Frère 2012), and this book is not a comparative study, aiming at systematically underlining the differences between the two “families” of media landscapes. Rather, this book focuses on French-speaking countries and presents some common features of their media systems, journalistic practices, and identities. These features will lead the English-speaking reader to discover how divergent historical, political, and economic paths have made media systems in English- and French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa fundamentally different. Consequently, the book may help Anglophone scholarship become more cautious when encompassing “African media” in a single sweep, neglecting the fundamental peculiarities of the Francophone media environment.8
8 The same no doubt applies to Portuguese- or Arabic-speaking countries, but these are beyond the scope of this book. Because their political and media histories were completely different, North African countries are also excluded from this study. Moreover, even though French is still frequently spoken in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, it is no longer an official language in these three former French colonies.
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M.-S. FRÈRE
Before going any further, three questions require clarification: (1) What do I mean when referring to Francophone Africa? (2) Why is an analysis in terms of “media systems” relevant and how will it be used? (3) What traps are to be avoided in presenting the media systems of 17 French-speaking countries of Africa?
2
What Is “Francophone” Sub-Saharan Africa and Why Should We Look at Its Media?
At this point, it is important to define a little more precisely what I call “French-speaking” Sub-Saharan Africa. This geographical zone encompasses countries that were formerly French or Belgian colonies, and which have retained French as an official language. The objective of this book is to present historical, political, sociological, legal, and economic elements that situate the media of 17 of these so-called “Francophone” SubSaharan African countries (even though sometimes only a minority of the population actually speaks French), in their context and highlight their defining features.9 At this level, this book is not a “comparative” work, as it will not systematically present each media landscape of each country, using fixed variables to analyze each system. All of these landscapes have their own particularities and several other studies have analyzed media systems of a single country—often focusing on one single type of media (Loum 2003; Tcheuyap 2014; Yameogo 2016; N’Sana 2019; Ekambo 2013). A few studies compare journalism in two or three Francophone countries (Fierens 2017; Frère 2000; Atenga 2007; Faye 2008). But no work, up to now, has attempted to present the common trends—both 9 Our sample differs slightly from the group of 21 countries in Africa defined by the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF) as “Francophone”. Our study will focus on 17 countries, mainly in West and Central Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, and Togo. We have opted to include Mauritania, even though French is no longer its official language, because of its shared history with the rest from the former Sub-Saharan French Empire, and because French is still used by many Mauritanian media outlets. We have excluded Djibouti and the islands of the Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Comoros, and Seychelles) because they are somewhat isolated from the media currents of the continent. We have also excluded Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, where French, even though recognized as official language, is not widely spoken. Moreover, I have not had the opportunity for field work in any of these five countries, while I have traveled and worked in all the others.
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INTRODUCTION
7
historical and current—that impact the way the media operate in these countries. Is French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa sufficiently homogeneous to be regarded as a specific entity, particularly in a context where scholarly approaches focusing on particular geographical areas are no longer popular?10 Can any coherence be drawn (without forcing it) from the diverse situations in these 17 French-speaking countries? Again, I am convinced that the answer is “yes”. Of course, there are many differences between the newsroom of a major newspaper such as Le Soleil (“The Sun”) in Senegal and a small community radio station broadcasting mainly in local languages, such as Radio Moto in Butembo, in Eastern D.R. Congo. And the media do not face the same political and economic threats in Burkina Faso as they do in the Central African Republic. But beyond the particularities of each state or locality, media landscapes present sufficient similarities so that the specific and unique experiences of one country can feed into a reflection on the media situation in others, in Africa or elsewhere. These similarities are anchored in a shared past and constant exchanges and dialogue between media professionals from these countries, but also between their governments and officials who inspire each other in the way they manage the media sector—for instance, through their legislation. These 17 countries also share training sessions and educational curricula, which influence the way journalists perceive their own profession. And, even though there are striking differences between the wider economies of Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, and Congo-Brazzaville for instance, their media economies actually have more similarities than these broader differences would suggest. Another reason to take a broad look at these French-speaking African mediascapes (Appadurai 1996), is that, even though local media are vibrant voices in national political debates, little is known about them. Although they have been key witnesses, well informed analysts, and sometimes actors in Africa’s political processes for more than a century, local media are barely used as sources in research, except sometimes by local 10 Area studies have often been criticized in a research environment characterized by globalization and the convergence of media and political systems worldwide and by the fact that an object is no longer limited to its geographical location, in an environment where digital information and technologies, as well as social networks are shared all over the world. Moreover, area studies can hinder comparative approaches, because of the way they anchor their perspective in the specificities of a region, making it difficult to make comparisons with similar phenomena or objects in other spaces.
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researchers investigating political developments in their own countries. It is nevertheless important for any scholar doing research about politics in any country to look at what local journalists (and more recently online activists) have been producing: the way they are telling the stories. But, in order to do so, researchers would benefit from knowledge about the general environment in which such narratives are produced. What are the dynamics behind the production of the local media discourse? What is the “system” of interactions between journalists, their fellow media professionals, their management, the state, political parties, the economic environment, and the audience? Facts are facts, but news, such as disseminated by the media, are constructed narratives and all these historical, political, economic, and social factors influence the practices and output of journalists in Francophone Africa (both past and present). A European reading of African current affairs is no longer the only legitimate one, and the perspectives of politically and economically dominated peoples are no longer silenced. Other voices are being heard today in the African public sphere, and those expressing themselves in English should not be the only ones taken into account.11 Thanks to digital technologies, Francophone African media available online can be a valuable source of information for those wishing to follow the local news without going through the prism of Western-centric international media, or via an analysis of the media in English-speaking African countries.
3
On Using the Notion of “Media Systems”
A systemic approach is based on the conviction that interactions between journalists and other actors (be they political, economic, civil society, or audience members) influence the production of media content. This book focuses on news production, and therefore mainly on this kind of journalistic activity (regardless of other types of programming such as entertainment, religion, or sport). To understand narratives produced by French-speaking African journalists, it is important to extend observation beyond their output and consider the environment in which these are
11 In English-speaking Africa, there is now a growing body of research analyzing media production in local languages such as Kiswahili for instance. In Francophone Africa, as there is no press in local languages (we shall explore reasons for this later in this book), such research would only be possible for broadcasting, but this raises major methodological issues, as broadcast archives in local languages are often unavailable.
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INTRODUCTION
9
produced. Different scholars have called a set of interactions that have a certain stability at a given time, a “system”, “paradigm”, or “configuration”, allowing the identification of specific characteristics of historically and geographically located media to be identified. The transition from one system to another implies a redefinition of the relationships between the media and other actors, and this book will show how different media systems have developed at different times in Francophone Africa, within different political systems. Because a system is never isolated: it is always interacting with other systems. As the Quebec media scholars, Charron and de Bonville have noted: “systems are generally conceived as totalities in interaction with other systems which constitute their environment. The state of a system is therefore explained by its relationships with other systems in its environment” (Charron and de Bonville 2002, 12). Media systems have been analyzed and compared for several decades,12 but this book focuses primarily on interactions with political systems. This approach is not new. In Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al. 1956), the authors distinguish four systems that have succeeded or coexisted since the emergence of the modern press: the “authoritarian” system, where the media are in the hands of a handful of enlightened men; the “liberal” system, based on the rights of each individual to access the truth; the “social responsibility” system, which is based on the conviction that the journalist is the depository of the citizen’s right to information, and the “Soviet communist” system, presented as a modern and sophisticated version of authoritarian theory. Each is distinguished by particular modalities of relationship between media and political power, different missions entrusted to media in society and different conceptions of the place of individual or collective expression in the social environment. Criticized for its simplifying and ethnocentric nature, and for being outdated, given the developments in global politics, this model has nevertheless had a profound and lasting impact on the field of media analysis, giving rise to many updates and variations (Nerone 1995; Ostini and Fung 2002). 12 Some French researchers have also developed the notion of a “media system”, but they conceive it differently. Michel Mathien (1992) uses the expression “media system” to describe the dynamics within media companies, and the way technical, organizational and moral constraints have an impact on journalists’ daily work. In Quebec, Charron and de Bonville (2002) apply the notion of media systems in journalism studies but insist on the constant flexibility of the interactions in which journalists are engaged. For them, the stability of a system depends on permanent reciprocal adjustments between the different elements within the system and the degree of dependence can also vary in time and place.
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Nearly 50 years later, Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini (2004) attempted to propose a more detailed analytical framework and classified the media systems of 18 countries in Western Europe and North America into three main categories. To build their comparative approach, they highlight four “dimensions” of media landscapes, especially in their relations to the political sphere: the level of development of the media market, the degree of professionalism of journalists, the nature and intervention of the state in the sector, and the degree of “political parallelism” (i.e., the closeness of relations between the media and political parties and therefore the way in which media pluralism reflects political pluralism— or not). Their main aim, through these four dimensions, is to observe “the relation between media systems and political systems” in particular, which is why they have paid little attention to other possible dimensions such as the relationship with the audience. On the basis of these dimensions, they built three categories or “ideal types”, three “models of media and politics”.13 These models, built exclusively on European and North American countries, have been heavily criticized and considered impossible to adapt to other environments outside their 18 case studies. But the four “dimensions” have been more successful. As Hallin and Mancini themselves recognized, “the four dimensions we use for comparing media systems ‘travel’ better than do our three ideal types” (2012, 87). In this book, I will refer regularly to these four dimensions, even though the aim is certainly not to propose anything like a single “model of media systems and politics” in French-speaking Africa. Whatever one may think of its normative character, Hallin and Mancini’s media systems approach is useful in answering the fundamental question, in any country: “why is the press as it is” (Siebert et al. 1956, 1)? It encourages a historical approach to understand current media landscapes, especially highlighting how interactions between the media and political regimes and economic environments have been built over time. Then, when looking at the profession of journalism, it helps us grasp how journalistic practice and production are influenced by traditions or routines that are transmitted and are upheld by certain perceptions of the role the news media play in a given society. Beyond professional principles and routines, a media systems approach forces us to look at how media 13 The three models identified are: the “Polarized Pluralist Model” (localized in the Mediterranean countries), the “Democratic Corporatist Model” (in North and Central Europe), and the “Liberal Model” (North Atlantic).
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INTRODUCTION
11
companies supervise and direct news production through constraints, such as editorial lines, hierarchical organizations, and validation mechanisms. Finally, it leads us to consider the integral role of other political, economic, and social actors in shaping the discourse that circulates in the public space. Governments and lawmakers, regulatory bodies, political parties, official and rebel armies (often responsible for violence against media professionals in Africa), advertisers, the international community (donors can offer substantial support to local media)—all of these intervene in the media field, and have a direct impact on content. Audiences also influence the media they consume through direct participation or feedback effects, today more than ever due to the expansion of digital technologies and social networks. I believe that this specific dimension (the interaction between journalists and the public) has been underestimated by Hallin and Mancini, who address the issue mainly as a component of the media “market”. In Africa, audiences have been central, for several decades, as the media have been perceived as agents to promote social change, to transform mentalities, and mold attitudes. And today, they actually contribute to the media narratives, to setting up the agenda, and act as whistleblowers. Therefore, our approach will be developed around five dimensions: (1) State intervention in the media sector; (2) Journalists’ professional practices, values, and identities; (3) Media markets and the economics of news production; (4) Interactions between the media and audiences (including media impacts and access to information by the public); and finally (5) Relations between media and political actors (be they political parties, individual politicians or other bodies with political ambitions such as armed rebels)—here we are extending the original definition of “political parallelism”. So far, attempts to apply and adapt Hallin and Mancini’s framework to Africa have been limited (Shaw 2009) and have focused on particular geographical areas, mainly South Africa (Hadland 2012).14 However, as I have argued above, the media landscapes of these countries contrast
14 In 2012, Hallin and Mancini edited another book, Comparing Media Systems beyond
the Western World, in which they gave the floor to scholars from other countries than the ones they had previously covered, in order to see how their models could be applied elsewhere. Their chapter dealing with Africa, written by Adrian Hadland, is limited in that it is based essentially on the (special and specific) experience of South Africa, detracting from its relevance to the whole continent.
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sharply with those of French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa and these studies do not help to actually grasp the particularities of that “other Africa”, or should we say these “other Africas”. Because there is of course no such thing as one “Francophone media system” in Africa. Systems are very diverse when comparing say, Cameroon,15 Chad, Burkina Faso, or Burundi. They are different in capital cities and in rural areas. They are even different in public and commercial media. But by using these five dimensions, while also considering different contexts, some similarities and dissimilarities will appear more clearly, helping us to understand the dynamics of each system.
4
Traps to Be Avoided
This book could be seen as a contribution to “de-westernized” media studies, while at the same time using a frame of analysis that was developed by Northern scholars to look at European and Northern American media environments. Although it may seem so, I do not think this is a contradiction, because the questions raised by the five “dimensions” appear to be universal: What is the role of the state in the media landscape? How is “professionalism” understood and practiced by journalists? On what kind of economic and business conditions do media eco-systems depend? What relationships exist between political entities and the media? How do newsmakers perceive their audiences and (perhaps) take them into account? All these questions can be asked about the media in any country in the world. Using these dimensions, we do not feel that we are borrowing “foreign Western concepts”, but just using quite universal entry points to understand media systems. The issue of “universality” vs. “African particularities” is a tricky one (Nyamnjoh 2011). We agree with Francis Nyamnjoh that theoretical frameworks elaborated in the North can help to capture the realities of the South, but they have to be “domesticated”, while, at the same time avoiding an essentialist approach of Africa. We also have to keep in mind that these debates are highly political. As we will show later, the
15 Cameroon is of particular interest here, as it is the only country with a dual colonial legacy, part of it having been colonized by France and part of it being attached to the British Empire when German colonies were redistributed. Until this day, journalism practice differs in the French-speaking and English-speaking parts of Cameroon.
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argument that there is an “African way” to practice journalism and organize the media sector has been (and sometimes still is) invoked to justify ways to repress or censor communications. Throughout African history, there have been many periods when press freedom (as well as political freedom) has been heavily restricted or even suspended, in the name of local “particularism”. Regarding journalistic “professionalism”, a question arises as to how to distinguish between universal values and principles (e.g., freedom of expression, journalists’ responsibilities, and balance) and those that are perhaps more relative. Values and principles manifest themselves in very diverse practices around the world, but relativizing their foundations can lead to the endorsement of authoritarianism. We will see that several authors have argued, for example, that African journalistic ethics are particular and rooted in values other than those of the West, justifying different professional practices (Kasoma 1996). Nevertheless, if African media and journalists’ practices and values are indeed to be considered without constant reference to Western principles that claim to be universal, it must not be forgotten how local specificities can be (and have been) invoked to justify restrictions of press freedom, as well as the denial of political and human rights in general. This debate is a recurring one in the field of journalistic ethics, as we will see. In countries where many journalists routinely request their sources to pay them before writing articles or broadcasting reports, the response is often to organize training courses to ban this form of “corruption”—referring to universal principles inspired by Western codes of ethics. While not claiming that these kinds of “brown-envelope” traditions should be recognized as a specific “African” way to practice journalism, it is important to ask whether these practices are really due to a lack of training or knowledge of professional ethics. When a journalist has no salary but must still find a way to feed his or her children, send them to school and pay for their medical care, these practices can be regarded by wider society as serving a social purpose. In some ways the quality of the final product (which no one might actually read) does not matter, as audiences are (much more than one might think) aware that the news has often been paid for, and therefore it is not worth paying attention to. This leads to another challenge, which is also central to analyzing African realities. Depending on one’s point of view, the situation in Francophone Africa may appear either radically different or quite comparable
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to the dominant discourses (whether such discourses emanate from the West or from the dominant countries of Anglophone Africa).16 On the one hand, French-speaking African media systems could be considered as “radically different”, requiring the design and application of theoretical schemes that are distinct from those used to describe Western societies or neighboring English-speaking countries. On the other hand, Francophone African media systems could also be approached as “commonplace objects”, that can be grasped using concepts developed in other contexts. This is the case, for instance, with the issue of journalistic “corruption” or closeness between media owners and political parties: on the one hand French-speaking Africa may be said to have “particular dynamics” in this regard, but on the other, France or Belgium may equally be said to have problems in this area as well. This leads to a need to interrogate the use of words and the way actors and practices are labeled in different contexts. Notions such as “corruption”, “clientelism”, as well as “civil society”, “counter-power”, and “public space” are used in all countries, but they may not actually mean the same thing for the media, political actors, or researchers when used in different contexts. Here again, an approach in terms of media systems may help better to define the meaning of these words in different contexts.
5
The Structure of the Book
The book is divided into 8 chapters. The first three chapters give a historical perspective on the development of media from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. They show the roots of the current situation, which is then explored through the lens of our five dimensions. Chapter 2 explores the emergence of French-speaking African media in its historical context. This chapter shows how the circulation of information was organized before colonial times in several African societies, and how the colonial process brought about major changes, including establishing the press, radio, and later television in the colonies, allowing
16 Political scientists have highlighted this same ambivalence in studies of electoral
processes in Africa, which can be presented either as mechanisms completely foreign to Western-style electoral democracy or as mechanisms for redistributing and legitimizing power that are comparable in every respect to elections held in the older democracies. Francis Nyamnjoh (2005) has explored the same kind of ambivalence regarding the media sector in Africa.
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indigenous initiatives to emerge (or not). It focuses mainly on the French and Belgian Empires, while underlining the major differences in colonial rule of the media sector compared with the British Empire, and showing how these differences still resonate today. Chapter 3 focuses on the post-independence period, showing the arguments that were used by the newly independent governments in former French and Belgian colonies to justify their control of the media and their repression of freedom of expression, soon after they gained power. For 30 years almost all French-speaking African governments totally eradicated privately owned media (as well as political pluralism), allowing only state-controlled media to exist. Nevertheless, “alternative” communication tools sometimes allowed divergent views to circulate. Chapter 4 opens with the official recognition of freedom of expression in French-speaking African countries and the creation of private media, at the beginning of the 1990s. The process was gradual, as independent newspapers, then radio and television stations were authorized in stages. Each of these media were (and still are) faced with specific challenges that I describe. This chapter also shows how, more recently, new technologies such as mobile phones and the Internet, have hindered government attempts at maintaining control of information flows. After this three-part history, which establishes the foundations of today’s media systems through the lens of our five dimensions, Chapter 5 focuses on the analysis of the most central dimension, namely interaction between the media and the state. It demonstrates more specifically how governments have managed to remain major players in Frenchspeaking African media systems. The chapter describes the different ways/institutions used by state authorities to interfere with the media and maintain control or exert pressure on journalists. These interactions reflect the very nature of the political regimes of most French-speaking African countries today, most of them best labeled “semi-authoritarian” (Ottaway 2004; Hilgers and Mazzocchetti 2010). These regimes allow a degree of civil liberties and political rights (for the media, political parties, and civil society), while developing strategies to neutralize the threat of these actors, in order to stay in power. The media systems are therefore simultaneously both “free” and “not free” and are best characterized as “liberal pluralist authoritarian” media systems (Frère 2015). Chapter 6 then details how, in this ambiguous political environment, journalists themselves, and their daily practices, routines, and values, have been transformed by the changes of the past three decades and
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by local constraints. Journalism as a profession has undergone significant changes: new values and practices have emerged, new codes of ethics and self-regulating bodies have been developed, and new professional organizations have arisen. Journalists have attempted to draw borders, in order to define who could be “in” or “out” of the group, but the multiple ways news producers perceive their role, the diversity of newsmaking cultures and the interference of politics in the media sector have often jeopardized the emergence of a collective or shared identity among journalists, and a common understanding of “professionalism”. Not only are political actors a constant pressure on professional journalistic routines, they are also omnipresent in the economic sector. Chapter 7 describes recent economic transformations in the media systems of Francophone Africa. Media companies exist to provide information and entertainment, but in order to do so, they need to be sustainable and/or make a profit, whether they are outlets of a private, public, or a community-based nature. But the media market in French-speaking Africa is particularly tight: economies are generally weak and mostly “informal”; the large majority of the population has other spending priorities (mostly survival) than accessing information; the advertising market is very narrow, while media outlets competing for advertising revenue have multiplied in numbers. The sustainability of media outlets and proper salaries for journalists can rarely be guaranteed. Moreover, the economic fabric is intricately linked to the political space, giving political parties and figures another tool with which to exert leverage and dominance over the media. In such context, foreign aid may sometimes be the only way to support the production of “independent” news. Finally, Chapter 8, focuses on the interactions between the media and their audiences. In Francophone Africa, the media have long been thought of as tools to transform people’s habits and behaviors (since colonial times and following independence—as we shall see in Chapters 2 and 3). African audiences have been, and still are, perceived as easily influenced by media messages, be it in positive ways (to turn their “traditional habits” into more “modern practices” in agriculture, education, or health), or in negative directions (for instance, the role of the Radio Télévision libre des Mille collines—RTLM, French for “Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television”—in Rwanda, which encouraged citizens to take an active part in the genocide of Tutsis in 1994). So-called “development”, “peace”, or “hate” media all reflect this understanding of African audiences as manipulable—mostly to serve political aims and agendas. Other examples,
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however, suggest that audiences, on the contrary, have agency: they are creative and capable of inventing new ways to consume or even produce independent news. The reader may be surprised not to find a chapter devoted to exploring the “political parallelism” dimension, our fifth analytical lens: the reason is that relations between media and political actors (in which I include political parties, individual politicians, and other bodies with political ambitions such as armed groups) will appear throughout the book as a cross-cutting issue. The way media systems reflect the political landscape (to a greater or lesser extent) is rooted in relations between the media and the state (including with possible “oppositional” political entities); it is embodied by journalists themselves who can, in many cases, be “journalists” and “militants” at the same time; and it is fueled by the media market (or lack thereof) that often requires forms of financial support from political parties, civil society, or international organizations (that have been known to fund “independent” media while at the same time giving budgetary support to semi-authoritarian regimes). The vast majority of these organizations have an agenda that aims at gaining visibility and influencing audiences. This book is therefore intended to be a general introduction to media systems in the French-speaking part of the African continent, and at the same time to propose tools for readers wishing to go deeper into the analysis of specific environments, be they in Burundi, Senegal, Cameroon, or Benin. It does not aspire to reflect the full diversity of local contexts, but to give food for thought for further in-depth research.
6
About Sources and References
A wide range of sources have been used in the writing of this book, from academic work to grey literature, as well as formal and informal interviews. Regarding academic references, as stated above, one of the aims of the book is to give an insight into research produced by French-speaking scholars about media and journalism in Francophone Africa. One delicate issue here is to strike a balance between sources that exist only in French (which might not be available or accessible to an Anglophone reader) and sources published in English that are much more widely
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known and quoted.17 Works in English about journalism and politics in French-speaking Africa are very limited18 (i.e., Bourgault 1995; Nyamnjoh 2005; Grätz 2011, 2014, 2015; De Bruijn 2017; Cante 2018a, b), while anthropologists have paid much attention to how the audience relates to religious or entertainment programs19 (Pype 2012; Schulz 2012). A notable exception is Cameroon, the only country that is officially bilingual (French/English), where scholars (mostly those from the English-speaking community) understand and read French perfectly, which allows them to publish in both languages (Nyamnjoh 2005; Ndangam 2006 and 2009; Ngangum 2019). But sometimes, regarding some issues or some countries, even robust academic sources in French are scarce, for several reasons. The main is historical. Sources on Francophone African media date back to the colonial period, where the press appeared long after it did in Anglophone Africa, as we shall explain later. After independence, most of the research published consisted mainly of monographs on a single country or medium, at a time when press freedom was extremely limited everywhere. The work of the French historian André-Jean Tudesq was pioneering: he started to publish, at the beginning of the 1980s, the first books providing a panoramic overview of the continent’s media (1983, 1992, 1995, 1998a, b, 2002). But, in France, his work faced two obstacles. Firstly, the field of African studies had long been dominated by political, legal, and administrative sciences, and research on African media did not attract much recognition. Secondly, in the 1970s, the discipline of information and communication studies was itself struggling to be recognized
17 In the spirit of this book, references specifically to media in Sub-Saharan Africa are prioritized, to the detriment of generalist references to journalism that can be found in many other books. 18 The following is a recent example of this academic divide. In the most recent issues of the journal African Journalism Studies (2019–2020) only two papers (by the same author) have appeared about a Francophone Country (Cameroon, which is officially bilingual French/English), and these papers were written by an English-speaking Cameroonian scholar. Conversely, the new Revue d’Histoire contemporaine de l’Afrique devoted its first issue to “Médias et décolonisations en Afrique (1940-1970)” (Chomentowski and Leyris 2021), but all the papers presented were authored by French-speaking researchers, and focus on Francophone countries. 19 For a general introduction to these anthropological approaches, see Pype and Jedlowski (2019).
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and fully integrated into the humanities and social sciences in general (Lenoble-Bart and Tudesq 2008). The number of studies in this area has nevertheless increased since the early 1990s, with the emergence of independent media in Francophone Africa drawing in more researchers (La Brosse 1999; Frère 2000; Perret 2005). The occurrence of armed conflicts in fraught political transitions, has also drawn attention to the role of the media in communal violence, and also in peace and reconciliation processes. Nevertheless, according to the sociologist Sylvie Capitant, Francophone research has remained “weak in terms of theoretical outputs” (2006, 64) and disconnected from the general paradigms and concepts that have been developed in Western academia in the field of media studies.20 According to Capitant, works on Francophone African countries have therefore remained too descriptive and have stayed at the margins of both African and Media studies. Her opinions have therefore been somewhat at odds with parallel trends, in the English-speaking African media studies world, which have denounced the “imperialism” of Northern theories in information sciences and have questioned the universality of concepts, on the basis of limited and localized Western experiences. But this English-speaking world has not, itself, specified their precise scope of application nor the applicability of their theories in other types of societies.21 Up to now, when these types of concepts have been used in Africa for instance, it is often to the neglect of the diversity of the continent and is done with a caricatured vision of the media landscapes of African countries. Most authors who have tried to identify the Western foundations of media analysis, and to propose others that are better adapted to the realities of the African continent appear unable to solve this issue (Berger 2002; Obonyo 2011). Research about media in Francophone Africa has kept itself apart from these debates, but has grown, nevertheless, often in the form of unpublished masters or doctoral theses. Some works have focused on
20 Her own unpublished PhD thesis (2008) was an attempt to apply the “uses and gratifications” approach, developed by Elihu Katz in the 1980s, to analyze community radio stations in Burkina Faso. For a critical and “decolonized” approach, from an African point of view, of uses and gratifications theory, see Bosch 2019. 21 Tomaselli underlines that “African scholarship is conventionally labelled by Northerners as ‘area studies’, rather than understood to be intrinsic contribution to generic global theoretical terrains” (2018, viii).
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the normative framework of journalistic practice, through the study of media regulation or self-regulation. Many have focused on analyzing media content, particularly the print media, which is more easily and regularly accessible (because archived) than radio or television programs. But country monographs or collections of chapters based on the analysis of single countries have remained dominant (Loum and Sarr 2018). More recently, research has increased about trends in globalization and about the expansion of new technologies (Internet and mobile phones) that have transformed both the professional practices of journalists and the ways in which audiences participate in the dissemination of information (Chéneau-Loquay 2004; De Bruijn et al. 2009; Alzouma 2018, 2020). News receivers (readers, listeners, viewers, and Internet users) have, however, remained absent from media research in French-speaking Africa, generally, probably due, among other things, to the lack of reliable audience data and insufficient capacity to undertake surveys with large samples. According to the Burkinabè media scholar, Serge Théophile Balima (2000), the fact that audiences have long been perceived merely as passive and manipulable recipients of information has also contributed to a lack of curiosity among researchers about how people get informed and how they deal with the news they have access to. Beyond examples such as Serge Théophile Balima in Burkina Faso, Thomas Atenga in Cameroon, Aghi Bahi and Francis Barbey in Côte d’Ivoire, Mor Faye and Ibrahima Sarr in Senegal, who publish regularly, the weakness of media studies in French-speaking Africa also reflects the often-difficult conditions in higher education and research institutions in this part of the continent, where universities lack resources to support local researchers. This means that much of the knowledge about the media in Francophone Africa is still produced in Northern educational and research institutions (France, Belgium, Quebec, etc.). Doctoral and master’s theses by African students educated in Northern institutions and containing research about the media in their home country—using mainly references in the French language—are often confined to university libraries. We have named this phenomenon “path dependency” (Agbobli and Frère 2018): because of where they study and the language barrier, researchers working on Francophone Africa often confine their work to the concepts, methodological approaches, and theoretical issues emanating from the French academic literature, i.e., from the sociology of journalism. Therefore, “whilst a growing body of knowledge is produced
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in English about Francophone Africa, this research has very little impact on Francophone research media trends” (Agbobli and Frère 2018, 88). Therefore, research about French-speaking African media remains all too often locked onto its own flightpath, scattered, unsupported by established networks or journals (as previously mentioned), and almost completely invisible at the large conferences of the international communication and information sciences community (such as IAMCR and ICA22 ). It is also absent from various ambitious “worldwide” journalism survey projects, such as Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures around the Globe (Hanitszch et al. 2019), that seek to compare practices and values of media professionals all over the world. Besides academic research, there is an abundance of grey literature produced by NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and private consultants. Several French NGOs implementing media-support projects in French-speaking Africa (such as Institut Panos Paris—IPP—or Gret) actively published material devoted to African media between the mid1990s and 2010.23 These books, based on independent research, were widely distributed among African journalists and used in journalism schools in Francophone Africa. Furthermore, over the past few decades, international NGOs have been producing other literature: a growing number of reports (unfortunately generally not public24 ) have been written, mainly because international donor policies now require international NGOs to produce baseline studies and final evaluations of their donor-supported projects. Although they can be useful, these sources are problematic in two ways. Firstly, they
22 International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) was created in 1957 “to facilitate exchanges of methods and findings between research institutes and to promote personal contacts among individual members”, as well as “to seek recognition for mass communication as a subject for independent scientific investigation”. This association has always been perceived as more open to international debates and participants than the International Communication Association (ICA), created in 1950, that remains dominated by US scholars. 23 IPP was closed in 2015 and Gret disbanded its media department at around the same time. 24 For instance, as there are no local reliable polling institutions, data about audiences are generally ordered to costly Western polling agencies, either by international NGOs or by international media (RFI, France 24) when they need to demonstrate the extent of their audience “reach” to their donors. Given their cost and their aim, these data are very seldom shared with the researchers. I will expand on this issue in Chapter 7.
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generally focus on one single media outlet or project, without providing an overall picture of the national or local media landscape, and sometimes not even mentioning what other media-support organizations are doing in the same location. Secondly, such reports tend to be written in answer to a specific request by a donor who wishes to know if their financial investment was worthwhile: very few consultants will dare to write that a media support project did not generate any improvements or that it might even have contributed to destabilizing the local media ecosystem that, otherwise, might have achieved some kind of balance, before the international aid intervention in question. Moreover, this recent growth in media development assessments has an impact on the research produced by local scholars in academia in Francophone Africa. Very often, the local consultants involved in producing these assessments are the very same scholars who cannot obtain funding for proper independent research from their own universities, and who are better paid for this kind of consultancy work. The vocabulary and approaches of “media development” discourses and institutions have thus gradually penetrated academic work, and are a far cry from independent and critical analysis. Last but not least, besides academic outputs and grey literature from NGOs, the main sources that have provided data for this book are African journalists themselves. I have had the good fortune to travel around all of these 17 countries, to visit media outlets, to engage in lengthy debates with many actors involved, from media owners to staff members (journalists, technicians, accountants, etc.), to members of regulation authorities and civil servants from ministries of communication. So, over the past 25 years, I have accumulated hundreds of recordings and notes from these visits and conversations. Of course, oral testimonies must be used carefully, which is the reason why quotes and data from my interviews are used only when they have been confirmed by at least two other sources. Regarding the amount and diversity of interviews, there is an obvious imbalance between countries where I have had the chance to travel regularly for extended field work (such as Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo or Burundi), and countries where I have been just once (such as Guinea or Togo). But I was also able to attend many meetings bringing together Francophone journalists from the world over, especially during the time I worked at the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF) and later when I collaborated closely with
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Institut Panos Paris. I myself have had the occasion to act as an international consultant, like those I mention above, while collecting data for a report commissioned by a media donor. Such ongoing discussions with a wide network of French-speaking African journalists, at conferences, training sessions, or while sharing a beer, a soft drink, or a sugary green tea during field work, are at the core of this project; and this book is also a way to make their voices heard.
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N’Sana, Pierre Bitentu. 2019. Médias et conflits en RDC: Analyse des déterminants du traitement de l’information par les radios locales, nationales et internationale. PhD diss: Université libre de Bruxelles. Ndangam, Lilian N. 2006. ‘Gombo’: Bribery and the corruption of journalism ethics in Cameroon. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 27 (2): 179– 199. Ndangam, Lilian N. 2009. ‘All of us have taken gombo’ Media pluralism and patronage in Cameroonian journalism. Journalism 10 (6): 819–842. Nerone, John C., ed. 1995. Last Rights. Revisiting Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ngangum, Peter Tiako. 2019. Media Regulation in Cameroon. African Journalism Studies 40 (3): 10–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2020. 1725777. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2005. Africa’s Media. Democracy and the Politics of Belonging. London/New York: Zed Books. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2011. Epilogue: Opening up the Research Design in and on Africa: ‘To Souls Forgotten’. In Postcolonial Turn: Re-imagining Anthropology and Africa, ed. René Devisch and Francis B. Nyamnjoh, 435–448. Bamenda: Langaa Research. Obonyo, Levi. 2011. Towards a Theory of Communication for Africa: The Challenge of Emerging Democracies. Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research 37 (1): 1–20. Ostini, Jennifer, and Anthony Y. H. Fung. 2002. Beyond the Four Theories of the Press. A New Model of National Media Systems. Mass Communication and Society 5 (1): 41–56. Ottaway, Marina. 2004. Democracy Challenged. The Rise of Semi-Authoritarian State. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Perret, Thierry. 2005. Le temps des journalistes. L’invention de la presse en Afrique francophone. Paris: Karthala. Pype, Katrien, and Alessandro Jedlowski. 2019. Anthropological Approaches to Media in Africa. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Africa, ed. Roy Richard Grinker, Euclides Gonçalves, Christopher B. Steiner, and Stephen C. Lubkemann, 351–374. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. Pype, Katrien. 2012. The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, media, and gender in Kinshasa. New York: Berghahn Books. Rambaud, Brice. 2009. Réflexions sur les trajectoires africaines de deux modèles médiatiques occidentaux. Analyse comparative de la presse écrite du Burkina Faso et du Kenya. In La Politique des modèles en Afrique. Simulation, dépolitisation, et appropriation, ed. Dominique Darbon, 171–185. Paris: Karthala-MSHA. Schulz, Dorothea. 2012. Muslims and New Media in West Africa. Pathways to God. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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Shaw, Ibrahim Seaga. 2009. Towards an African Journalism Model: A Critical Historical Perspective. International Communication Gazette 71 (6): 491– 510. Siebert, Fred S., Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm. 1956. Four Theories of the Press. The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stremlau, Nicole. 2018. Media, Conflict and the State in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tcheuyap, Alexie. 2014. Autoritarisme, presse et violence au Cameroun. Paris: Karthala. Tomaselli, Keyan G. 2009a. Repositioning African Media Studies: Thoughts and Provocations. Journal of African Media Studies 1 (1): 9–21. Tomaselli, Keyan G. 2009b. (Afri)Ethics, Communitarianism and Libertarianism. The International Communication Gazette 71 (7): 577–594. Tomaselli, Keyan G. 2018. Foreword: Implicit Geographies. In The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa, ed. Bruce Mutsvairo, i–x. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tudesq, André-Jean. 1983. La radio en Afrique noire. Paris: Pédone. Tudesq, André-Jean. 1992. L’Afrique noire et ses télévisions. Paris: Economica. Tudesq, André-Jean. 1995. Feuilles d’Afrique. Étude de la presse de l’Afrique subsaharienne. Talence: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSHA). Tudesq, André-Jean. 1998a. Journaux et radios en Afrique aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Paris: GRET. Tudesq, André-Jean. 1998b. L’Espoir et l’illusion. Actions positives et effets pervers des médias en Afrique subsaharienne. Talence: MSHA. Tudesq, André-Jean. 2002. L’Afrique parle, l’Afrique écoute. Les radios en Afrique subsaharienne. Paris: Karthala. Willems, Wendy. 2014. Provincializing Hegemonic Histories of Media and Communication Studies: Toward a Genealogy of Epistemic Resistance in Africa. Communication Theory 24: 415–434. Yameogo, Lassané. 2016. Interactions des médias publics avec les champs politique et socio-économique au Burkina Faso. Facteurs d’influence, identités et pratiques professionnelles. PhD diss: Université libre de Bruxelles.
CHAPTER 2
The Emergence of Modern Media and Politics in Africa
Any media system is the legacy of a particular political and social history. Media outlets have always conveyed information between governments and their subjects, or between close or distant communities. Regardless of where and when, the emergence of mass media has always been based on a combination of socio-political factors and technological progress. In all former colonies, including in Africa, the dominance and importation of technologies originating in the colonial metropole catalyzed the development of modern media. Although communication tools existed in pre-colonial societies, the establishment of modern media (i.e., press, radio, and television) was embedded in the ideological and conceptual framework of the colonial experience, and later, in anticolonial liberation movements. Current media systems often reflect these colonial legacies.1 Modern media emerged and evolved differently in the various colonial territories on the African continent. French-speaking newspapers appeared and developed almost a century after English-speaking press did, and these first publications positioned themselves very differently both in 1 The focus here is on French-speaking Africa. The situation in Britain’s former colonies in Africa is described for the first few decades of the development of the press there, and for the sake of comparison only. Portuguese and Spanish colonies will not be covered, likewise, the exceptional cases of Liberia (independent since 1847), Ethiopia (never colonized but occupied by Italy during the Second World War) and South Africa (independent Republic since 1910).
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terms of their economic models and their political contents. This chapter highlights the particularities of the French and Belgian colonies and the development of their French-speaking media, and compares them with the way media developed in the British Empire.
1 Media and Political Communication in Pre-colonial Africa Before modern media emerged on the African continent, various communication tools were used to convey messages, sometimes over long distances. In pre-colonial political systems, official information was channeled from political or religious authorities to the general population who, on occasion, were allowed to express themselves in return. Written cultures existed in several parts of Africa long before European colonizers arrived but in societies without writing, political messages were delivered by professional speakers or musical instruments. Frank Ugboajah (1985) calls these communication tools oramedia (or folk media): songs, dances, drums, and storytelling. He argued that they continue to play a major role in how information flows in Africa. 1.1
Speech Professionals in Societies Based on Orality
In many societies in pre-colonial Africa, the art of public speaking, as well as formal and official communication, was reserved for skilled “professionals” with the authority to speak out: griots, traditional songwriters, storytellers, priests, and patriarchs, sometimes belonging to specific castes, like hunters or blacksmiths. In West Africa, their knowledge and responsibilities were hereditary (Camara 1992). A wide range of narratives were passed on via these professional speakers: family or dynastic eulogies, oral jousting, initiation stories, legends, myths… In some cases, only professional messengers were allowed to liaise between political leaders and their neighboring leaders and communities. In the Kingdom of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin), the King’s messengers were called Récadères, as they held a symbolic staff or stick (the récade), that authenticated the royal message they carried. As soon as the Récadère was given the staff, he talked for the King, and could not truncate the message, for fear of execution. These messengers passed on messages to the vassal kingdoms, which in turn transmitted them to the regional chiefs, who communicated them to the village chiefs, who then used the town criers to inform
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the public. Royal communiqués included, for instance, orders to plant oil palm trees, to recruit young men for the king’s army, or to pay certain quantities of corn to the royal tax collector. In some regions, these professional speakers would act as a check on power. Indeed, griots in the Sahelian zone, for example, knew the family secrets of powerful dynasties and could threaten to spread them publicly (Salmon 2007, 167). Therefore, griots were sometimes feared and protected by the very people they were supposed to serve, maintaining both a clear and an ambiguous relationship with their employers at the same time (Zanetti 1990). In West Africa, griots still exist and sometimes play important social roles. In Mauritania, particular female griots are hired by political parties to support them by singing at meetings called by political hopefuls during election campaigns. In Niger too, politicians use griots in rural areas for their campaigns. In Mali, there is an official association of griots, which was formed in order to resist what they perceived as their primary threat: radio broadcasting. Since the early 1960s, they have adapted to developments in new electronic media by transforming both their instruments and their storytelling techniques (Diawara 1996). Moreover, research has also shown that, even today, the written press sometimes contains narrative techniques inspired by the oral-based communication of these traditional speakers (Bourgault 1995; Frère 1999). 1.2
Musical Instruments
Drums, trumpets, and gongs were often used to transmit messages, using coded language. In the Kongo Kingdom, drummers were able, through relays, to convey messages over long distances with great precision. Georges Niangoran-Bouah, an anthropologist and musicologist from Côte d’Ivoire, dedicated his career to promoting the concept of drummology (1980)—to raise awareness about these “speaking” instruments of Africa—and to study the role of drums in preserving and transmitting knowledge. These instruments are still present in many regions, inspiring the names of some current media outlets. For example, Lokolé (after a traditional drum) is the name of a radio production studio in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In Burkina Faso, one of the main private newspapers is called Bendré (a sacred percussion instrument). Drums are still in use in countries or areas without electricity, where other media cannot operate: in Central African Republic for instance, they
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have recently been used to warn people of the danger of armed groups operating in specific areas. 1.3
Africa’s History of the Written Word
The usual stereotype is of an oral culture in Africa as opposed to a written culture in Europe. This stereotyped dichotomy requires nuancing, as demonstrated by Goody (Goody 1993; Goody and Watt 1963). Firstly, because European popular culture was, itself, still essentially oral, until the end of the nineteenth century, when the African colonial process started. Secondly, because the written word was used by many African political institutions in the pre-colonial era. In the Hausa Kingdoms or the Sultanate of Agadez (now Niger), writing appeared along with Islam, although it remained restricted to an educated elite. Literary life developed in Timbuktu (in modern-day Mali) as early as the fifteenth century: thousands of manuscripts (treatises on medicine, astronomy, philosophy, history, as well as administrative documents, wills, and religious texts) are still kept in the city’s libraries (though partially destroyed by Islamist armed groups occupying the city in 2012). Just as the Western imagination, supported for a long time by a fringe of academics, has pictured pre-colonial Africa as an unstructured virgin world without any kind of formal state, it has also often reduced the continent to a world (half exotic, half despised) which is exclusively oral, therefore constantly shifting and unreliable. On the contrary, many socio-political organizations did exist during the pre-colonial period, with specialized channels for transmitting messages. That was how order was upheld—even if that order was feudal and authoritarian. Populations were informed, and contact was maintained with neighbors.
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The Creation of the Press on the African Continent
The first modern media appeared in Africa during the nineteenth-century colonial period. The history of this period is important because the way the media sector is configured in many African countries today still bears the marks of the way it emerged at that time. The nineteenth-century legacy largely explains the contrast between the commercial evolution of the Kenyan and Nigerian press, and the absence of a real market for the political newspapers in present-day Côte d’Ivoire or Benin. Subject to
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different tutelages and enjoying different rights, different African populations have been influenced by the press traditions of their prespective colonial rulers. The very first newspaper printed on African soil was in French: Le Courrier d’Égypte, created in August 1798, by French garrisons stationed in Egypt. It was followed a few months later by La Décade Égyptienne. The first was a weekly newspaper, which circulated news about the occupation of Egyptian territory by French troops, and informing the military of current events in France, in order to maintain a link between these exiled soldiers and Paris (Tudesq 1995). The second, a monthly newspaper, was for the civilians who had followed the military to Egypt. Both papers lasted for three years. In 1800, the Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser was created by British settlers in Cape Town. The following year, some other Englishmen, managing the Sierra Leone trading post before it became a British colony in 1808, founded The Sierra Leone Gazette (1801). This paper, the first in West Africa, appeared sporadically before being taken over by the colonial administration which very quickly began its own publications. After relaunching the Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser in 1817, Crown Governor MacCarthy created the Royal Gold Coast Gazette in present-day Ghana. The first editors on the continent were therefore European settlers or colonial administrators. Their newspapers targeted a particular expatriate and English-speaking audience. 2.1
A “Black” Privately Owned Press
As early as the 1820s, private newspapers managed by black people appeared in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Written in English, these publications were not started by indigenous populations, but by freed former slaves brought from America to the African coast by philanthropic societies in America (Liberia) and in Britain (Sierra Leone) (Barton 1979, 15). Indeed, from 1816 onward, freed slaves were “repatriated” to Africa, convinced that they had a role to play in the development of their ancestors’ continent, but also fleeing the inequalities and discrimination they continued to face in North America and the Caribbean (Blyden 2006). In 1822, the colony of Liberia was established with the support of the American Colonization Society. Charles Force, a black American who came to settle in Africa, created the Liberia Herald in 1826, thanks to a press
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donated by the Massachusetts Colonization Society of Boston. The newspaper was later headed by a Jamaican, John Brown Russwurm, one of the first men of color to graduate in the United States, and who had already worked in the emerging world of black student newspapers in America (Burrowes 2004; James 2010). At the time of Liberia’s independence in 1847, several other titles managed by this “American” elite were in circulation. In Sierra Leone, the first title considered indigenous was New Era, a privately financed publication released in 1855 by William Drape, another Jamaican who played an important role in defending the independence of the press in the face of colonial control. Unlike Liberia, Sierra Leone was a colony under British rule, and the colonial administration had an ambiguous relationship with this elite of migrants from America and the Caribbean. On the one hand, they were considered “civilized”, as they were English-speaking, literate, and Christianized, and the colonial administration often hired them; but, on the other hand, many of them defended ideas of freedom and equality that worried British rulers. William Drape’s position, defending “Sierra Leone residents” against unfair British rule, gave him recurrent legal problems with the authorities (New Era was banned), but also set him up as a model for the elite throughout the region.2 The period was a time of significant change in the emerging press industry in Europe: creation of news agencies; technological progress in printing; and growth of advertising. As Odile Goerg points out, “because of the constant relationship between Freetown’s intellectual elite and Britain, the local press was to benefit from the liberalization and modernization of journalism in the metropole” (Goerg 2001, 303). The first newspaper published by Charles Bannerman, a native of Africa, was the Accra Herald (1858). Its first editions were copied-out by hand. Private newspapers were also launched in Lagos, when the city was made a British protectorate. The first of these was The AngloAfrican, founded in 1863 by Robert Campbell, a mixed-race Jamaican. This private press quickly developed under the ownership of indigenous traders, anxious to defend their interests against those of their British competitors who were privileged by the colonial state (Omu 1978). 2 Other publications led by this elite emerged in Sierra Leone, including The Sierra Leone Weekly Times and West African Record (1861), The Sierra Leone Observer and Commercial Advocate (1864), The African Interpreter and Advocate (1866).
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As former slaves who had campaigned in the United States or the Caribbean for the abolition of slavery, many of the first journalists in West Africa had gained some prior experience of political struggle through the press. Therefore, it is not surprising that they sharply criticized the colonial authorities. In addition to this intellectual elite, Protestant missionaries were another group who played a major role in the emergence of the written press in British colonies. For religious reasons, Protestant missionaries were especially preoccupied by the transcription of local languages and the teaching of literacy to the local population (much more than their Catholic counterparts), which was why they published the first newspapers in African languages. In South Africa, Methodists started Umshumayeli Wendaba (“The Teller of News” in Xhosa) in 1837, and Anglicans launched Iwe Ihorin (“Books” in Yoruba) in 1859 in Abeokuta (now Nigeria). The purpose of the latter, published by Reverend Henry Townsend of the Church Missionary Society, was initially to educate and convert indigenous people to Christianity (the first Bible in Yoruba was printed three years later on the same printing press). But the newspaper took an increasingly anti-slavery position that dragged him into politics. Although the primary motivation of these religious papers was evangelization, many of them supported anti-slavery campaigns, as the practice continued, despite its abolition in law. “Anti-slavery propaganda and religious propaganda” were often mixed in the first African newspapers (Tudesq 1995, 21). These newspapers, whether in the hands of local elites or missions, were often short-lived, were published irregularly, and their circulation was small (250 copies for newspapers in Sierra Leone in the 1860s, for example). But they provided a genuine space for freedom and exchange in which ideas circulated relatively freely, at least until the First World War. Very soon after, newspapers in the British colonies and protectorates began to condemn colonialism. For example, on March 9, 1881, the Lagos Times and Gold Coast Advertiser (created in 1880) wrote: “we are not clamoring for immediate independence, but it should be borne in mind that the present order of things will not last forever. A time will come when the colonies on the West Coast will be left to regulate their own internal and external affairs” (cited in Eribo and Jong-Ebot 1997, 57). Inspired by the French and American revolutions, journalists from the three British colonies in West Africa (Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and
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Nigeria) showed solidarity across borders, traveling frequently from one capital to another and often collaborating.3 Given the absence of a democratically elected government or any representation of Africans in official institutions, the press was the most effective weapon with which to stake claims and try to influence the course of events (Omu 1968). Journalists also judged newspapers to be the best way to reach the local populations and raise their awareness about freedom and independence issues, even if the reading public remained small, given the low literacy rate. The eminently political tone of the press at that time and its stance in favor of African rights did not please the colonial administrations, which often tried to curb it. However, the British authorities were relatively tolerant, compared with other colonial empires, no doubt because they had an unshakeable faith in the omnipotence of Victorian England. The situation in English-speaking West Africa contrasted markedly with that in neighboring French colonies. 2.2
The Francophone Press: Several Decades Later
A privately owned press appeared in French-speaking Africa almost a century after it emerged in English-speaking areas. Le Moniteur administratif du Sénégal et dépendances was created in 1856 in Saint-Louis (in modern-day Senegal) by General Faidherbe, Governor of the first French colony in sub-Saharan Africa. It remained the only newspaper in the French empire for nearly 30 years. In 1885 white settlers and mixedraced merchant-families created Le Réveil du Sénégal in Dakar, then Le Petit Sénégalais (1886) in Saint-Louis, L’Union africaine and L’Afrique occidentale (1896). Potential readers were the minority of Europeans and educated locals, often spread widely across the territory (Pasquier 1962, 478). Some of these newspapers criticized the colonial administration for favoring major merchants from the metropolis, to the detriment of smaller, local merchants. Publications in the hands of mixed families also condemned prejudice related to color. But the main purpose of most of these papers was to help the expatriate community with their nostalgia for
3 An emblematic personality of this period is Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1915), considered one of the founding figure of pan-Africanism: born a slave in the Virgin Islands (probably from Igbo parents from current Nigeria), he was considered both a Liberian-American and a Sierra Leonean Krio. Having traveled far and wide, he was a journalist (he led the Liberia Herald in the 1850s), a diplomat, a writer, and a politician.
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home, to build a sense of cohesion in the group, to keep readers abreast of events in Paris or to convey useful information to settlers (promotions, transfers, births, and deaths within the expatriate community). It was not until 1907 that L’AOF ,4 the first newspaper run by Africans, appeared in the French colonies. This was a newspaper of the SFIO (Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière), the French section of the Workers’ International Socialist Party, based in Conakry (presentday Guinea). Subsequently, a politicized press developed, especially in Senegal, where inhabitants of four Senegalese municipalities (Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar) had previously been recognized as French citizens and had the right to vote since 1885, in contrast to the rest of the French empire. During the French elections of 1910 and 1914, some short-lived newspapers were created, supporting candidates competing for the one seat reserved for Senegal in the French National Assembly. Political concerns and electoral propaganda, rather than commercial interests, were therefore at the root of this emergent indigenous press. Two other French colonies had some privately owned publications before the First World War, all owned by French settlers. In Dahomey (now Benin), the newspaper Benin (1907) proclaimed itself the “instrument of colonial interests”, created to “present to the public economic issues of purely local interest” as well as to “enlighten those in power”. Other newspapers in Côte d’Ivoire had similar aims (La Côte d’Ivoire and L’Indépendant , created in Grand Bassam and Abidjan in 1906 and 1910, respectively). Dhyana Ziegler and Molefi Asante’s (1992, 24) argument that “Nothing occurred in the press to indicate that there were people other than the colonial administrators in the territory” is therefore especially relevant for the parts of Africa under French rule. In the Belgian Congo (occupied by the Belgian government in 1908, after it was ceded by King Leopold II), the media landscape was even more of a desert. Newspaper publication was under the control of the authorities and, as secondary education was even more limited than in the French or British colonies, potential readers were even scarcer. Protestant missionaries created Sekukianga (“Daylight”) in Bas-Congo in 1891 and 4 AOF stands for “Afrique occidentale française” (“French West Africa”), a federation of eight French colonial territories, established in 1895, until 1960. It included Senegal, Ivory Coast, Dahomey (now Benin), French Guinea, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and Niger.
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Minsamu mia Yenge (“The Good News”) in Matadi in 1892. Catholics in turn created Ntetembo Eto (“Our Star”) in Kisantu in 1901 and missionary publications multiplied. But, given the low level of literacy, they have been described as a “press without real readers” (Ekambo 2013, 66). The themes addressed were primarily religious, very seldom social, and never political, since the missions had to accommodate the public authorities that gave them funding. Only a few Congolese people were involved in these publications—mainly former pupils of Catholic seminaries. On the government side, an official paper was published in the Belgian Congo from 1895 onward (Le Recueil Mensuel des Ordonnances ), while a little later, some newspapers were created by the Belgian settlers in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), where an emerging urban center developed around the mining industry (L’Étoile du Congo and Le Journal du Katanga, begun in 1911). Protestant missionaries also launched small newspapers in Togo and Cameroon, then administered by the Germans, such as Mulee-Ngea (“The Guide”) in 1903, Mwendi Ma Musango (“Message of Peace”) in 1906 and Elolombe Ya Cameroun (“Cameroon Sun”) in 1908. The colonial government only began to publish the official Amtsblatt Gazette in 1906 in Togo and in 1908 in Cameroon (Eribo and Tanjong 2002, 4). No newspapers existed at that time in Ruanda-Urundi (now Rwanda and Burundi), which were both under German administration. In the Portuguese colonies, the press was almost exclusively religious as well. 2.3
On the Eve of First World War: Contrasting Scenarios
At the turn of the twentieth century, the scramble for Africa came to an end and the continent (with the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia) was now entirely divided between the major European powers. The press situation was one of contrasts. In the British colonies, there had been a vibrant, highly politicized press for some 50 years, part of which managed by Africans criticizing the colonial administration and the very principle of colonialism. By 1900, 70 newspapers were circulating in trading posts and missions in English-speaking West Africa, including 35 in Sierra Leone, about 20 in the Gold Coast and about 10 in Nigeria. There was even a newspaper in tiny Gambia. However, in the French and Belgian colonies, only a few newspapers, owned by white settlers or missions, had appeared by the beginning of the twentieth century.
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What do these contrasting scenarios tell us about media systems and politics in Africa? They demonstrate the major influence of state intervention and policies. The fact that a local press emerged later in the French colonies was due to three factors. First, the legal framework: the 1881 French Press Law, applicable to the colonies (art. 69), stipulated that the editor of any publication on French territory had to be “French, over the age of majority (and should) enjoy his civil rights” (art. 6). Some literate Africans could therefore occupy subordinate positions in newsrooms, but under no circumstances could they publish a newspaper because, apart from the inhabitants of four specific Senegalese municipalities (see above), they were not granted French citizenship: they were only “subjects”. Second, education policies had an impact on the emergence of a potential newspaper readership. The French colonial schooling system was based on the concept of assimilation, aimed at producing a small elite that would completely adopt the language and values of France—it was not aimed at giving a basic education to a large number of children. The schools created in the French colonies were secular, elitist, and exclusively French-speaking. Conversely, the British system was based on the principle of association, leaving schools in the hands of Christian missionaries or Muslim groups who made extensive use of local languages, and who supported the costs of education themselves. As a result of this system, the number of locals enjoying basic literacy, but also enrolled in secondary schools, was much higher in British colonies. Finally, for the French government, all political decisions and intellectual activity were centered on Paris. As a result of this centralist approach, the development of local newspapers was hampered because huge taxes were imposed on printing paper and press equipment imported into African colonies, while newspapers published in Paris were not subject to import-tax.
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Between the Wars: Colonial and Anticolonial Media
After the First World War, a few newspapers owned by “native” people eventually appeared in French-speaking Africa. In Dahomey (now Benin), in 1917, the Récadère de Béhanzin, circulated briefly—it was a handwritten sheet copied onto carbon paper, a few hundred at a time, and distributed clandestinely. It was a series of six imaginary letters criticizing the French colonial administration, supposedly sent by Béhanzin, the last
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King of Abomey, who was defeated by the French in 1894 and exiled in Algeria where he died in 1906. In 1918, La Voix du Dahomey appeared, followed by Le Guide du Dahomey in 1920. There were two main reasons why these publications appeared in this small French colony. Firstly, Dahomey had the largest number of indigenous literate people (along with Senegal) because schools had been created there very early on, including some institutions supported by the Catholic Church. There was also a potential readership among a local community dubbed the Brazilians. These were either freed slaves who had returned from South America (Christianized and some of them literate) or descendants of Portuguese traders who had settled on the West African coast during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Brazilians formed a sort of intermediary class and acted as privileged interlocutors for the French colonial administration (Ronen 1974). Secondly, many Dahomean soldiers had fought alongside French troops during the war,5 so France was forced to grant them the French citizenship they consequently sought. The 1881 Press Law could therefore no longer prevent them from starting newspapers. Now recognized as French citizens, many Dahomeans became aware that they were not treated as equals to the French settlers by colonial authorities, and they started to use the press to express their dissatisfaction. For instance, Le Guide du Dahomey proclaimed in 1920: “The Great War, from which France emerged victorious and full of glory, gave us the opportunity to prove our unfailing loyalty and filial love. Our moral obligations, which we have fulfilled without counting, to the benefit of our adopted homeland, give us rights that we must safeguard” (Le Guide de Dahomey, n°1, December 11, 1920). 3.1
A Critical Francophone Press
In Dahomey, the press became a tool with which to attack the French authorities: those locals known as the “Akowés ” (also known as the “évolués ”, or those with basic education) demanded better schooling and reform of the unequal and segregated judicial system. They revolted
5 Dahomeans had participated in large numbers in the forces known as the “Senegalese riflemen”. Of the 200,000 riflemen recruited, 135,000 were sent to Europe to fight and 30,000 died.
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against the incompetence or cruelty of local administrators (Codo 1978; Lokossou 1976). The colonial administration was infuriated by such attacks, and feared dissent would spread to other colonies. In 1933, Governor Coppet stated: “Dahomean newspapers are clearly hostile to the French administration and influence. Their undeclared but obvious goal is to prepare for the emancipation of Dahomey, by shaking off the yoke of French control. These newspapers support the troublemakers, provoke unruliness, encourage tax resistance, teach contempt for authority”. Even though their circulations were low (between 300 and 2000 copies) and their publication irregular, the Governor noted: “Each paper is read in the villages, each article is perfidiously distributed and commented on in the huts. Those who pull the strings of these papers have a knowledge of the indigenous mentality and know exactly what they are doing”. The French authorities then opted for repression: trials against news editors, police searches, and restrictive legal measures came into force. In 1921, a decree required prior authorization for newspapers, even those published by French citizens: “The publication in West Africa of any newspaper or periodical written in indigenous or foreign languages may not take place without the prior authorization of the Governor General, granted after consulting the Conseil Supérieur du Gouvernement. Authorization can be revoked at any time”. In addition, infringing the decree carried a jail term of one to five years and a fine of 300 to 300,000 francs for “the sale, distribution or exhibition of drawings, engravings, paintings, emblems, images, writings, printed matter, periodicals or otherwise, likely to undermine the respect due to French authority in the AOF” (art. 6), as well as “any excitation of indigenous people to revolt against French authority by French, Europeans or assimilated persons” (art. 3). The French authorities also prohibited newspapers or books from abroad that presented anti-colonialist views. The French also used economics as a weapon to weaken the local press. The salaries of literate Africans hired by the colonial administration were kept at very low levels: educated locals could therefore not afford to set up publications, or even to buy copies of newspapers on a regular basis. Apart from in Senegal, the local population could not develop their own media businesses and generate any income from them. Yet, at that time, the emerging local press was ambiguous in its criticism of the colonial masters. It attacked the repressive and unfair local colonial administration but did not question the colonial situation itself.
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A number of early indigenous journalists preferred to tackle traditional authorities and customary powers they viewed as retrograde, rather than attack the colonial project itself (Ronen 1974). Instead of dreaming of independence, the desire expressed by many of these journalists was simply to be recognized as fully French citizens. Their real frustration was that their level of education allowed them to aspire to a higher degree of recognition than they actually enjoyed. 3.2
An Emerging Market
During the 1930s, while indigenous, privately owned newspapers were starting to hector the colonial authorities in Dahomey, a local press was also emerging and developing in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. In Senegal, because people in four key cities (Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar) were recognized French citizens and could therefore vote, the press revolved around local elections. Blaise Diagne, the first Black man elected to the French National Assembly in 1914, and his main competitors, Galandou Diouf and Lamine Gueye, were supported by several newspapers, which formed the backbone of their political campaigns.6 During the 1932 French parliamentary elections in particular, there was fierce competition between Diagne and Diouf, who both used the press to promote their views and to denounce their opponent’s shortcomings. This campaign had a considerable impact beyond Senegal and resonated among the local educated elite across the rest of French West Africa. The emerging local press was therefore founded and managed by small groups of intellectuals whose ambitions were more political than economic, and whose concerns were more “assimilation” than “emancipation”. As faithful disciples of the colonial model, their demands were just for total equality with French citizens in terms of rights and duties.7
6 Blaise Diagne was supported by La Démocratie au Sénégal (1923), L’Ouest Africain Français (1926), La France Coloniale (1927), Le Franco-Sénégalais Indépendant (1934), La Bastille. Galandou Diouf had his own newspapers: Le Périscope (1929) in Dakar, L’Echo de Rufisque in Rufisque and Senegal (1934). Lamine Gueye had bought L’AOF. 7 At the same time, African students were creating publications in mainland France such as Les Continents, Le Paria, La Voix des Nègres, La Race Nègre, La Revue du Monde Noir, Le Cri des Nègres, Légitime Défense, L’Etudiant Noir. They raised questions about
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In Côte d’Ivoire, possibly influenced by the dynamism of the press in neighboring British Gold Coast, several new publications appeared: L’Indépendant Colonial (1931), Le Trait d’Union (1930), L’Éclaireur de Côte d’Ivoire (1935), Le Flambeau de Côte d’Ivoire (1937). Far from having the critical tone of the Dahomean newspapers, these publications were very conciliatory toward the colonial authorities. L’Éclaireur, which called itself “the first black newspaper in Côte d’Ivoire”,8 proclaimed in its first edition: “the overall vital role of our magnificent colony within the framework of the French nation” and its wish to “collaborate sincerely and totally with the government” in order to “serve the French colonial cause even better” (quoted by Campbell 1998, 76). Although it was quite limited, the emerging market for a local press in Francophone Africa attracted an experienced French businessman, Charles de Breteuil. Having created newspapers in Tangier and Casablanca, he launched a weekly newspaper in Dakar in 1933 called Paris-Dakar, which became the first privately owned daily newspaper in French-speaking Africa in 1935. He then launched Paris-Congo (1936) in Brazzaville, Paris-Tana (1936) in Madagascar, and France-Afrique in Côte d’Ivoire (1938). This was the first attempt (and remains the only one to date) to set up a regional media group in French-speaking Africa. These newspapers shared one section in common, which was produced in Paris, and local pages were added in each African city, making the production of the different versions a considerable technical feat for the time, because the printing plates had to be transported to the various destinations for each issue. 3.3
The Belgian Colonies: African News (Almost) Without Africans
The tiny Kingdom of Belgium gained the two new territories of Ruanda and Urundi, following the German defeat in World War I. Here, newspapers multiplied, published by large Belgian corporations or individual businessmen. L’Avenir colonial belge (1920) and L’Essor du Congo (1928)
the way France treated the nationals in its colonies, and helped to spread the ideas of the “Negritude” movement (aiming at enhancing the specific characteristics of African cultures), created by the Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor, and the Martinican Aimé Césaire. 8 The newspaper was officially owned by a fisherman who was Senegalese (and therefore a French citizen) but it was in fact published by two Ivorians (Fierens 2017, 106).
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were among the flagships of the Belgian colonial project. They targeted a European settler audience; the indigenous population had no voice among their pages. The law was also very restrictive in the Belgian colonies. A 1922 decree stipulated that “the publication in the Belgian Congo of any newspaper or periodical may not take place without the prior authorization of the Governor General. Authorization can be revoked at any time” (art. 2). The press from Brussels was also controlled: the same decree of 1922 also stated that “the introduction and circulation in the Belgian Congo of newspapers or periodicals published outside the colony, in any language whatsoever, may be prohibited by order of the Governor General” (art. 1) (Bart 1982, 28). A report by the Colonial Institute issued in 1924 justified this measure for fear of “fairly serious incidents, due to pan-Negro propaganda originating from America, and the introduction into the colony of pamphlets and newspapers from that same source, all of which are likely to cause insubordination, even revolt, of the Indigenous against the Whites, to excite them and to destroy their essential moral authority…” (cited in Bart 1982, 28). The same report continued: “There is no indigenous colonial press yet… for the good reason that the number of literate coloreds is still very small. In any case, it is beyond question that such a press is only useful if written by Europeans who are very cautious, very knowledgeable, very experienced and extremely sensitive. Left in the hands of people of color, it would not fail to become dangerous and subversive”. The Belgian authorities nevertheless allowed the Catholic missionaries to start small publications to support the evangelization of the population which was continuing apace (Ndaywel è Nziem 2008, 404). Missionaries also created in Congo two dailies in French, Le Courrier d’Afrique (1930) and La Croix du Congo (1933) in order to defend colonial policies, but also to support the position of the Catholics as opposed to the anti-clerics, who were currently active in Belgian politics. Very few Congolese could read these newspapers at the time (Ekambo 2013). In Rwanda, at about the same time (1933), the White Fathers launched the monthly Kinyamateka (“The Teller of News” in Kinyarwanda), devoted to encouraging “the spiritual elevation of indigenous society”. As the only newspaper in Rwanda, it became quite popular and its circulation rose to 25,000 copies. As well as news from the religious community, it publicized the decisions of the Mwami (the King of Rwanda) and those of the Belgian administration.
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The “Free-Market” Approach of the English-Speaking Press
During the same period, the press in the British Empire presented a quite different picture, not only from a political but also an economic perspective. In West Africa, a vibrant privately owned African press began to develop, with coverage of, and movement of journalists across the whole region. For example, in Nigeria, between 1921 and 1930, more than 20 newspapers were created, including 7 dailies.9 The West African Pilot was a case in point: launched by Nnamdi Azikiwe (the future president of independent Nigeria) in Lagos in 1937, the newspaper took a new American-style approach, with many short features, photos, and human-interest stories. Azikiwe had studied sociology and journalism in the United States, then had worked as a journalist in Accra (in present-day Ghana). From the outset, the paper aimed at both criticizing the colonial authorities and developing a successful economic model, based on circulation more than on advertising. For Azikiwe, the press was certainly a political tool, but it was also a business, and had to turn a profit (Oso 1991). In East Africa, running a successful business was also a major concern for publishers, mainly British settlers and Indian traders: their investment had to be worth the money. The East African Standard (1902) was created in Mombasa, Kenya, by an Indian trader who sold it in 1905 to two British businessmen. In 1910, the newspaper was transferred to Nairobi, and gradually became a regional newspaper group, publishing various titles in the neighboring colonies of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Uganda as well as in Kenya. As an outlet for the settlers, it demanded more autonomy from the British authorities. The East African Chronicle (1919), owned by an Indian manufacturer, gave a voice to emerging local political actors, including the Young Kikuyu Association, established in 1922, of which Jomo Kenyatta was a member. The future president of independent Kenya then created the monthly newspaper Muiguithania (“The Reconciler”) in 1925, the first political newspaper published in a local language, aiming at defending the interests of the Kikuyu (Gadsden 1986).
9 The three major dailies were the Nigerian Daily Times (1926), the Daily Service (1933) and the Nigerian Standard. All of them owned and managed by Nigerians, they were relatively lenient toward the colonial authorities in order to preserve good relations with the mainly British advertisers (Tudesq 1995, 34).
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Nationalism was brewing in the British colonies, where the population had also participated in the war effort and some demobilized African soldiers had realized that the colonizer was fallible and could, therefore, possibly be overcome. Several newspapers reported and denounced forced labor and compulsory taxation. Where Africans were not entitled to start their own publications, they issued their demands in “Asian” newspapers run by Indian traders who enjoyed more rights than Africans (Makali 2004). In the 1930s, faced with growing nationalist discontent, the colonial administration in East Africa created its own newspapers in local languages, in order to disseminate British propaganda and it suspended several newspapers that were judged to be dangerous. British settlers also used their own publications to defend their interests in the face of growing collaboration between Indian and African workers (Durrani 2006). In the southern part of the continent, the media landscape was dominated by South Africa, independent since 1910. Five types of newspapers were competing, each of them with its own market: a British press (mainly the Argus group, whose shareholders were rich businessmen from the mining industry), an Afrikaner press (among them Die Burger, meaning “The Citizen”, which was fighting against the domination of the “English”10 ), Christian publications in local languages (e.g. Xhosa and Zulu), and a Bantu political press (including Ikwezi Le Afrika—“The Morning Star of Africa”—created in 1912, spreading the increasingly militant views of the African National Congress, ANC), as well as some titles aimed at the Indian community.11 There was a real diversity of opinion, at the time, despite the gradual imposition of apartheid. Thus, in contrast to the situation in the French and Belgian colonies, the press in English-speaking Africa took a different approach. Firstly, it was rooted in “free-market” principles: from the outset, newspaper groups were linked to the business community, which both invested and advertised in these publications. From the beginning of the twentieth 10 It was led by Dr. D.F. Malan, a pillar of the Afrikaner National Party, who became Prime Minister in 1948 and who officially established the apartheid regime. 11 Mohandas Gandhi, a young Indian lawyer residing in South Africa, founded the Indian Opinion in 1906 which spoke out against racial discrimination.
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century, printing companies owned by Africans were established in the British colonies, and, as a result, most publishers were not dependent on the printing equipment of foreign businessmen, nor on the religious missions, nor on the colonial authorities. This technological independence enabled economic and ideological autonomy. Secondly, these newspapers adopted what could be called the “Anglo-American” journalism model, as opposed to the “French” journalism model: focusing on facts rather than commentary (or clearly separating the two) and claiming independence from government. Aiming at profitability, the newspapers in the British colonies targeted the widest possible readership, including the local working classes. Last but not least, in the wake of the anti-slavery press, some newspapers initiated a more nationalist discourse, both in English and local languages. 3.5
Radio Begins on the African Continent
Between the two World Wars, the colonial authorities realized they could derive political benefit from the new communication tool that was radio. Faced with growing demands for autonomy, the British Crown started to establish radio stations in its main colonies (Armour 1984): Kenya (1930), Sierra Leone (1934), and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) (1935).12 The British and French colonial powers quickly realized that this new instrument could be useful for their imperial policies. In May 1931, during the international colonial exhibition in Paris, the Poste Colonial started to operate, broadcasting programs on short wave to America, Africa, and the Middle East. The initial aim was to connect French nationals spread across the globe to their homeland and to inform them about current events in Europe. In 1932, the British launched the Empire Service, broadcasting the BBC to Canada (independent since 1931), Australia, India, and the African colonies. Radio in the colonies was mainly directed toward the European settlers because only a very small number of Africans could afford to purchase a radio set. Programs were at first broadcast just from London or Paris, but as early as 1936, the Empire Service office in Accra (Gold Coast, 12 They were not the first radio stations on the continent. As early as 1924, three stations had opened in South Africa, but the government granted itself a monopoly in 1933 by setting up the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). In 1928 in Kenya, a radio station had been created by the British East Africa Company.
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now Ghana) began to develop its own programs and to recruit African presenters to broadcast in local languages (Tudesq 1998a, 57).
4 After 1945: The Media and the Path to Independence During the Second World War, the African elite discovered the power of the airwaves. In the British colonies, the BBC was used heavily during the conflict, broadcasting programs from Nairobi, Lagos, and Lusaka aimed at the troops in both Indian and African languages (Gadsden 1986). In the French colonies, various colonial radio services took sides: for example, Radio Dakar, established in 1940, supported the Vichy government (supporting Pierre-François Boisson, Governor of Afrique Occidentale Française—AOF), while Radio Brazzaville, also created in 1940, rallied to the cause of the “Free France” government exiled in London,13 as supported by Governor Félix Eboué of Afrique Équatoriale Française (AEF).14 As contact with Paris or London was difficult to maintain on a daily basis, the two radio stations gained a certain amount of autonomy and played an important role in disseminating information and propaganda. Despite reaching only a tiny minority of the African population, this minority was the one that would eventually “play an essential role in emancipation movements” (Tudesq 1998b, 60). Another example was in the Belgian Congo, where the only existing radio station, Radio Leopoldville (set up in 1937 in a Jesuit school), was requisitioned by the Governor General to broadcast propaganda from the Belgian government exiled in London. Congo was, at that time, the only Belgian territory not occupied by Nazi forces and Radiodiffusion nationale belge (RNB), launched in 1940, acted as the broadcaster of the Resistance both in Europe and in Africa (Ekambo 2013, 139–141). Many newspapers stopped publishing during the war, because of the shortage of paper, but also because a good number of journalists—who
13 In 1941, Radio Douala was also created to contribute to war propaganda: the first Cameroonian radio station was called “the child of war” (Muluh and Ndoh 2002, 6). 14 AEF stands for “Afrique Équatoriale Française” (French Equatorial Africa): established in 1910, this second federation of French colonies gathered together Gabon, the French Congo, Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic) and Chad. Cameroon was added when it was taken from Germany and partially placed under French administration after the First World War.
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were willing to defend their “homeland”—were sent to the front. This commitment led the African elite to demand to be treated more fairly by the colonial authorities, even before the end of the war. 4.1
Political and Press Freedoms in French Africa
The Allies won the war, but the colonial powers were weakened and had to adapt to global changes. First, they had to deal with the claims of those colonies that had participated in the war. Moreover, at the international level, they now faced two powerful anticolonial actors: the United States and the USSR. In February 1944, the Comité français de libération nationale (French Committee of National Liberation)15 organized a conference in Brazzaville (in present-day Republic of Congo) which proposed a new colonial system and the abolition of the most oppressive practices such as forced labor. In 1946, the new French Constitution renamed the colonies “Overseas Territories” of the “French Union” and granted their inhabitants political rights, freedom to form trade unions, and freedom of the press. A law was passed to extend French citizenship to the whole population of these territories. This new context brought tremendous changes for the local press. Local political parties and trade unions were created by these new French citizens, many of whom published their own newspapers. The press became the favored tool of a local elite seeking election to the local assemblies of the new French Union or, indeed, to the National Assembly in Paris. Staking a claim to a place in these institutions seemed to be the priority, rather than defying them or demanding alternatives. While the clamor for independence was already widespread in several British colonies,16 most intellectuals in French-speaking Africa did not share the same agenda. Even in Dahomey—known as a “rebel” colony— the new French Union was welcomed. La Voix du Dahomey wrote: “Dahomey is not an independent country because, thank God, we have retained enough common sense to understand the need for France’s presence at our side” (n°159, August 1948). And Le Phare du Dahomey argued: “We know that Dahomey is still at the stage of the bow and 15 This was the name of the joint government established by “Free France” exiled in London and the French authorities supporting it on the African continent. 16 In 1947, India and Pakistan gained independence which galvanized Britain’s African colonies’ struggle for the same outcome.
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arrow, that it does not yet know how to make simple gunpowder or forge a simple rifle or even build a simple hot air balloon. How could Dahomey push out the representatives of a nation that has reached the age of the atomic bomb, radar and airplane?” (n°29, May 1947). However, though the link with France was not questioned, some newspapers soon began to denounce the failure of the French Union to actually bring about change. The press became the space not only for disputes between the local elite and the colonial bourgeoisie, but also for conflicts between literate Africans. The relative solidarity and unanimity that prevailed among the African elites in the 1920s and 1930s disappeared as a result of competition for political positions. In several territories, local political leaders fuelled rivalries between communities, clans, or regions, in order to establish their electoral bases. These divisions, in which some partisan newspapers took sides, were to mark the political landscape for decades, and were to last well beyond independence. “Newspapers” might not be the most appropriate word for these local publications which, in the 1950s tended to consist of occasional and short-lived pamphlets, printed on a few pages, linked to political parties or trade unions. They flourished in all the colonies, including the more isolated ones in the Sahel and Equatorial zones, where there had been no independent local press until this time: for instance, Niger, Sudan (now Mali), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Chad, Oubangui-Chari (now Central African Republic), and Gabon. Even in Senegal, where the press had a much longer history, more than 170 new publications were registered between 1945 and 1960 (Tudesq 1995, 51). A case in point was La Condition Humaine, launched by Léopold Sédar Senghor, a leading figure in African politics and the man soon to become the President of Senegal. This newspaper was a mouthpiece for his political party, the BDS (Bloc démocratique sénégalais), promoting his political views and personal concerns about culture and education. Le Réveil (renamed Afrique Noire in 1951) was also published in Dakar: this newspaper was the official voice of the Rassemblement démocratique africain (RDA), a federation of political parties from West and Equatorial Africa established in 1946 and led by the Ivorian, Félix Houphouët-Boigny.17 Pan-Africanist, anticolonialist, and initially affiliated to the French Communist Party, the RDA was severely repressed
17 President of Côte d’Ivoire from 1960 to 1993.
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by the colonial authorities and the circulation of Le Réveil was very restricted. Ideological divisions inside the federation were discreetly encouraged by the French at regional as well as at local levels, and Houphouët-Boigny was instrumental in progressively distancing the RDA from the communists and aligning it with the colonial authorities’ views (Cooper 2014). At the same time, a Catholic press was developing and, in the face of increasing competition for news, started to publish more general and social information. New publications were launched, which would become key players: La Croix du Dahomey in Cotonou (1946), La Semaine Africaine in Brazzaville (1952) and L’Effort Camerounais in Douala (1955). But the most influential among them was Afrique Nouvelle, a weekly newspaper created in 1947 in Dakar by the bishops of West Africa. Aimed at the educated elite all over West Africa, it affirmed independence from the colonial authorities, was free from religious influence, and was open to emerging African nationalist discourses (Lenoble-Bart 1996). The new African representatives sitting on the National Assembly in Paris had very few ways to communicate with their constituents and Afrique Nouvelle became the forum through which they could present their manifestos and activities to their electorates. The newspaper’s circulation never reached more than 18,000 copies, but each issue was passed from hand to hand and read by at least ten people (Lenoble-Bart 1996, 53). Every week, the editorial staff received hundreds of letters from readers. For the first time in French Africa, information was spreading, and ideas were being discussed, across borders. It is probable that Afrique Nouvelle contributed to creating something that had not been seen hitherto, namely a public opinion peculiar to West Africa. In the meantime, Charles de Breteuil’s newspaper group continued to expand,18 and maintained its focus on a European audience and its defense of French interests. These were by far the most sophisticated publications available in French-speaking Africa. Another publication owned by a French couple, Anne and Maurice Voisin, Les Échos de Guinée (renamed Les Échos d’Afrique Noire after it moved to Dakar), became 18 De Breteuil created La Presse de Guinée in 1954 and La Presse du Cameroun in 1955.
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famous among French settlers, especially after it launched a campaign against the so-called “Libano-Syriens” who had lived in Senegal for decades (Thioub 2009). The French colonial authorities feared any hint of nationalism and anticolonialism in the AOF, especially in Senegal. They mistrusted the Lebanese-Syrian community, suspecting it of supporting anticolonial ideas spreading in the Arab world, especially in Algeria, and of advocating on behalf of Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser. France banned the publications of Arab nationalist movements in its West African colonies and kept the Lebanese-Syrian community under strict surveillance. France’s other major interests were in former German possessions— the territories of Cameroon and Togo. Both countries had been divided between France and Britain after the First World War. Pro-independence discourses emerged in the local press in both places, and gave voice to those among the local population who were critical of the brutality of French rule and of the fact that new borders had divided local communities.19 Cameroonians created Le Flambeau in 1945, then La Voix du Peuple du Cameroun in 1949, linked to the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), a radical party that demanded independence and which started a liberation struggle in 1953.20 Suppressed and forced to go underground, the UPC was also supported by La Lumière, L’Étoile, and La Vérité, all newspapers which demanded not only immediate and unconditional independence, but also the reunification of French and British Cameroon (Eribo and Jong-Ebot 1997, 53).21 In Togo, members of the CUT party (Comité de l’Unité Togolaise) launched anticolonial newspapers (L’Étendard, La Muse Togolaise, Togoland) (Douti et al. 2021), but never took up arms against the French. Indeed, Cameroon was
19 The British Cameroon was reattached to Nigeria and British Togo to the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana). In the parts of Cameroon and Togo which were under French rule, nationalists not only demanded independence but also reunification of these former territories. 20 In April 1950, La Voix du Peuple du Cameroun wrote “Colonization is theft, pillaging and murder” (cited by Tudesq 1995, 53), which was somewhat unusual discourse in French Africa at the time. 21 On the other hand, L’Éveil du Cameroun (belonging to the French settlers), L’Effort camerounais (in the hands of the Catholic Church), and de Bréteuil’s La Presse du Cameroun and Bamiliké were moderate newspapers, and stood on the margins of the political debate.
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the only French colony in Sub-Saharan Africa where an armed rebellion fought for independence.22 4.2
The Late Awakening of the Belgian Colonies
After the Second World War, in the Belgian colonies, the press did not experience the same expansion as in the French possessions, mainly because the Belgian authorities granted very limited additional freedoms to the indigenous population. The paternalistic colonial system remained the same, and only a few families considered “évoluées ” (“advanced”23 ) were allowed permission to access certain areas previously reserved for whites, to consume alcohol or to enroll children in “interracial” schools (Ndaywel è Nziem 2008, 391). The Belgian Congo perpetuated a system of racial discrimination which was, in some respects, close to South African apartheid. The Congolese population had participated in great numbers in the war effort, providing mineral resources and thousands of soldiers; they had also met soldiers from neighboring colonies, and had realized the disparities in their rights. However, there were few local intellectuals among the population who were equipped to denounce Belgian exploitation and demand political rights. This was due to very limited numbers of Congolese accessing secondary-level education, although primary schooling—mainly run by the Catholic Church–had increased significantly (35 percent of Congolese could read and write, which was much more than in the French colonies). Consequently, there was only a very small local elite24 (Fierens 2014, 2017). Those “advanced” locals who spoke out were concerned with being recognized as a distinct intermediate class, between colonial settlers and
22 Madagascar experienced a popular anticolonial insurgency in 1947, led by the Mouvement démocratique de la rénovation malgache (MDRM), which was brutally supressed, resulting in thousands of deaths. 23 These individuals and families had to be officially recognized and registered as such. Until 1958, they never numbered more than 2000 (Ndaywel è Nziem 2008, 415). They had to prove that their way of life was similar to those of the Europeans. 24 During the war, as it was not possible to recruit staff in Belgium, priests, school teachers, and civil servants had to be found locally, among the educated Congolese, thereby slightly increasing the small group of the population who were “advanced”.
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natives. An editorial published in 1946 in La Voix du Congolais (a publication created after the war by the colonial authorities and targeting the small population of educated Congolese) reflected these claims: In the face of history and in the eyes of humanity, we, the inhabitants of the Belgian Congo, trust in the good maternal care of Belgium, which must ensure our happy development in the same way as its own children. Consequently, with this protection in mind, we, the advanced indigenous people of the Belgian Congo, strongly express the following wishes: that the legislator take measures to ensure that obscurantism is eliminated in all areas and from all points of view; that the barrier established by ethnic or racial considerations is truly broken; and that, finally, once our destiny is cleared, we are able to enjoy adequate social and moral advantages. (n°2, 1946, cited by Ndaywel è Nziem 2008, 392)
Although the number of media publications tripled in the decade between 1948 and 1958 (from 112 to 350), most of them still belonged to Belgian settlers or companies, and to the Catholic Church. However, Belgian editors gradually opened their doors to Congolese staff in order to reach the growing number of local readers. Some even devoted sections of their newspapers to indigenous affairs, which later formed the basis of autonomous publications by the end of the 1950s.25 Despite denying political rights to the local Congolese,26 the Belgians were nevertheless forced to authorize trade unions in 1946, as the number of employees in the colony had reached 700,000 (out of a population estimated at 12 million). The first publication that was entirely managed by ethnic Congolese people was Le Syndicalisme Indigène (1946), published by the first trade union of skilled indigenous workers. This newspaper, which was distributed free of charge, claimed that the aim of its members was not to replace the European workers, but to collaborate with the 25 The Catholic daily Le Courrier d’Afrique created a supplement entitled Présence Congolaise in 1956, which became an autonomous paper in 1958. L’Avenir du Congo did the same with Les Actualités Africaines whose indigenous colleagues launched their own publication entitled Congo in 1957. 26 According to historian Benoît Verhaegen, the Belgian colonial administration did not
allow the Congolese to create political parties, not so much because they feared a debate on emancipation, but because they thought that political pluralism would reproduce the political divisions imported from the homeland, between Catholics and the laity; the latter being more interested in challenging the supremacy of the Catholic missionaries than in fighting for the rights of the local Congolese (Verhaegen 2003, 158).
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European company owners in order to improve their daily living and working conditions. Despite its relative weakness, the indigenous press in the Belgian Congo was eventually instrumental in bringing the debate about independence to the fore. In August 1956, the Catholic periodical Conscience Africaine, published a manifesto calling for an end to colonial rule and racial discrimination, although it was far from radical as it reflected the position of a section of the Congolese elite close to the Catholic Church, demanding more equality with the Belgians. Nonetheless, it opened the way for more radical positions and, a few weeks later, Abako, a local association of the Bakongo people,27 published another manifesto, in the fiercely anti-clerical paper L’Avenir, openly demanding independence and multiparty system, and criticizing the separation between the Congolese elite and the masses established by the colonial system. Even more radical publications then appeared, such as Congo (1957), published by Philippe Kanza and L’Indépendance (1958) by Patrice Lumumba (soon to become the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo), all clamoring for independence. But the Belgian colonial authorities did not seem to understand the winds of change blowing through the African continent, and it was only in August 1959 that the Governor General issued a decree granting freedoms of thought, union, and association for Congolese people, barely ten months before independence itself (June 1960). The local press in Rwanda, though still embryonic, also reflected significant political change. As the church and the Belgian administration were withdrawing their support from the royal Mwami and the dignitaries of the Tutsi court in favor of the Hutu majority, the Catholic bulletin, Kinyamateka (“The Teller of News”), reflected this and began to denounce discrimination against the majority Hutu population. This editorial turn was led by Grégoire Kayibanda, who was to become Rwanda’s first president on independence in 1962 (Munyakayanza 2013). Although political parties were banned before 1959, political pamphlets had already begun to circulate (Bart 1982), for example, Soma (1955) was published by Rwanda’s first political association, Aprosoma (Association pour la promotion sociale de la masse), which was opposed to the Tutsi monarchy and demanded equal treatment of both Hutus and 27 As indigenous political parties were not allowed, the Congolese created cultural associations based on language and ethnicity, and used them to voice their initial political and social claims.
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Tutsis. In 1957, the Manifeste des Bahutu was published which also clearly supported the Hutu majority. The following year, opting for an increasingly radical tone, another newspaper close to Aprosoma wrote: “For you too, young girls and young people of the Hutu Movement, the time has come… to take up the challenge of Tutsi youth. Arm yourself with your machetes, let’s get rid of the reeds that damage our field. By means of hoes, we must uproot them in order to fertilize our field, the sowing season is near… Don’t forget it… those who kill the rats have no pity for the pregnant female!” (quoted by Bart 1982, 134). This tone and wording are reminiscent of what was heard 35 years later during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi people. Therefore, in Belgian Rwanda, the struggle for independence appeared to be a secondary concern, compared with the struggle led by the Hutu elite to overthrow the Tutsi monarchy. The monarchy was eventually overthrown in 1959, leading to major massacres of the Tutsi population and forcing tens of thousands into exile. Given the low circulation of the press at the time, newspapers may not have been major actors in what is known as the “Hutu revolution”, but they provided support for this ideology, on which the Hutu regime was to build its power for the next three decades. In neighboring Burundi, the political situation developed very differently. The press was limited to two publications belonging to Belgian settlers (La Chronique Congolaise launched in 1948 and La Dépêche du Ruanda-Urundi created in 1952, aimed at white readers), a Protestant newspaper, Burakeye (“The Day is Dawning”) in 1952, and two Catholic titles created in 1954: Temps nouveaux d’Afrique and a monthly magazine in Kirundi, Ndongozi (“The Guide”). Ndongozi became popular and attained a monthly circulation of 20,000 (Palmans 2008). As it moved closer to the new nationalist Uprona party (Union pour le progrès national), created by the Burundian King’s son (Prince Louis Rwagasore),28 it was increasingly considered subversive by the colonial administration (Deslaurier 2002). No doubt the Belgian authorities felt they were less in control than in Rwanda, which was why they launched their own publication, Amakuru y’Burundi (“News of Burundi” in Kirundi) and never allowed the two main nationalist parties to publish their own newspapers, limiting Burundian political parties to pamphlets. 28 Prince Rwagasore, who lobbied for independence, was murdered in 1961 with the probable complicity of the Belgians.
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Rumors and word of mouth also helped political propaganda to circulate until independence in 1962 (Deslaurier 2005, 549). 4.3
The Development of Broadcasting in the Colonies
After the Second World War, the colonial powers had a monopoly over the airwaves, which was another advantage in dealing with an occasionally rebellious local print media, and which allowed them to reach the local population, which was mostly illiterate. Although radio was initially a privilege reserved for European settlers, it quickly became a space for African elites as well, and thus, radio programming and the profiles of its broadcasters were adapted to this new audience. In the 1950s, the French clearly understood that radio could be an instrument of government policy and they therefore established broadcasting stations in all of their colonial capitals. In addition to Radio Dakar and Radio Brazzaville (which were launched in 1940, covering West Africa and French Equatorial Africa respectively), Radio Dahomey and Radio Lomé were created in 1953, Radio Fort-Lamy (now N’Djamena, Chad) in 1955, Radio Soudan (now Mali) in 1957, Radio Niger and Radio Haute-Volta (now Burkina Faso) in 1959. In order for programs to be produced locally, a public company, Sorafom (Société de Radiodiffusion de la France d’Outre-mer), was created in 1955, to equip and train local journalists. In Paris, the RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision française) also reinforced and increased its capacity to broadcast to France’s colonies. One of the concerns was to counter the pan-Arab and pan-African nationalism of The Voice of the Arabs, an international radio station established in Cairo by Nasser in 1953 which broadcast in several African languages and was listened to not only in the north of the continent, but throughout East Africa. On the Belgian side, Radio Congo Belge was established in Léopoldville in 1947, broadcasting programs in several local languages. Subsequently, relay-stations were created in other towns: in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi) in 1955, in Bukavu in 1956, in Coquilhatville (Mbandaka) and Luluabourg (Kananga) in 1959. In the same year (1959), the Belgians initiated Radio Usumbura in Bujumbura, which also broadcast to Rwanda, before finally establishing a station in Kigali in 1960. Once again, the French and the Belgians were latecomers in the broadcasting arena compared with the British Empire, where, by the end of the 1950s, each British colony had at least one radio station and Nigeria
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even had a television station. The BBC in London hosted dozens of African trainees every year, to provide sufficient local broadcasters in the colonies. For example, the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS), located in all three regions of the country, already had 186 Nigerians out of 208 staff members in 1952, and 415 Nigerians out of 472 in 1958. The impact of radio on political discourse in the 1950s is a matter of debate. Tudesq (1995) suggests that, despite radio broadcasting being monopolized by the colonial powers, it may have served to strengthen a sense of “national” identity among listeners, at a time when there were generally few links to unify what were, in effect, diverse communities living in the same colony. Consequently, at the time of independence, radio may have contributed to the fact that there was very little questioning of the arbitrary borders imposed under colonialism. Nevertheless, it remained an elitist medium, limited to a few wealthy people in large cities: in 1960, most of French-speaking Africa still had fewer than 20 radio sets per 1000 inhabitants, with the exception of Gabon and Senegal. It would take the invention and introduction of the transistor in the 1960s, to allow radio to become a truly popular medium. 4.4
Different Colonial Powers, Different Media Systems
As discussed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the press that developed in French-speaking Africa was born out of a different, more restrictive, system than in English-speaking Africa. After the Second World War, even though political and press freedoms were granted to the African citizens of the “Union française” (“French Union”, which preceded the French Community that we mentioned above), systemic differences endured and formed the basis of the different media systems that still persist today in the two distinct linguistic areas. The four structural dimensions we are using to compare media systems were different in many ways in the Francophone and Anglophone colonies (though there were some similarities too), namely: the development of media markets; connections between press and political parties; journalistic training and capacity; and the degree of state intervention in the media sector. Media markets and media companies’ business models differed significantly in French-speaking Africa compared to British Africa. The indigenous press in French colonies in the 1950s, and to a lesser extent in Belgian possessions, consisted of partisan, often short-lived and looselystructured publications, with very low circulations. News groups in the
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British colonies, however, were publishing multiple newspapers in various cities, and were well-supported by the local business community. Kenya, for instance, had two major dailies, The Nation (created in 1958) and the East African Standard, but also a political press in Kiswahili and newspapers supporting openly anticolonial parties. Major British press groups invested in this flourishing market, such as the Daily Mirror Group (known in London for its sensational journalism aimed at the British working class), which acquired the Daily Times in Lagos (in 1947), then, eventually, the Daily Graphic in Accra and the Sierra Leone Daily Mail.29 Another regional venture was Drum, a magazine originally started in South Africa in 1951, but which then aimed to reach the whole continent, and created special versions for the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Nigeria. By the late 1950s, Drum’s cumulative circulation was over 500,000 copies per month (Fleming and Falola 2005). The English-speaking press benefited from the provision of capital for media companies, the simultaneous ownership of several newspapers in different areas and in different languages, and the interest of foreign investors. Furthermore, its financial strength gave it a certain independence from the colonial authorities.30 Consequently, on the eve of independence, there was not one single daily paper owned by an African in French-speaking Africa (the only dailies belonged to de Breteuil or white settlers), while there were many in the British colonies. In all colonial territories, the African-run press was generally close to political parties, if not directly linked. Because of the connection between press and politics, newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines were the means by which the African political elite spread their ideas and won-over voters at election time in both Francophone and Anglophone areas. However, two major distinctions must be made. Firstly, this political (rather than commercial) tendency among indigenous newspapers was much more pronounced on the French-speaking side. Secondly, the political claims were different, especially regarding independence—many English-speaking newspapers owned by locals were deeply nationalist and 29 The Daily Mirror’s investments in Africa were not motivated solely by an attractive market. 30 By contrast the only relatively large newspaper group in French-speaking Africa belonged to de Breteuil, and was devoted mainly to the French settlers—apart from Bingo magazine, launched by de Breteuil in 1952, which was aimed at a youth readership in Dakar (Senegal).
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often pro-independence. According to William Hachten (1971, 144), “Studying nationalism or studying the press in British West Africa is one and the same thing. The press provided nationalism with its first outlet, the instrument through which the idea could be spread; and nationalism provided the press with its main content, its raison d’être, by increasing its dissemination. The separation of the two is not possible because the two were combined in one heart and one mind: that of the nationalist-editor”. As we have seen, the discourse of the majority of French-speaking newspapers was much more moderate. When France initiated a referendum in 1958 on the future of its relationship with its colonies, the large majority of newspaper editors, alongside the politicians, opted to remain in a form of political union with France.31 The French-language press of the 1950s criticized the unequal treatment between the indigenous population and the Europeans but did not demand independence until the very end of the 1950s (with one or two exceptions)—its position was more “reformist” than “revolutionary” (Tudesq 1995, 42). A mix of nationalism and anticolonialism, commercial ambitions, and the different positions of the Protestant and Catholic missions, also explain why a political press in African languages developed in the British colonies but was almost absent in French and Belgian Africa. In the latter, the entire political debate of the years preceding independence took place in the language of the colonizers and the press was written almost exclusively in French, a language understood by a minority of the population. These discrepancies also reflect the different ways in which journalistic capacity and practice developed in French-speaking newsrooms, compared to English-speaking ones. While in British colonies a number of African journalists had actually been trained in Great Britain or the United States and had practiced there, those of the French-speaking press were generally teachers or civil servants by background.32 The only journalists 31 This new “Communauté française” (“French Community”) was granting various different forms of autonomy to its overseas territories. The press collections of the time (now kept at Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire—IFAN, Fundamental Institute of Black Africa—in Dakar) show that most journalists in West Africa were on the side of “yes” to the French Community. Only the papers close to Sékou Touré in Guinea and Djibo Bakary in Niger advocated “no”. 32 For case studies of the first African “journalists” in French-speaking countries and their profiles, see Fierens (2021) on Côte d’Ivoire, Yameogo (2021) on Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Douti et al. (2021) on Togo, and Barry (2013) on Senegal.
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actually making a living from their writing were the expatriates working in the settler-newspapers. In 1960, Joseph-Roger de Benoist, the former director of Afrique Nouvelle noted: “The majority of professional journalists currently working in French-speaking West Africa are of French origin. With one or two exceptions, African journalists work in subordinate jobs and receive their professional training within the newspapers that employ them” (1960, 128). Many local newspaper owners combined journalism with politics, but how this was done was very different on each side. In the British colonies, almost all the individuals who would go on to become president of their country at independence owned a newspaper,33 which was not only a political tool for their party, but also a personal business, concerned with reaching a large number of readers (be it through sensational journalism, the publication of pictures or other crowd-pleasing strategies). By contrast, in French-speaking Africa, the press was mostly “opinion” oriented and circulated mainly among an urban elite, concerned more with the achievement of personal or party ambitions than with keeping the public informed—here, the editors were much more akin to politicians than journalists. Regarding the role of the state in the media sector, there were more similarities than differences, in that the press in both Francophone and Anglophone Africa had troubled relations with the colonial administration—although conditions under Belgian rule were especially restrictive. In French and British possessions, despite the press being supposedly free, several means were used to tame local newspapers which were perceived by the authorities as partisan and radical, including censorship, financial pressures, bans, and advertising boycotts. In many countries, the colonial governments financed public or private newspapers supporting their own, imperialist, point of view, they tightly controlled news emanating from outside the colonies, and, of course, they also had a monopoly on broadcasting. Despite the many differences on both sides, the media of the 1950s reflected an important social change in all the colonies which was the way power shifted into the hands of local African elites. The press was a symbol 33 Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president, founded the well-known West African Pilot as part of the Zik Group (Idemili 1978). Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana founded the Evening News in Accra in 1948, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya and Julius Nyerere in Tanganyka also owned newspapers—all were premiers of their respective countries.
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of the changes that colonization had brought about: after achieving independence, the colonies would never go back to the political structures and communication tools that prevailed in pre-colonial times. A century of European domination had led to the establishment of new models, including the modern state, and the use of new languages and technologies, on which these media were based. These new tools had brought about a shift from the pre-colonial pattern of individual, interpersonal and limited information flows, to the modern pattern of mass circulation of standardized messages sent out to a faceless public. Indeed, this was as large a step as the one from oral communication to the written word.
5
Conclusion
The preceding historical journey of more than a century enables us to understand the differences that now pertain between the current media systems of English-speaking Africa, on the one hand, and French-speaking countries on the other. The colonial legacy was a heavy influence on the five dimensions for comparing media systems, described in our Introduction. Colonialism configured the way states now intervene in the media sector (through legislation, attacks on the press, or broadcast monopolies), the way journalistic skills and aims are built and defined today (in public and independent media), and the way media markets have developed or remained limited. As far as “political parallelism” is concerned, there is no doubt that the colonial period established the way the press now interacts with political parties, individual political ambitions, and with civil society. Regarding audiences, even though the mediaconsuming public was, at that time, limited to a handful of “évolués ”, a new literate urban African elite (products of the colonial system) chose to adopt modern news media, thereby distancing themselves from oral traditions that had long been central to the way information circulated in the past. As we have seen, the first newspapers on the continent were published by European traders, missionaries, freed slaves returning from the Americas, and by the colonial administration. By the nineteenth-century indigenous people had entered the media sector—in British possessions— but it was not until around 1945 that locally owned titles appeared in the French colonies, and in the Belgian colonies it was not until the very end of the 1950s.
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The first local French-speaking newspapers were essentially opinionoriented, often appearing irregularly and were short-lived, with no commercial foundations and with very low circulation. They were aimed at the educated minority and written by non-professionals, who were trained on the job, and often, also, involved in politics. In the French colonies, these publications often had an ambiguous relationship with the colonial authorities, proving more reformist than revolutionary. They contrasted with most local newspapers in the British colonies, which had commercial strategies, aimed at profit, sought to broaden their readership and to attract the interest of private investors, and also published nationalist and pro-independence opinions and demands very early on. The first African-owned titles thus operated in media systems that were influenced by different press traditions and models, displaying both similarities and differences. We can presume that the press contributed to the emergence of a new form of public opinion to a greater extent in the British colonies than in the neighboring French-speaking ones. This was because, in the former, there was a higher number of copies circulating, there was more use of local languages, and a greater concern to reach a wider audience.
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CHAPTER 3
Media, Journalists, and Ideologies in Independent Africa
Independence ushered in a new era for the media in Africa. Perhaps unexpectedly, the new regimes did not use their autonomy to consolidate press freedom and political pluralism, but rather to impose their control on the political space and on the media. Within a few years of independence, most countries had only one single party remaining, and usually nothing more than state-owned media. To justify these restrictions, the new political leaders used several ideological arguments, which we will explore in this chapter, namely the necessity of building national unity and development, as well as resisting Western cultural imperialism. The result was the establishment of authoritarian media systems that would last for three decades in almost all Francophone countries. In the context of the Cold War, whatever their leanings (pro-communist, pro-West, very often a mix of both), governments used the same rhetoric and strategies, which had a long-lasting influence on all dimensions of the media systems, from market structures to the nature of journalism itself. Critiques or alternative views could only circulate through backdoor channels—and are explored in the last section of the chapter. These three decades of state monopoly (roughly between 1960 and 1990) are important to analyze, because some features of current media systems are rooted in this period.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M.-S. Frére, Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3_2
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1
Independence and “National Unity Journalism”
Between 1960 and 1962, the former French and Belgian colonies and territories became independent states.1 Apart from the armed rebellion in Cameroon, the January 1959 unrest in the Belgian Congo and the November 1959 “social revolution” in Rwanda, this process of decolonization took place peacefully, which would later lead some to conclude that independence in these countries was granted rather than won or fought for. Far from wanting to strengthen freedom of expression, most of Africa’s new leaders quickly muzzled the publications run by their political opponents. Many of the new presidents had used the press in their political struggle before independence and were therefore suspicious of it. As we have seen, Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal), Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Côte d’Ivoire), Patrice Lumumba (Republic of Congo), and Grégoire Kayibanda (Rwanda) had all been involved in local newspapers. Within the space of a few years, one by one, the newly established political regimes became one-party systems, and the media were soon limited to publications owned by the government or the party. Radio stations established by the former colonial authorities were passed on to the new states which retained a monopoly over the airwaves. Government control of the media was justified by the ideological need to develop and consolidate a sense of national belonging, due to arbitrary colonial borders, and people being unused to living together as one. A text of the time argued as follows: “The young states that recently gained independence must above all build a new nation and make the inhabitants of their territory aware of their belonging to this national entity, they who, until now, had known no social framework other than the family, the clan and the tribe” (Hébarre 1961, 167). To confront this challenge, the media had to be under government control, to ensure that it worked for unity and stability. “Because Third World nations are newly emergent, they need time to develop their institutions. During this initial period of growth, stability and unity must be sought; criticism must be minimized and public faith in governmental 1 Guinea had gained independence in 1958, being the only French colony to have voted “no” in the referendum on the French Community. In the British Empire, Sudan had gained its independence in 1956 and the Gold Coast in 1957.
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institutions and policies must be encouraged. Media must cooperate (…), by ignoring negative societal or opposition characteristics and by supporting governmental ideologies and plans” (Lent 1978, 12). A dissident press was considered a luxury that African countries could ill afford (Wilcox 1975). 1.1
Two Tools to Silence the Media
To ensure their control over the media, the new governments wielded two weapons: law and repression. The constitutions of these new republics all contained explicit references to human rights and generally guaranteed of freedom of expression. However, new press laws were adopted (largely based on the 1881 French law) with significant restrictions (Hébarre 1961). In Niger for instance, as early as 1959, a new press law stipulated: “The Minister of the Interior, to which the final proof of newspapers or writings must be submitted 12 hours before their publication, may provisionally seize these publications” (art. 8). In Cameroon, where publications close to the UPC2 were banned, a 1962 law authorized the prosecution of any media organization that disseminated “talk, news, rumors or comments likely to harm the public authorities”. A range of coercive measures were implemented which included prior authorization, legal deposition before circulation and even direct censorship. In addition, in many countries, opponents and their newspapers faced open repression. Political figures and publishers were harassed, mistreated, and sometimes forced into exile while their publications were banned. Because the local, privately owned press was solely political and had no commercial basis, there were few financial interests at stake which could otherwise have forced publishers to compromise with the diktats of the ruling party.3 In French-speaking Africa, apart from Senegal, the press was limited to one main government newspaper per country: Togo-Presse (1962); Le
2 The Union des populations du Cameroun, a national liberation movement, which failed to gain power after independence, remained active and continued an armed struggle against the Cameroonian government until 1970. 3 In English-speaking Africa too, the media underwent major changes, but in Nigeria and Kenya a privately owned press remained. Businessmen from the press sectors of both countries were able to protect their commercial interests by assuring the new leaders of their support.
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Temps du Niger (1959); Aube Nouvelle in Dahomey (1960); L’Homme Nouveau in Congo-Brazzaville (which became Dipanda in 1963); Liberté in Guinea (later Horoya in 1961); L’Essor in Mali (1959); Imvaho in Rwanda (1960); and Infor-Burundi in Burundi (1962). Some privately owned newspapers survived in the former Belgian Congo, but they were gradually controlled by the government. The denominational press was tolerated, provided it did not deal in politics. Although La Croix du Dahomey, L’Effort Camerounais , La Semaine Africaine, Kinyamateka, Ndongozi and Afrique Nouvelle all survived, their contents also changed and became apolitical. The press belonging to Europeans gradually died out after independence for two main reasons: firstly because the settlers left and secondly because in the former French colonies, where the 1881 law had long prohibited a foreigner from owning a newspaper, French publishers could hardly expect to continue their press activities now that they themselves were foreigners. The de Breteuil group gradually sold its newspapers to the local authorities. In Côte d’Ivoire, Abidjan-Matin became the government daily Fraternité Matin (1964). In Senegal, Paris-Dakar which had become Dakar Matin in 1961, later transformed into the state-controlled daily Le Soleil in 1970. La Presse du Cameroun became the governmental Cameroon Tribune in 1974. Newspapers remained expensive and had low circulations, and also remained largely out of reach of the mostly illiterate and rural population (Van Der Linden 1963). 1.2
“National Unity” Journalism
The argument about the need to build a national identity and unity not only justified restrictions on political and press freedoms, it also transformed professional practices in all media outlets, leading to what can be described as “national unity journalism”. Journalists had to create a sense of common belonging and to back government policies. At the inauguration of Radio Sudan (now Mali) in June 1957, Modibo Keita (future President of independent Mali, then Mayor of Bamako), said: “Radio must help the Sudanese people to know each other in order to become aware of their similarities, reflecting a community of blood and destiny, to affirm their collective personality…. Radio is an effective tool for keeping our communities informed of our policy goals on a daily basis” (quoted in Tudesq 1998, 76).
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In this context, any criticism of government policies was presented as an attack on the nation itself. Every achievement by the government was a contribution to nation-building. If journalists had to criticize, they were called on to do so only “constructively” and “responsibly”, and to target issues of minor importance or people that the regime wanted to mark out, or even eliminate. These journalists, working in outlets owned by the government or the single party, were generally civil servants, their salaries paid by their respective ministries of information. Their professional values were no longer founded on freedom of expression but on loyalty to the state. This normally guaranteed them jobs which were secure and valued, as well as assuring a certain level of well-being and access to privileges. This meant that any deviation from the accepted state narrative was extremely rare. Journalists were therefore in a position not very far from that of the “griot ” in traditional society (Sock 1977, 20–26). Some scholars (particularly in the 1970s) supported this approach to journalism by providing historical and cultural justifications for it. For Wilcox, for instance, the concept of “constructive or responsible criticism”, “is not just a political expedient: it is based on traditional African values. Although the Western world attaches great importance to criticism of government and considers it as a criterion for press independence, the African framework is different. Most traditional African cultures have a deep respect for authority, and it is considered disrespectful to challenge or joke about ethnic and now national leaders” (Wilcox 1975, 26–27). But the reasons why African journalists accepted this new restrictive “professionalism” had little to do with such arguments. Apart from their personal security and well-being, many of these media professionals were sincerely convinced that they could and should contribute to nation-building. First, they were sure that the role they played in their country was not comparable to that of their colleagues in old European democracies (Mboya 1962). They saw journalism in the West as simply transmitting news, or selling it as a commercial commodity. But in young African states, the news had to contribute to educating the population.4 Second, they were probably legitimately concerned with national
4 It should be noted that many young African politicians were attracted by communist ideologies in the 1950s. Therefore, the fight against their opponents was also an ideological struggle that pitted “communists” on one side against “imperialists” on the other. The communist system also provided many arguments to justify the state monopoly over the media sector.
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sovereignty after decades of colonial control, as well as attempts by the former colonizers to maintain some of their interests in these newly independent countries. Although not expressed as such before independence, there was a real nationalist ferment among the educated elite to which the journalists belonged. The creation of the first national television stations in Francophone African countries (Dioh 2009) reflected this concern, as did the establishment of their own airlines or news agencies by each state (even if they sometimes existed on paper only). Finally, the events that occurred post-independence in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Cameroon demonstrated that splits among the country’s population could be real threats. The new governments did not have the same coercive power base as the former colonial authorities, lacking a real army or police force, or an effective administration. These new states viewed it as safer to control the media a priori (by prohibiting criticism), than to manage trouble a posteriori (i.e., possible unrest resulting from popular discontent). 1.3
Questioning the Practice of “National Unity Journalism”
Although the ideological arguments about state fragility and the need to build a sense of common identity and destiny may have been wellfounded, they rapidly faced many contradictions. From a theoretical point of view, national unity is an objective that seems difficult to measure. How can one effectively assess it or say how long is needed to achieve it? More concretely, when and how should journalists know that they can start criticizing the government? Moreover, is aiming at a single unified national interest not a denial of differences, and, indeed, a failure to take them into account and reconcile them? Does national integration have more of a chance of success through silencing conflicts, rather than through acknowledging them in order to find a concerted solution? In practice, the main problem with the concept of “national unity” was the gap between discourse and practice. On the political side, behind the official discourse on unity, many African leaders obviously favored their own ethnic community, or even their own family, above the rest of the population. Other groups felt excluded from inner circles of power and developed resentments that led to deadly power struggles. From 1963 onward, the continent was faced with a series of military coups (more than 30 in the space of 20 years). In many cases, the military seized power
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after highlighting the inability of civilian leaders to ensure effective and inclusive management of state affairs. As for the media, daily output did not reflect what the population was experiencing, and the constant praise for government achievements did not have much impact on their lives. Moreover, these praises changed each time a new individual or party climbed the greasy pole of power to become head of state. Every new leader advocated national unity in their own way, while persecuting the previous regime, and the fickle journalists followed. Furthermore, the national media were largely made up of imported content, both for information and entertainment, so while the media were supposed to be fostering national identity, they were, at the same time, dependent on Western media to fill their pages and airwaves. In fact, their situation reflected a relationship with the former colonial powers which was very ambiguous: on the one hand, these media outlets had been established to assert national sovereignty, but, on the other hand, they had to rely on the technical assistance from Paris or Brussels to operate properly, because of a lack of capacity and resources at the national level. Although the official discourse gave the media heavy responsibilities, newsrooms actually received limited financial means and low investment from these newly independent governments. The media were the major tool of the various governments’ strategies but, at the same time, they were sorely neglected. Such contradictions were not unique to the media sector. France, in particular, appointed French experts and civil servants and retained an influence in various ministries of its former colonies, under the guise of technical support. Regarding the press, the French government created a special company called SNEI (a subsidiary of the SNEP, Société nationale des entreprises de presse 5 ) to support new publishing concerns in Africa, both financially and technically. As far as broadcasting was concerned, France established Office de coopération radiophonique (OCORA), which succeeded Société de radiodiffusion de la France d’Outre-mer (SORAFOM) in 1962, to help transfer colonial radio
5 The SNEP had been created in 1946 to manage the French press companies nation-
alized after the war for collaborating with the German occupier. From 1960 onward, it contributed to setting up publishing structures for government media in the former French colonies. It generally took shares, alongside the new governments, in the capital of these public companies, often replacing the private investor, de Breteuil (see Chapter 1) (Tudesq 1998, 106).
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stations to national governments. For years, the technical management of new national media outlets remained under the supervision of these French experts. Direct domination was simply replaced with another form of dependency called “technical assistance”. In most countries on the African continent, this discrepancy between discourse and practice, between what the media were said to be doing and what they actually did, was to last for 30 years. In addition to “national unity”, another ideological argument was soon to emerge which would help to justify governmental control over the information sector and legitimize foreign intervention.
2
The Theory of Modernization and “Development Journalism”
By the 1970s, all African French-speaking countries apart from Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, had experienced one or more military coups. Far from restoring pluralism and freedom of expression, military regimes used another justification for their control over the media sector: the need for “development”. If single party or military rule was ever necessary, it was because dragging the countries out of their state of “underdevelopment” required the organized mobilization of all national stakeholders under one centralized power. In such situations, the media had no choice but to support government policies in order to help the population to develop economically. For instance, in Haute-Volta (present-day Burkina Faso), where the army overthrew the civilian regime in 1966, the government’s five-year plan for 1972–1976 clearly specified the following, developmental, role of the media: “All activities of the information services should create a true doctrine of development among the population”. This recurring reference to the notion of development reflected a profound transformation in the way Western countries perceived what is now called the Global South. In 1949, on the day he took office, US President Truman delivered a speech stating: “We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas”.6 For the first time, countries and colonies in the Global South were described as “underdeveloped” regions whose “growth” the United
6 Harry S. Truman, State of the Union address, point IV, 20 January 1949.
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States was supposed to foster (Rist 2001, 116). This offered a different perspective to those of the colonial powers that had considered Africa as a wild continent whose resources could be exploited for their benefit, with Europeans bringing “civilization” to the indigenous peoples. In fact, Western countries were becoming gradually more aware of the precarious nature of the lives of half of humanity. In non-industrialized countries, social imbalances and poverty could, it was thought, provide fertile ground for communist influence. These areas labeled “Third World”,7 were viewed as lagging behind Northern countries but able to catch up gradually through “development”. Modernization theory described the different stages any human society had to go through for a progressive transition from “traditional” to “modern” (meaning a society of mass consumption)—thanks to economic growth. This developmentalist paradigm, which became dominant in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, had important consequences for African media. 2.1
The Media and the Diffusion of Innovations
In 1958, Daniel Lerner published his seminal book, The Passing of Traditional Society. Modernizing the Middle East, based on a field study conducted in six Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan). He identified a correlation between exposure to mass media and behavioral changes in the population of a particular locality. He concluded that people with access to radio were more likely to adopt new, “modern” behaviors, such as moving to cities, adopting new agricultural tools and techniques, and vaccinating and educating their children. Therefore, media development could contribute to modernization, and subsequently economic growth, by showing alternative ways to behave to those favored by tradition. Following Lerner, many authors tried to show that press and radio could be used for the “diffusion of innovations” (Rogers 1962, 1974); to describe how a community could be pushed, thanks to communication channels, to adopt new ideas, technologies, or cultural values. Wilbur Schramm (1964) supported the idea that the media could help increase agricultural productivity, decrease the birth rate, improve health 7 The term was first used in 1952 by the demographer Alfred Sauvy to denote those states created after decolonization, which were neither part of the first world, that of the capitalist nations, nor of the second, dominated by the Soviet Union.
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and nutrition and encourage political participation. Mass media were seen as a glimpse of a modern world; something that could stimulate modern behaviors and innovative, developmental techniques in the Global South. In this context, African media were urged, by both their governments and foreign aid agencies, to adopt a new model: “development communications”. From a quantitative and technological perspective, this meant that the media audience needed to be extended, as the mass media would be an agent of development on its own—simply because of its very existence and the opportunities opened up by technology. Experts from international organizations (Unesco, World Bank, UNDP) set a threshold of media equipment deemed necessary for a society to be considered “modern”. According to these institutions, in order to modernize, a country needed to have, for every 100 inhabitants, at least ten copies of newspapers, five radio sets, two television sets, and two cinema seats. African countries provided these agencies with annual figures showing progress against these media infrastructure targets, which these organizations could then correlate with data on economic growth.8 Another aspect of “development communications” focused on the necessity—in order to foster change—of adapting media content to the particular requirements of different communities and, in particular, to rural communities whose behavior was seen as needing to evolve (Colin 1981). Languages used and types of programs proposed to these communities had to be rethought accordingly. In order to bring about the expected changes, the media had to guide the audience to think about who they were, what they did, and how their lives could be improved.9 For African political leaders, however, the media was viewed in a far simpler light: it was to contribute to national development by promoting modernizing policies and encouraging the predominantly rural population to support the government (Domatob and Hall 1983). In Rwanda 8 This quantitative approach was criticized for its lack of relevance. Firstly, media equipment could increase, but remain concentrated in cities, beyond the reach of the majority of citizens. Secondly, overall growth in incomes could hide strong disparities between a wealthy urban elite and a poor rural population, thus benefitting, first and foremost, those already enjoying economic and political power. 9 This approach provided the basis for the vast field of “communication for development”, “communication for social change”, “social communications”, or “communitybased communication”, which remains essential in current development approaches (Servaes 2003; Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte 2006), and to which we will return in Chapter 7.
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for instance, President Kayibanda declared in a 1968 speech: “Informing the masses about the national program is a necessity. When the press, radio stations, cinemas, photos, meetings and rallies of the population insist only on showing the negative side of life, instead of showing the goal and indicating the means to achieve it, even if modest, they are saboteurs of the Nation’s development. All those in the country who have such means of communication (information and training) are responsible either for the stagnation or the progress of the people” (quoted by Bart 1982, 162). The message was clear: support for government policy had to be resolute, both for the state media and for the few remaining denominational newspapers. Radio, in particular, was a central actor in this strategy. It was the only medium able to reach the rural areas where most people were illiterate. For instance, in Dahomey (nowadays Benin), a General Information Policy Statement stated in 1973: “So far, information has always been aimed at the country’s elites. We must break with this practice (…) To educate our broad masses, it is essential that information be made available to them. (…) Journalists will focus on development issues”. Journalists were under pressure to behave like good “soldiers of development”—particularly apt, given that it was the army who held power at this time in most of French-speaking Africa. 2.2
Development Journalism and Rural Journalism
Similar to “national unity journalism”, “development journalism” required a particular journalistic practice strongly integrated with government activities. In Côte d’Ivoire, the Minister of Information reminded journalists in 1983 that: “In our developing countries, the press is not and should not be in any way, nor ever become, a fourth estate. On the contrary, it is a privileged tool serving development. Your pens, your voices, the tools at your disposal, must all aim at supporting the activities undertaken, in all fields, by our leaders who are doing everything to get our dear country out of underdevelopment. That does not mean that everything is necessarily going well or done well. Your right to criticize remains, but it should be constructive, and not destructive or demoralizing”.10 In reality, critiques were simply not allowed, and journalists 10 Speech by Minister of Information, Amadou Thiam, at the inaugural ceremony of the National Union of the Journalists of Côte d’Ivoire (UNJCI), published by Fraternité Matin, 16–17 April 1983.
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had to steer a course of commitment to official ideology and strategic self-censorship. This concern for the role of the media in development gave rise to a specific form of journalism devoted to small-scale farmers: “rural journalism” (Ansah et al. 1981). The aim was to create media for rural populations, using languages that they would understand, in order to educate, train, and inform. In the 1970s, dozens of newspapers aimed at the rural population were created in Africa, such as Gangaa in Niger, Game su in Togo, Kibaru in Mali, and Kparo in Benin (Unesco 1974). These rural newspapers were produced, in local languages, by national literacy services, by civil servants posted to rural areas, or by citizens themselves. Located in villages or regional centers, they were the first non-denominational publications to be published outside the capital city and in local languages, in many French-speaking countries. In the capital cities, national radio stations established new departments dedicated to “rural radio”. The rural radio station in Haute-Volta, for example, was conceived, according to its director, Urbain Nombré, as “a means of providing information, scientific and technical knowledge to all producers in rural areas, namely farmers, herders, craftsmen and fishermen, who therefore had to increase their production and productivity in order to help the country to have national resources to start its development” (personal interview, April 1993). Generally, the rural radio department either benefited from airtime on the national station or was granted its own frequency. Some rural radio stations were also established in smaller towns and, being under the control of the ministry of agriculture or development, they were the first broadcasters not directly overseen by ministries of information.11 The rural audience grew, thanks to technological progress and increasingly portable radio sets. Village “radio clubs” were created in which listeners were organized to listen in groups to the rural radio programs, and then to give their feedback to the producers (Berrigan 1979).
11 These rural radio outlets were often created with the support of Agence de coopéra-
tion culturelle et technique (ACCT), an intergovernmental organization established in 1970 in order to strengthen collaboration between French-speaking countries in several fields, including media and communication. ACCT (1970–1997) became the Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie (AIF) (1998–2005), then the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).
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At the same time, some countries created radio and a few television stations to support basic education, convinced that technology could make up for the lack of educational infrastructure, skilled staff, and access to technical and scientific literature (Bourgault 1995; Desalmand 1986; Egly 1986). For example in Niger, France initiated and supported a television channel for schools in 1963, but the project was abandoned in 1979, when it was converted into “national television geared towards objectives of national construction, development and public-awareness” (Alzouma 2012, 187). A similar project was implemented in Côte d’Ivoire. All of these experiments were presented by African leaders as key to the development process, yet they were granted very little public money, so had to depend on the support of foreign embassies and international organizations. The development paradigm became the backbone of foreign aid, which allowed former colonies to diversify their international partnerships. Financial and technical assistance was no longer provided mainly by the former colonizers. While French and Belgian aid continued to focus on the national Francophone media, Germany and, later, Switzerland often supported rural radio stations. Deutsche Welle (the overseas arm of German radio broadcasting) trained many rural journalists from West Africa and the GTZ (Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit, foreign aid agency of the Federal Republic of Germany, established in 1974) supported the establishment of the first continental training center devoted to rural journalism: the CIERRO (Centre inter-africain d’études en radio rurale de Ouagadougou) in Haute-Volta in 1978.12 Unesco also played an important role in promoting development journalism (Ogan 1982). The report of the Intergovernmental Conference on Communication Policies in Africa (1980) stated: “Within the African context, the essential function of communication was described as the diffusion of developmental information to the people so that economic, social and cultural benefits could accrue to the largest number in a speedy and effective manner” (Unesco 1980, 9). The media therefore figured prominently among the beneficiaries of development aid, despite the lack
12 This training center was managed by the Union des radios et télévisions nationales d’Afrique (URTNA, Union of African National Television and Radio Organizations), a specialized agency created in 1962 under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity. It was renamed the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) in 2006. The CIERRO closed down that same year.
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of freedom of expression and media pluralism.13 Once again, the majority of African journalists adopted and supported this approach with a mix of real commitment, faithfulness to their status as civil servants, and fear of repression (Jose 1975). Many journalists were, in fact, convinced that they were among the elite who were technologically equipped to help move their nations forward. There was a techno-optimism angle to development journalism, which assumed that technological innovations were the drivers of social change. This utopic-vision would, later, recur repeatedly in the field of communication for development—for example with the emergence of mobile telephony and the Internet. 2.3
Critiques of Development Journalism
Once again, there was a huge gap between discourse and practice, and development was arguably just a slogan used by African governments to justify state control of the media. As journalists had to focus on health, nutrition, and education policies, as well as propagandist civic and political education, they had no agency in choosing issues to be covered and therefore simply became channels for the government to publicize their decisions to the population. This was, in effect, “government say-so journalism” (Lent 1978, 11). As Domatob and Hall (1983, 19) pointed out, “the emergence of the internationally accepted doctrine of development journalism has become a source of alibis and plausible excuses for some African regimes which shun open government in favor of stringent and ruthless repression. (…) Under the aegis of development journalism, African elites have worked out a media strategy which responds to their power interests. This has resulted in the media being reduced to sycophants of the government and ignoring the rest of society”. Rural media, which were supposed to disseminate innovations, were generally used to convey government propaganda, while at the same time
13 At the same Unesco Conference, the issue of freedom of expression and freedom of the press was raised by an observer from an international non-governmental organization. The answer was that “the profession of journalism operates within given contexts”, and that African news for Africans should be available “in a manner compatible with the values inherent in the African continent” (Unesco 1980, 9).
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attracting financial support from foreign donors. The rationale of development journalism allowed African states to both control the media and argue that they were not dictatorships but, rather, countries that were pre-democratic and pre-pluralistic, so development had to happen before any political and media freedoms were possible.14 Critics of development journalism also argued that, in practice, mobilizing the media for development resulted in very few successful achievements. Strategies to disseminate innovations and educate through the media were often poorly designed by foreign experts who were unfamiliar with local contexts. These initiatives were misinterpreted by target populations who started to perceive development as coming from above. Implementation was also problematic, as governments did not provide the infrastructure and resources needed to carry out the advice provided by the media. Information was disseminated in a top-down manner, and participation by the people was extremely limited. Contrary to what it advocated, development journalism may have contributed to growing frustration, as people were exposed to innovations (agricultural tools, health care, etc.) that they did not have access to. A third critique pointed to the fact that the main focus of the media was less on disseminating innovations than on glorifying government initiatives and promises (Bourgault 1995, 173). Fraternité-Matin in Abidjan, Le Sahel in Niamey, Elima in Kinshasa, Togo-Presse in Lomé, Ehuzu in Benin, L’Essor in Bamako, Imvaho-La Relève in Kigali, Le Renouveau in Bujumbura, and Horoya in Guinea—all these state newspapers, published in French—were merely the tools of propaganda and cult of personality. Indeed, every government achievement was presented as a gift from the President, offered by a caring “father” to his childnation (Badibanga 1979). This trend developed further with the arrival of national television stations in the late 1970s. Local programs covered little more than the head of state’s movements, highlighting his achievements and enhancing his national and international stature. The remaining airtime was filled with programs from abroad.
14 Development theory could be accommodated to strong military authoritarian regimes, because the army was considered the most appropriate social institution (organized, equipped and disciplined) to carry out tasks of development and nation-building.
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Overall, the media in Francophone Africa were clearly part of the authoritarian systems that prevailed during this period.15 They were backed by states employing a discourse about the social responsibility of the media, and which used this argument to justify a state monopoly over the media sector, while, at the same time, foreign aid from Western countries was needed to equip and operate media outlets, as well as train journalists.16 To this day, the state-owned media are marked by the legacy of these 30 years (approximately) following independence (Table 1).
3
Dependency Theory and the New World Information Order
Modernization and the developmentalist approach started to be critiqued from the late 1960s onward, especially in Latin America. These theories were criticized for their ethnocentrism,17 their stereotypical and paternalistic views of the South, and their lack of historical perspective (Pexeito 1977). A new concept in international relations was proposed in reaction to this. It posited that poverty and “underdevelopment” were not due to delays in economic growth because of backward traditions; rather, they were the consequence of a historical process during which Northern countries had built (and were continuing to build) their own wealth by exploiting the resources of the South.18 According to this concept, capitalist countries in the “center” of the global economic system had, for centuries, been exploiting territories at the “periphery”, by imposing
15 Even in Senegal, where a few privately owned newspapers survived, President Senghor claimed: “There is nothing in our political environment that is a fourth estate, that is to say a ‘journalistic power’, that can impose its rule, indeed its terror, through extortion, denunciations and denigrations” (cited by Tudesq 1995, 62). 16 Some authors (Hachten 1971; Wilcox 1975) have labeled this system “neocommunist”, arguing that even though most of the media did not refer to communist ideology, they operated just like the media systems of communist countries. Other authors have talked of a “fifth theory of the press” (Ogan 1982). 17 I.e., the conviction that values and lifestyles in the North were superior to those of the South. Development equaled capitalist economics, and the US and Western countries were fighting against the expansion of communism, under the guise of development aid. 18 A seminal work on this was published by the historian Walter Rodney, who demonstrated “How Europe underdeveloped Africa” (1972). Other major promoters of dependency theory were Samir Amin, André Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
Congo (Brazzaville)
Central African Republic Chad
Cameroon
Dipanda (1963–1967) Mweti (1977–…) La Nouvelle République
Cameroon Tribune (1974–…)
Infor-Burundi (1962) • Flash-Infor (1970) Le Renouveau (French) (1972) Ubumwe (Kirundi) (1972–…)
Aube Nouvelle (1960–1969) Daho-Express (1969–1975) • Ehuzu (1975–1990) • La Nation (1990–…) Carrefour africain (1960–…) Sidwaya (1984–…)
Benin
Burkina Faso/ Upper Volta (1960–1984) Burundi
State newspaper
Radio Télévision du Burkina (RTB) • Radio (1959) • Télévision (1963) Radio Télévision Nationale du Burundi (RTNB) • Radio (1960) • Télévision (1984) Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) (1987) • Radio (1941) • Télévision (1985) Radio Centrafrique (1958) Télévision centrafricaine (1974) Radio nationale du Tchad (RNT) (1959) TV Tchad (1987) Radio Congolaise (1940) Télévision Nationale Congolaise (1962)
Office de Radio Télévision du Bénin • Radio (1953) • Télévision (1978)
State broadcaster
The national media in French-speaking Africa
Country
Table 1
(continued)
Agence Centrafrique Presse (ACAP) (1961) Agence tchadienne de presse et d’édition (ATPE) (1966) Agence congolaise d’information (ACI) (1960)
Agence camerounaise de Presse (ACP) (1960)
Agence d’information du Burkina (AIB) (1964) Agence burundaise de Presse (ABP) (1976)
Agence Bénin Presse (ABP) (1963)
National press agency 3 MEDIA, JOURNALISTS, AND IDEOLOGIES IN INDEPENDENT AFRICA
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8 regional newspapers financed by the governement: Salongo, Elima, Mjumbe, Jua, Beto na Beto, Boyoma, Mambenga, Nsambi Fraternité Matin (1964)
L’Union (1974)
Horoya (1961)
L’Essor (1947)
Chaab (1975) • Horizons (1991)
Le Sahel (1974)
Congo (DRC)/Zaïre (1974–1998)
Gabon
Guinea
Mali
Mauritania
Niger
Côte d’Ivoire
State newspaper
(continued)
Country
Table 1
Office de Radio Télévision du Niger (ORTN) • Radio (1958) • Télévision (1964)
Radio Mauritanie (1959) Télévision Mauritanie (1984)
Radio Télévision ivoirienne (RTI) • Radio (1951) • Télévision (1963) Radio Télévision gabonaise (RTG) • Radio (1959) • Télévision (1963) Radio Télévision Guinéenne • Radio (1958) • Télévision (1977) Office de Radio Télévision du Mali (ORTM) • Radio (1957) • Télévision (1983)
Office zaïrois de Radio Télévision (OZRT) (1983) • Radio (1945) • Télévision (1966)
State broadcaster
Agence nationale d’information du Mali • (ANIM) • Agence malienne de presse (AMAP) (1992) Agence mauritanienne d’information (AMI) (1975) Agence nigérienne de presse (ANP) (1987)
Agence guinéenne de presse (AGP) (1960)
Agence gabonaise de presse (AGP) (1960)
Agence ivoirienne de presse (AIP) (1961)
Agence congolaise de presse (ACP) (1960) Agence Zaïre Presse
National press agency
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Imvaho (1960–1994) • Imvaho Nshya La Relève (1973–1994) • La Nouvelle Relève Le Soleil (1970)
Togo-Presse (1962) • La Nouvelle Marche
Rwanda
Togo
Senegal
State newspaper
Country Office Rwandais d’Information (ORINFOR) • Radio Rwanda (1960) • TV Rwanda (1992) Office de Radio Télévision du Sénégal (ORTS) • Radio (1939) • Télévision (1965) Radio Lomé (1959)/Radio-Kara (1975) TV Togo (TVT) (1973)
State broadcaster
Agence togolaise de presse (ATOP) (1975)
Agence de presse sénégalaise (APS) (1959)
Agence rwandaise de presse (ARP) (1983)
National press agency 3 MEDIA, JOURNALISTS, AND IDEOLOGIES IN INDEPENDENT AFRICA
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a system that benefited only wealthy societies, through colonialism and unfair terms of trade. The poverty of Third World countries was, therefore, a consequence of their “dependency” on rich capitalist countries,19 and, in response, some countries demanded a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to be established, based on more balanced economic relations. Some scholars advocated that African countries should not only resist the foreign stranglehold on their economies, but even more radically, should totally detach themselves from the global system (Amin 1985, 1990). Although they were initially economic debates, dependency theory and the call for a NIEO soon influenced the field of media and communications. 3.1
Imbalanced Information Flows and the Vision of a New World Information Order
In the 1970s, the global flow of information and cultural products was as imbalanced as the global economy. More than a decade after independence, the media in French-speaking Africa were still dominated by foreign, particularly Western, productions and news (Bourges 1978). Although radio had developed more local programming, more than 80 percent of programs on state television stations were from Europe. Furthermore, in 1980, Francophone African newspapers were devoting 60–80 percent of their content to international news produced by the dominant press agencies (Agence France Presse, AFP for the former French colonies and Belga for the Belgian ones), while events occurring in their own countries went unreported. Only a few newspapers (Le Soleil in Senegal or Fraternité Matin in Côte d’Ivoire) provided fairly extensive coverage of national events (but it was always “politically correct”). Critics denounced this unequal flow of information as dependency and criticized the stereotypical, incomplete, and Eurocentric way African current affairs were treated by the Western media. For the American researcher Herbert Schiller (1976, 1978), “cultural imperialism” simply replaced the political imperialism of the colonial
19 Dependency theory was very much inspired by Marxism, which had become the focus of world political controversies during the Cold War. In the 1970s, several Frenchspeaking African regimes openly opted for Marxism (e.g., Congo, Benin, and Guinea). The continent was also plagued by several conflicts in which the US and USSR clashed through local proxies (e.g., Mozambique, Angola, Eritrea).
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period. He defined cultural imperialism as “the sum of processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or promote, the values and structures of the dominant center of the system” (1976, 9). Domination was thus exercised, in part, through the conscious or unconscious complicity of Third World elites, including certain actors within the media. When “dependency” theory was applied to the media sector20 it led to two demands: firstly, the establishment of a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) and, secondly, the strengthening of endogenous media productions, to properly reflect the concerns and values of African countries. The debate on an NWICO took place within Unesco, mainly between 1978 and 1983. Unesco set up a commission, in order to assess the situation and make recommendations, composed of representatives from all continents and chaired by former Irish Prime Minister Sean MacBride. Moustapha Masmoudi, one of the commission’s members from Tunisia, pointed out in 1979 that “By transmitting to developing countries only news processed by them, that is, news which they have filtered, cut and distorted, the transnational media impose their own way of seeing the world upon developing countries. (…) Moreover, they often present these communities - when indeed they do show interest in them - in the most unfavorable light, stressing crises, street demonstrations, putsches, and even holding them up to ridicule” (1979, 174). The report of the MacBride Commission was published in 1980, entitled Many Voices, One World: it presented most of the South’s grievances but proposed few concrete solutions to redress the imbalances it highlighted. The report begins by demonstrating the high degree of inequality in terms of media infrastructure and equipment. It then goes on to underscore the flaws in communication flows that are dominated by the market and ideology. It also emphasizes the dominance of large Western companies in shaping
20 The writers and academics who wrote about international media imperialism in the
English-speaking environment are well known, for example: Herbert Schiller, Oliver BoydBarret, Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman and Robert McChesney, but little of their work was translated into French at the time. Armand Mattelart, along with Michèle Mattelart, played a pivotal role in introducing these reflections and debates to the Frenchspeaking academic community.
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the images of the world, and how this “distortion of content” potentially leads to “cultural alienation”, offending national pride and damaging cultural identity in Third World countries. In Francophone Africa, the Western imperialism argument was widely used by governments to condemn foreign media influence. For instance, a document from the Niger Ministry of Communication clearly stated: “The danger for us is the whole foreign press, whether African, European or other, which attacks our public, distorts our morals and leads the younger generation down winding and pernicious paths. (…) It imposes news on the mass of readers that does not meet its expectations at all but whose main goal is to succeed in shaping mentalities, perverting them, engaging them in narrow and harmful prisms of judgment and lack of initiative” (Niandou 1980, 107). The aim was therefore to advocate for the development of endogenous media in the South, and also to promote a national perspective on events taking place in any given country, in the name of defending local cultural identities and views. Journalists had to toe the line in this regard. 3.2
Authentically African Media Systems
The injunction on journalists to defend “endogenous information” against foreign imperialism had developed some years before the MacBride report appeared. From the early 1970s onward, the leaders of several African countries had developed “authentically African” forms of government, in the face of Western models. In French-speaking Africa, “authenticity” was an official policy of Mobutu’s regime, and the reason for the name-change from “Congo” to “Zaire”.21 The currency, the main river, the cities, and the individuals themselves were renamed to take on “authentically Zairian” names. In 1972, one of the main newspapers, Le Progrès, became Salongo, explaining on its front page that the change was a step toward Mobutu’s aim of the mental liberation and cultural rehabilitation of the country. For a short period, the Zairian model inspired President Eyadema in Togo (where Christian first names had to be abandoned for traditional ones) and President Tombalbaye in Chad (who 21 The policy of authenticity was not just a lexical one, but part of a “national revolution” (which, according to the ruling party, Mouvement populaire de la révolution [MPR], was based on the repudiation of both capitalism and communism). Because large formerly foreign-owned companies were nationalized, it had significant economic implications.
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renamed Fort-Lamy, the capital city, N’djamena). However, these changes were little more than superficial. In Upper Volta, where a nationalist anti-imperialist revolution was initiated by Thomas Sankara after a coup d’état in 1983, the semantic and cultural break with the legacy of colonialism was more consistent: the country was renamed “Burkina Faso” (“the country of honest men”, in Dioula and Mooré—the two main national languages). Dress codes were changed to return to traditional and locally produced clothing, and local products were supported in an attempt to circumvent France’s influence on the economy. The national newspaper Sidwaya (“The Truth Has Come”) was created during this period. Even in countries that did not implement an official policy of authenticity, governments used the threat of Western cultural imperialism to justify their control over national media, with leaders and single parties presenting themselves as the sole arbiters of the relevance of media content, and its conformity with “local values”. The argument was also useful in the face of international broadcasters whose growing success threatened African governments’ monopolies on information. Thus, the state, the party, and often presidents themselves were the backbone of the media, which consisted of political speeches by officials, reports, and photos of the head of state’s engagements, and praise for government projects. On the economic front, the ambiguity of the relationship between the media and foreign bilateral and multilateral donors became even more obvious. Repudiating the capitalist media model of pursuing nothing more than profit, the African media received funding from international organizations and from many Western countries to develop national media output, which was in fact devoted to government propaganda. A delicate issue remained the definition of journalistic “professionalism”. The last two chapters of the MacBride report (“Rights and Responsibilities for Journalists” and “Norms of Professional Conduct”) reflected fundamental disagreements between the members of the commission on
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this matter.22 One member stressed that “a planetary code for journalists of all nations is neither attainable nor desirable”, as there are indeed “two essentially distinct conceptions of journalism in the world today”. One conception where “the press is an arm of the state”, and one where journalists “see their role as independent of the state” (MacBride et al. 1980, 244). Journalists in French-speaking Africa belonged to the former group, and the journalism schools that were established in the 1960s and 1970s in Dakar, Yaoundé, Kinshasa, and Lomé aimed at adapting training to these local requirements. The director of the Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Information (ISTI) in Kinshasa, Malembe Tamandiak, wrote in 1985: “the training given in European or American schools to future journalists from modernizing countries takes place in a sociopolitical frame different from the one in which these agents will one day have to work” (1985, 65). “The Zairian journalist, at the service of national development of which he really is truly the tool, is, above all, a committed militant of the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution. (…) His freedom to exercise his profession is both conceived and embedded in the frame of the national party” (1985, 67). Paradoxically, these schools were established with the financial support and human resources from the self-same Western imperialist countries which promoted a completely different perspective on journalistic practice and press freedom at home, in contrast to abroad. 3.3
The Failure of the New World Information Order Debate
By the mid-1980s, the debate around the establishment of a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) vanished in Africa, for three main reasons. First, African governments never adopted genuine policies or invested the necessary resources to develop their own news 22 Several footnotes indicate clearly that the President of the Commission disagreed with the content of the report on these issues. Sean MacBride wrote his personal views in a paper entitled The Protection of Journalists (CIC Document n°90) which he submitted to his colleagues. The USSR delegate (Sergei Losev, Director-General of the TASS News Agency) also took issue over several points, especially about the recommendation against censorship which, according to him, should remain “within the national legal framework taking in due consideration the national interests of each country” (MacBride et al. 1980, 266). He wrote an appendix with his comments on the report that he viewed as too Westernized.
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outlets. The Pan-African News Agency (Pana) was a case in point. Created in 1979 by the Organization of African Unity (OUA) and largely subsidized by Unesco, Pana was devoted to distributing African news, free from Western bias, to the African continent and the world. But Pana never functioned as it should: partly because it lacked credibility, since it only relayed the official voice of the national news agencies of African states,23 and partly because its resources were very limited due to African countries being reluctant to provide funding (Cavanagh 1989).24 Second, the debate on an NWICO turned into “one of the strongest cultural clashes of the Cold War” (Frau-Meigs 2004, 861) and ended by paralyzing Unesco. The United States supported the “free flow of information”, which guaranteed the hegemony and interests of big US commercial communication companies. They were opposed to any redefinition of the world news markets, as requested by the Southern and non-aligned countries, backed by the USSR—USA’s enemy. Criticizing the MacBride report, the Americans denounced the politicization of Unesco and claimed that the USSR had used the debate to gain influence in many Third World countries.25 In 1984, the US decided to leave Unesco, soon followed by Great Britain. As the Americans were the largest financial contributors, their departure prevented the UN body from operating efficiently for the next two decades.26 The third reason that weakened the idea of an NWICO was a growing critique of dependency theory. The proponents of an NWICO were accused of simplifying what was a much more complex scenario. In fact, the “central”, imperialist countries were not all equal, pursuing the same objectives and serving the same interests, and the countries of the South were not a homogeneous peripheral group. Furthermore there were 23 Governmental news agencies were very strictly controlled, as they often provided access to the major international agencies. They were also generally the only agencies to collect domestic news through local correspondents and the only voices heard outside their respective countries (via PANA). 24 Launched in 1983, PANA had only five correspondents and two subscribing countries by 1992. It was eventually privatized in 1999. 25 In the context of the Cold War, the North–South debate had turned into an East–West issue. Journalism organizations were part of the conflict, with the socialist International Organization of Journalists on one side, and the International Federation of Journalists, Freedom House, and the International Press Institute on the other. 26 The United States only returned to the institution in 2003, when the adoption of the Convention on Cultural Diversity was under discussion.
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unequal information flows within Third World countries and between countries of the North, as well as forms of cultural imperialism inside the “center” as well as on the “periphery”.27 More fundamentally, dependency theory ignored the complexity of power relations: in any situation of dominance, as the French philosopher Michel Foucault stressed, the power of the dominant party is not exerted unilaterally, those that are dominated are also “active”. Therefore, African populations could not be considered mere passive receivers of foreign models and news: in politics, as in their consumption of media, they were building strategies of appropriation and negotiating margins of autonomy, despite being subject to dominant powers.
4
Bypassing State Monopolies: “Politics from Below”
Even in the authoritarian media systems of French-speaking Africa some forms of resistance remained, allowing people to bypass the state’s monopoly on information. A limited pluralism had persisted in a few countries since independence. Senegal, which had maintained a multiparty system limited to three authorized parties, allowed a privately owned, and sometimes critical press, to circulate. From the early 1970s to the revolution of 1983, Upper Volta maintained a privately owned news media as well. Cameroon had some supposedly free media outlets, but they had limited room to maneuver. Catholic newspapers continued to operate in Cameroon, Benin, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, however, they rarely covered social issues and never political ones.28 Some privately owned newspapers were permitted to focus on sports, tourism, economics, or culture. Within the governmental media, there were some attempts by journalists to step out of line, but the consequences were generally imprisonment, humiliation, and demotion
27 For instance, Indian and Egyptian cinemas were dominant in Africa, while American productions, Japanese cartoons, and Brazilian series were gradually invading European markets. 28 These media outlets were nevertheless closely monitored by the authorities and some of them were suspended. For example, Ndongozi in Burundi was suspended from April to August 1972 when genocidal massacres were devastating the country. When the newspaper was allowed to publish again, the minimal social criticism it had previously engaged in had disappeared.
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to positions in remote towns, threats of exile, or even assassination. Those who dared often became heroes. Nevertheless, counternarratives developed in other forms and social spaces, directly resisting, or subtly undermining the foundations of the authorities. 4.1
Circumventing Public Censorship
Clandestine leaflets continued to circulate in some countries, such as Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire. Sheets criticizing the single party appeared regularly, posted anonymously at night on city walls or tree trunks. Generally, they were connected to underground political parties challenging the single party in power. Laurent Gbagbo, Houphouët-Boigny’s opponent in Côte d’Ivoire, created a clandestine party in 1982 and wrote explicitly: “We all hide in order to express ourselves. […] Forms of camouflage are many (exile, fictitious names or anonymity), but the aim remains the same: to express ourselves without being jailed” (1984, 10). Therefore, Gbagbo argued, underground pamphlets were the consequence of dictatorship. However, this underground press remained rudimentary and secretive, given the risks faced by anyone caught possessing them. Protest was generally expressed in a more disguised form. The Togolese scholar Comi Toulabor (1981, 56) shows how the Ewe of Togo used satire and mockery against the powerful (although they were the most populous ethnic group in the region, the Ewe were deprived of access to positions of power, reserved for President Eyadema’s ethnic group). They altered the words of slogans and songs of the ruling party, particularly focusing on those from the Togolese “cultural revolution”. For instance, Eyadema’s “authentic” first name, Gnassingbe, officially translated as “take command and withdraw yourself only after having made peace” but was unofficially translated as “the great ape” (Toulabor 1981, 65). In Zaïre, the “authentic” full name of the President was Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, “the great warrior who triumphs over everything”, which was modified by the people to a meaning equivalent to, “the randy rooster” (Diamani 1995, 152). In Burkina Faso, the slogans of the Sankara revolution were also distorted in various ways (Dubuch 1985): for example, the name of the government daily Sidwaya (“The Truth Has Come”) was turned into Zirwaya (“The Lie Has Arrived”).
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This form of soft protest worked more as an antidote to relieve the pain inflicted by constant propaganda than as an active form of opposition. In this authoritarian and repressive context, where the dominant political culture was obedience and silence, these strategies had no clear author or origin. They could be invoked only within close circles of trusted relatives and friends, sharing a coded language which was opaque to others (Toulabor 1981, 136). Much factual information circulated through what is referred to, in French-speaking Africa, as “radio-trottoir” (“pavement radio”) which is word of mouth and unofficial discussion of current events (Ellis 1989; Ekambo 1985). For Stephen Ellis, “pavement radio” is not just rumors or gossip, but an effective way of spreading alternative information in a climate of disinformation due to state control over the media. This was how people were informed about demonstrations, strikes, attempted coups d’état, human rights abuses, or massacres, while the governmental media kept quiet about such matters. Consequently, “pavement radio” can be “a field of political protest no less vital, in its own way, than articles in the daily press or television news for a Western government” (Ellis 1993, 463). The foreign media also offered an alternative perspective on local events. Broadcasting in French on shortwave, Radio France Internationale (RFI), the BBC, as well as Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Moscow, provided tens of millions of African listeners with an alternative view of events happening in their own countries (Vittin 2002; Randall 1993).29 Even though international broadcasters were not without ideological bias and they reflected the views of the countries that owned them (Price 2003, 53), they still provided alternative news, and a different type of journalism, with some enjoying a much higher level of trust than the state media (Vittin 1995). African government media often reacted by trying to undermine the credibility of these alternative sources, presenting them as imperialist tools. But the audience kept listening to them, in full knowledge of their value. 29 Despite targeting the educated elite, the foreign press also had an influence: in French-speaking Africa, the weekly pan-African magazine Jeune Afrique, created in Tunisia in 1960, then based in Paris, always had ambiguous relations with African governments, but still circulated otherwise unpublished information in Africa. It was regularly banned by African countries and reporters were deported (Domatob and Hall 1983, 14). The French press could be purchased in those countries where many French expatriates resided, such as Côte d’Ivoire.
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New Paradigms: “Politics from Below” and “Appropriation”
The attention given by researchers in the late 1980s to how people were circumventing state control over information (i.e., the underground press, satire, pavement radio, international broadcasting) reflected a broader shift in the way academics and scholars viewed the African continent. Dependency theory had given way to new approaches broadly related to cultural studies. In France, the academic journal Politique africaine, created in 1980, contributed to these new approaches. Considering that previous theories had deprived African societies of their historicity and agency, in perceiving them as malleable and amorphous—subject to dictatorship or to foreign influence30 —this new approach focused on the active nature of African societies, despite being subject to political and cultural dominance. This new paradigm, generically called “politics from below” (Bayart et al. 1992) revealed how, in African political systems, populations had never remained voiceless, either in pre-colonial societies, during European domination, or under post-independence authoritarian regimes. According to Jean-François Bayart, “Africans have been the active subjects of the dependency of their societies, sometimes to oppose it, sometimes to associate themselves with it” (Bayart 1989, 46). Africans had consistently developed “popular modes of political action”, tactics or strategies, which gave them agency—albeit in a limited form. Denis-Constant Martin (1989, 2002) called such strategies “OPNI” (“Unidentified Political Objects”), defining them as “fruits of the social imagination”, “practices and cultural commodities that are usually not taken into consideration by political science” (2002, 16). Music, religious practices, oral or written literature, as well as the satire mentioned above, helped an alternative discourse to develop to that of the ruling class.31 30 By the late 1980s, the influence of Marxism in the analysis of international relations was weakening, reflecting the crisis in the Soviet Union and its satellites. African dictators could no longer justify their authoritarian politics by referring to Marxism, or by blaming Western imperialism (especially since African regimes claiming to be Marxist portrayed few differences compared to neighboring regimes that were supported by Western capitalist countries). 31 The perspective of “politics from below” crossed the Atlantic and, in the United States, inspired many authors and approaches, such as the so-called “society centered” approach (as opposed to the so-called “state-centered” approach) which emphasizes a plurality of factors (historical, geographical, social, economic) contributing to building a political phenomenon (Rothchild and Chazan 1988).
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The attention paid to the way foreign concepts and ideas, as well as power play, were actively “appropriated” by “actors from below” clearly made sense in the media field. Building on the seminal work of Stuart Hall (1973), cultural studies shone a light on how meaning was constructed and produced within cultures, integrating the influences of political environment, historical heritage, and social context. According to Hall, each member of the audience has a form of agency in constructing the meaning of the message he/she is exposed to. Instead of denouncing “cultural imperialism”, based on “a portrait of a passive spectator, vulnerable to the demands of trade and ideology” (Liebes and Katz 1992, 125), it may be more relevant to analyze how this media content was received, interpreted, and perhaps reused in the local context.32 Just as people were not completely powerless subjects, submitting to authoritarian powers and condemned to absolute silence, foreign media content and information were not passively received by an acculturated African audience captured by Western cultural imperialism.33 On the contrary, the consumers of information and entertainment needed to be seen as active, participating in the construction of the meaning of the message received, be it from international broadcasters or from local state media. Globalization, far from leading to homogenization, would, it was thought, develop hybrid societies, each of them responding to transnational change through strategies of mimicry, resistance, adaptation, and appropriation.34
32 The media theory of “uses and gratifications” highlights the active and selective nature of the receiver and his/her ability to choose media content and interpret it according to his/her own expectations. In 1990, a study published by Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes (1990) on the reception of the soap opera Dallas in different cultures showed that distinct audiences, watching the same television series, perceived it according to their own cultural references, and also according to their social positioning strategies in their own environments. 33 As early as 1976, a Unesco report devoted to the cultural, linguistic, psychological, and political effects of cross-cultural broadcasting had underlined that there was simply no field research and no data available on the topic, and this explained why “wishful or fearful thinking has flourished” (Contreras et al. 1976, 9). It concluded that audience research and data were lacking because they had not attracted any investment from a commercial, political, or social interest point of view, thereby leaving the floor open to ideological debates. 34 For a comprehensive overview on the debates and seminal works on international communications for the past five decades, see Thussu (2010).
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In turn, the “politics from below” approach was criticized, with some arguing it had just replaced the former dualities (tradition vs. modernity, or center vs. periphery), with another one: politics from below vs. politics from the top (Geschiere 1990, 155). The “bottom-up” approach could, it was argued, neglect the centrality of the state in countries heavily dependent on foreign aid flowing through official channels. Other critics have contended that this approach idealizes the degree of autonomy of the dominated and minimizes the exercise of terror and oppression by the state (Buijtenhuijs 1992). Thus, by the early 1990s, changes in the politics and media in Africa gave new food for thought, both to observers of politics and media consumption “from below” and to followers of cultural studies. The new decade saw a major transformation of this public space and is the focus of our next chapter.
5
Conclusion
Following independence, the African media developed in an ideological environment marked by global geopolitics. The new governments of French-speaking countries established authoritarian media systems under the guise of “social responsibility”, leaving very little space for independent initiatives, critiques, or criticisms. Several arguments were used to justify state control of the media sector, including the obligation to build national unity and the need for journalists to serve domestic development in order to resist foreign media imperialism. Press laws were manipulated and repression was used to silence dissident voices as one-party states consolidated their monopoly of the broadcasting sector and of most of the press. The political parallelism between the media system and the political system was (almost) total. In the context of the Cold War, where even the US would not expect the countries of their sphere of influence to allow free speech, many African regimes evoked their “underdevelopment” and “dependency” to avoid any debate around the lack of press freedom. Regarding our second dimension, “professionalization”, almost all journalists were civil servants, working for government-owned media outlets. Being professional meant being a “patriot”, interpreted as serving the party, the state, and the president’s policies. Journalism training was tailored accordingly, and the content these journalists produced was, in effect, “state journalism”: a trend that mainly persists nowadays in the so-called “public” media.
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For 30 years there were almost no alternative media markets, only those controlled by states. National news agencies and television stations were set up, devoted solely to the promotion of state regimes. Rural radio stations and newspapers were created in order to reach a rural population that had hitherto been largely ignored, however, these new outlets were not truly pluralistic. The lack of media markets was not an issue because there was no need for economic sustainability: the media and their staff were completely supported financially by the governement. To remain informed about current events in their own countries, African audiences had to turn to alternative media such as international broadcasters, “radio-trottoir”, underground pamphlets, and foreign or denominational newspapers with limited circulations. Despite being weak and subjugated, people developed strategies to escape from propaganda and to retain some semblance of agency. Many media systems in French-speaking Africa today retain some features of their authoritarian pasts. As Guy Berger (2002, 22) points out, the fact that the propaganda and development press was dominant at this time, should not be analyzed as a “deficit” against a Western model of counter-power. It is not a question of explaining “what did not happen, but rather what happened”.
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Gumucio-Dragon, Alfonso, and Thomas Tufte, eds. 2006. Communication for Social Change. Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings. New Jersey: Communication for Social Change Consortium. Hachten, William. 1971. Muffled Drums. The News Media in Africa. Ames: The Iowa University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1973. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Discussion Paper No. 7. Birmingham: University of Birmingham. Hébarre, Jean-Louis. 1961. Les pays sous-développés et la liberté de l’information. Politique Étrangère 26 (2): 153–173. Jose, Alhaji Babatunde. 1975. Press Freedom in Africa. African Affairs 74 (296): 255–262. Katz, Elihu, and Tamar Liebes. 1990. The Export of Meaning. Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lent, John E. 1978. Mass Communications in the Third World: Some Ethical Considerations. Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association Second Summer Conference on Intercultural/International Communication, Tampa, 17–21 July. Lerner, Daniel. 1958. The Passing of the Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press. Liebes, Tamar, and Elihu Katz. 1992. Six interprétations de la série Dallas. Hermès 11–12: 125–144. MacBride, Sean, et al. 1980. Many Voices, One World: Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World information and Communication Order [report by the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems]. London/New York/Paris: Kogan Page/Unipub/UNESCO. Malembe, Tamandiak. 1985. “L’information et la culture nationale: L’expérience zaïroise.” In La fonction culturelle de l’information en Afrique, ed. Institut Culturel Africain, 53–68. Dakar/Lomé/Abidjan: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines. Martin, Denis-Constant. 1989. À la quête des OPNI (Objets politiques non identifiés). Comment traiter l’invention du politique? Revue Française De Sciences Politiques 39 (6): 793–815. Martin, Denis-Constant. 2002. Sur la piste des OPNI . Paris: Karthala. Masmoudi, Moustapha. 1979. The New World Information Order. Journal of Communication 29 (2): 172–179. Mboya, Tom. 1962. Mboya Demands Free Kenya in ’62. The New York Times, February 11. www.nytimes.com/1962/02/11/archives/mboya-dem ands-free-kenya-in-62-british-concerned-over-rift-on-form.html. Niandou, Harouna. 1980. L’informateur, la collecte et la circulation de l’information au Niger. In Le rôle du communicateur dans la nouvelle société de développement, ed. Ministère de l’Information, 99–111. Niamey: INN.
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Ogan, Christine L. 1982. Development Journalism/Communication: The Status of a Concept. International Communication Gazette 29 (1–2): 3–13. Pexeito, Antonio Carlos. 1977. La théorie de la dépendance: Bilan critique. Revue Française De Science Politique 27 (4–5): 601–629. Price, Monroe. 2003. Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of International Broadcasting. Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 21 (1): 51–85. Randall, Vicky. 1993. The Media and Democratisation in the Third World. Third World Quaterly 14 (3): 625–646. Rist, Gilbert. 2001. Le développement. Histoire d’une croyance occidentale. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. London: BogleL’Ouverture Publications. Rogers, Everett M. 1962. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press. Rogers, Everett M. 1974. Communication in Development. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 412: 44–54. Rothchild, Donald, and Naomi Chazan, eds. 1988. The Precarious Balance of State and Society in Africa. Boulder: Westview Press. Schiller, Herbert. 1976. Communication and Cultural Domination. White Plains: International Arts and Sciences Press. Schiller, Herbert. 1978. Decolonization of Information: Efforts towards a New International Order. Latin American Perspectives 5 (1): 35–48. Schramm, Wilbur Lang. 1964. Mass Media and National Development. The Role of Information in Developing Countries. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Servaes, Jan. 2003. Communication for Development and Social Change. Paris: UNESCO. Sock, Boubacar Mor. 1977. Griot, griotisme et la pratique du journalisme en Afrique. Éthiopiques: Revue socialiste de Culture Négro-Africaine 11: 20–26. Thussu, Daya Kishan, ed. 2010. International Communication: A Reader. London: Routledge. Toulabor, Comi. 1981. Jeu de mots, jeu de vilain: Lexique de la dérision politique au Togo. Politique Africaine 3: 55–71. Tudesq, André-Jean. 1998. Journaux et radios en Afrique aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Paris: GRET. Tudesq, André-Jean. 1995. Feuilles d’Afrique. Étude de la presse de l’Afrique subsaharienne. Talence: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSHA). UNESCO. 1974. …To Reach the Village… Unesco and Rural Newspaper in Africa. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. 1980. Conférence intergouvernementale sur les politiques de la communication en Afrique. Paris: UNESCO. Van Der Linden, Fred. 1963. Le problème de l’information en Afrique: journaux européens, agences de presse, publications africaines, cinéma, télévision, radio. Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer (ARSOM).
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Vittin, Théophile. 1995. Les radios internationales en Afrique noire: L’exemple de RFI dans les pays francophones (avec référence au cas du Bénin). PhD dissertation. Université Bordeaux 3. Vittin, Théophile. 2002. L’impact des radios internationales en Afrique noire. In La mondialisation des médias contre la censure, ed. Tristan Mattelart, 81–101. Brussels: Boeck & Larcier. Wilcox, Dennis L. 1975. Mass Media in Black Africa. Philosophy and Control. London/New York/Washington, DC: Praeger Publishers.
CHAPTER 4
Democratic Transitions and the Emergence of Pluralist Media
At the beginning of the 1990s, a wave of change deeply disrupted political and media systems in French-speaking Africa. After three decades of mainly authoritarian rule, all countries opened up to pluralism within the space of a few months, allowing multiple political parties and a free press to operate. This “African spring” (Bourgi and Castéran 1991) brought a major transformation to the public sphere, leading to the organization of elections (often the first ones since independence) and the freeing of the broadcast sector. Freedom of expression was definitively out of state control, despite political transitions being unstable: sometimes involving violent conflict, long-term instability, and, in many cases, a return to authoritarian rule.1 From the early 2000s onwards, technological change, the rapid expansion of mobile phones, and the growth of the Internet, led to new dynamics in the production, circulation, and consumption of information. Today, three decades after this “spring”, all French-speaking African countries now have pluralist media landscapes, with a diversity of newspapers, radio, television, and online information providers. Most audiences can turn to a wide range of information and entertainment sources, 1 Political scientists have produced many assessments of the last three decades (1990– 2020) of political “democratization” in Africa. Nevertheless, they have generally paid very little attention to the changes in the media sector. See, for instance, Lynch and Crawford (2011).
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although there are differences between, and even within, each country. This chapter describes these transformations and the challenges faced by each type of media outlet. New media systems have emerged over the past 30 years, which can once again be depicted through the lens of our five dimensions.
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Democratic and Media Openings
The roots of the African political spring were located both within political regimes and, externally: at the international level. Internally, African countries were undermined by corruption, poor governance, and economic crises due to the drop in the value of raw materials on international markets. Following the recommendations of international financial institutions, African governments had been implementing structural adjustment programs since the 1980s, reducing public services, slimming down the civil service (in which, formerly, all university graduates automatically found jobs), reducing student grants, and at times delaying the payment of civil servants’ salaries. These restrictions especially affected the educated urban elite, who, by the end of 1989, started to demonstrate and protest. Governments used their usual arsenal to counter these demonstrations: threats, repression, and compromises (Bratton and Van De Walle 1992, 423). But this time these strategies did not calm the demonstrators down, they persisted with their protests, moving from purely economic demands to calls for multiparty democracy and the rule of law. At the external level, international donors quickly understood that this angry urban elite would be more likely to accept economic sacrifices if these were required by governments that were democratically elected rather than by worn-out dictatorships. Thus, the principle of “democratic conditionality” was introduced, linking the granting of development aid to political openings. In the French town of La Baule in June 1990, during the annual France-Africa Summit, François Mitterrand formalized this policy in front of an audience of African leaders: French overseas aid would now be contingent on the implementation of democratic reforms, including press freedom and an end to censorship. The end of the Cold War had ushered in a “third wave of democratization” (Huntington 1991): African authoritarian regimes, which had, for decades, negotiated their support to one side or the other, now had little choice but to follow the new injunctions of Western democracies and to adopt multiparty politics and media freedom.
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The First Steps Towards Media Pluralism
A few publications displaying a new, less restricted tone had already appeared in some countries in the latter half of the 1980s, for example Wal Fadjiri (1984) and Sud Magazine (1986) in Senegal; La Gazette du Golfe in Benin (1987); Les Échos in Mali (1989); and Haské in Niger (1990). Le Messager in Cameroon, dating from 1979, had also become more political and critical, by this time. These newspapers were probably initially considered by states to be a pressure valve through which their urban elites could release their frustrations. They were also, perhaps, visible evidence of democratic change to display to foreign donors. But just a handful of newspapers were simply not sufficient and, under pressure from parts of the public and from international partners, African heads of state were compelled to officially grant the media their freedom and, thus, the “democratic transition” was initiated.2 Benin served as a model for all French-speaking Africa: it was described as a “laboratory” of African democratic transitions. President Kérékou, a military general who had been in power since a coup in 1974, was forced, in January 1990, to accept the organization of a “National Conference”, following weeks of street demonstrations. This National Conference gathered nearly 500 representatives from all sectors of society (trade unions, associations, and religious groups) for two weeks of deliberations and it quite openly discussed the failures of the one-party regime. It ended by establishing a transitional government, responsible for ruling the country for a year until free and fair elections could be held—the first for 30 years. The need for press freedom was officially acknowledged, and within a few months, about 30 new independent newspapers started to circulate in the capital city, Cotonou (Frère 2000a). The Benin transitional model was copied (with varying degrees of success) by many other countries. National conferences were organized in Niger, Togo, Mali, Congo-Brazzaville, Zaire, Gabon, and Chad (EboussiBoulaga 2003; Robinson 1994). Bratton and van de Walle underline similarities between French-speaking African countries regarding the 2 These transitional processes reinvigorated political science scholarship about Africa.
Within a few years, hundreds of articles and books about these “transitions” had been published, examining (for example): the extent to which Western democracy’s institutional models could be adapted to African contexts (Chabal 1998; Gueye 2009); the emergence of new political elites in the context of elections (Quantin 1995); and the role of civil society in these changes (Thiriot 2002; Otayek 2002).
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patterns of their respective democratic transitions, due to their “cultural unity, forged over the years by a shared media – notably the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique and Radio France Internationale – and the pull of French intellectual life” (1992, 431). In Niger, the first issue of the new periodical Haské (“The Light”) alluded to democracy as “a highly contagious virus”, whose “symptoms are now well known: free elections, free opinions, multipartyism… It is pointless to think that some countries could be spared” (n°00, May 1990, 1–2). In each country, dozens of new political parties were created, while the press was also experiencing unprecedented growth. Mali went from four to 12 newspapers within two years; Niger from two to eight; and more than 200 were published in a few months in Zaire. In Rwanda and Burundi, a good dozen newspapers were created from 1991 onwards and in Côte d’Ivoire, 178 publications had been registered by 1996.3 This new local press both reflected and galvanized political debate during the transitional period. In addition, the international media no doubt encouraged African popular protest movements by disseminating information about the events in Eastern Europe and in neighboring African countries. Images of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Ceausescu era in Romania were watched in Africa thanks to the expansion of satellite dishes (Ba 1996, 12). According to Renaud de La Brosse “the wave of democratization that Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced owes a great deal to the explosion of information exchanges from North to South and to the progress in communication technologies that have made them possible” (2001, 178). But perhaps most influential among the foreign media, in Francophone Africa, were international radio stations (especially Radio France Internationale—RFI), which publicized political unrest in neighboring states and even informed African audiences about local protest movements in their own countries (Randall 1993, 625–646). 1.2
A Mixed Political Record
Within a few years, the African “spring” had led to a varied picture. In many countries, free and fair elections were organized, which led to an alternation of powerholders. The following leaders were presented as 3 There is no comprehensive directory of newspapers published in the early 1990s in Africa, but a list of the main ones was published by the International Federation of Journalists (Maja-Pearce 1995).
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models of political and, in some cases, ethnic alternation in power (even though some of them had been pillars of the former regimes): Nicéphore Soglo in Benin, Mamane Ousmane in Niger, Alpha Oumar Konaré in Mali, Ange-Félix Patassé in the Central African Republic, Pascal Lissouba in Congo-Brazzaville, and Melchior Ndadaye in Burundi.4 In other cases, the old authoritarian leaders managed to stay in power, using various tricks, such as postponing elections (i.e., Mobutu in Zaire, Eyadema in Togo and Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d’Ivoire) or manipulating the polls (i.e., Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso, Paul Biya in Cameroon and Omar Bongo in Gabon). In Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Rwanda, and Zaire, political competition and the possibility of alternation eventually led to violent conflict over power-sharing. By the end of the decade, more than half of French-speaking Africa was in a state of chronic instability or had witnessed military coups after only a few years of civilian rule. Political scientists concluded that “democratic transitions” had not generally been followed by “democratic consolidation” (Sandbrook 1996), and the 1990s were ultimately one of the bloodiest decades in the continent’s history. However, as the twenty-first century dawned, media pluralism was one undeniable achievement, within this otherwise somewhat depressing political landscape. New media systems had appeared that were more participatory, and that allowed the media to act as checks on power (Ronning 1994; Tettey 2001; Berger 2002). The media were witnesses, recorders, commentators, and sometimes actors in these political and social changes (Bourgault 1995; Hyden et al. 2002). The following sections describe the specific contributions each type of media made to this genuine revolution in the public sphere.
4 These examples also illustrate how the “transition to democracy” narrative was soon contradicted by political events: Nicéphore Soglo was beaten in the next election by former dictator Mathieu Kérékou, after only one term in office; Mamane Ousmane was deposed by a military coup after three years in power; Ange-Félix Patassé was also deposed by a military coup, at the end of his second term; Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated by the presidential guard after three months in office; and Pascal Lissouba’s term ended in civil war. Only Alpha Oumar Konaré was reelected for a second term and then left office as per proper democratic process.
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2 The New Independent Press: Achievements and Constraints Newspapers flourished by the dozen in Francophone Africa from 1990 onwards (Institut Panos Paris 1991). At first, most of them were monthlies or weeklies and only the most successful survived and became dailies—for instance, in Senegal, Cameroon and Zaire. These publications were often short-lived, appeared erratically, and consisted of only a few pages. Some were close to newly emerging political parties or individual politicians. Many of them openly criticized their governments, denounced abuses, and closely monitored the processes of political “transition.” In response to this unbridled criticism, many of the old African leaders used state-controlled newspapers to defend their views and discretely funded ostensibly “independent” newspapers that they, in fact, controlled. The new, independent press, with its tone and content of open contestation, broke apart the false national consensus that government media had hitherto sought to maintain (Frère 2000b; Faye 2008). These new publications owed much to technological changes, in particular, to the expansion of desktop publishing. With a computer and a printer, aspiring publishers could create a newspaper in their living rooms, thus the new African independent press was dubbed the “child of the [Apple] Macintosh” (Diana Senghor cited by Sissouma 2001). These newspapers claimed to act as a fourth estate—many of them created by journalists who had left the state media sector or by teachers who had, for decades, been deprived of the opportunity to express themselves freely. This phenomenon quickly drew the attention of foreign donors and international organizations, who sought to support the transitional processes by strengthening civil society. Unesco organized a conference in Windhoek (Namibia), gathering together the pioneers of the continent’s emerging free press. On 3 May 1991, they adopted a declaration stressing the importance of a free, independent, and pluralistic press for the consolidation of democracy and economic development. “Independent” meant a press over which there would be no “governmental, political or economic control”, and “pluralistic” was defined as “the end of monopolies of any kinds and the existence of the greatest possible number of newspapers, magazines and periodicals reflecting the widest possible range of opinion within the community” (Windhoek Declaration, 3 May 1991). The Declaration also stated “the international community – specifically international organizations (governmental as well as non-governmental),
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development agencies and professional associations – should as a matter of priority direct funding support towards the development and establishment of non-governmental newspapers, magazines and periodicals…”.5 This declaration represented a completely new media agenda, which also gave rise to the UN recognizing 3 May as World Press Freedom Day. In 2021, adding to the issues of freedom, pluralism, and independence in the original Declaration, the Windhoek+30 Declaration called for attention to expand so as to also cover new issues of media economic viability, internet transparency, and the public’s levels of media and information literacy. 2.1
New Roles, New Content, New Aims
The new print media transformed both the role of media in society, their contents, and the way journalists perceived and presented themselves. Unlike their predecessors, who were government spokespersons, publishers and their staff wanted to position themselves as a fourth estate, a watchdog, denouncing human rights violations, abuse of power, political manipulation, and corruption (Tudesq 1998; Perret 2005). In a context where checks and balances had not previously existed, the executive was generally powerful and was attempting to control the legislature and the judiciary. Journalists in the independent press felt that one of their main duties was to be a check on government decisions and actions. They proclaimed their commitment to being a combative press, with little pretense at “neutrality”. The press’s critical role contributed to changes in the way citizens perceived their governments. Political leaders were no longer sacred, and the cult of personality was openly mocked. New modes of expression were used to talk about politicians, such as caricature, cartoons, satire, and irony. Many satirical newspapers were created, such as Le Journal du Jeudi (Burkina Faso), Le Cafard Libéré (Senegal), Le Scorpion (Mali), Le Paon Africain (Niger), Le Messager-Popoli (Cameroon), Le Grognon (Zaire), La Griffe (Gabon). This kind of journalism was completely groundbreaking: laughing out loud was now allowed in the political arena (Daloz 1996; Bah 2004; Eko 2003). Furthermore, the diversity of opinion conveyed by the press highlighted the relativity of 5 The full declaration can be downloaded at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000093186, accessed 24 April 2020.
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political discourse, demonstrating that truths that were formerly incontrovertible could now be questioned. Newspapers reflected the positions and ambitions of a large number of political actors now on the scene, each of them with their own particular perspective. The independent press also brought new vocabulary into the public sphere, such as “multiparty system”, “checks and balances”, “rule of law”, “human rights”, and “freedom of expression”. The titles of new publications illustrated this change in political semantics, for example: Le Républicain, La Libre Expression, Le Démocrate, and Le Citoyen. Journalists started to discuss completely new issues such as the relative merits of “presidential” or “semi-presidential” systems, “one-round” or “two round” elections, or the separation between religion and the state. Newspapers also aspired to provide new public spaces by publishing contributions from readers and op-eds. These columns allowed for free expression—though only for the urban elite (such as teachers, students, and civil servants), who were literate in French, since none of these newspapers were published in local languages. Although several newspapers developed humorous columns that used more popular “street” language (for instance “Moa Goama” in Le Journal du Jeudi in Burkina Faso or “Zek le Pêquenot” in Le Paon Africain in Niger), these pieces were written by French-speaking journalists, who were only affecting popular slang. In Kinshasa and Abidjan, the sidewalks and newsstands where newspapers were put on display became spots for citizen debates called “parlementaires debout ” (“standing delegates”) or “titrologues ” (“headline specialists”). These were for those who could not afford to buy newspapers and for political activists who would come to look at the publications and openly discuss political issues (Dugrand 2012; Bahi 2001). In some countries, the independent press quickly aligned itself with the main political parties or leaders, reflecting the dividing lines of new systems built around political competition. In Cameroon, for instance, ethnicity and regionalism impacted the editorial policy and content of newspapers (Nyamnjoh 2005; Tcheuyap 2014) and many newspapers in Côte d’Ivoire openly displayed their connections to political parties (Fierens 2017). In Burundi, a number of politicized newspapers that appeared in the heat of the 1993 election campaign were described as “hate media” (La Brosse 1995), fueling animosity between communities. In Zaire, each member of the government was the power behind a different newspaper, reflecting the local adage: “one minister, one paper”.
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The “red” newspapers, with their titles printed in red on the front page, were the ones closest to the opposition, while the “blue” or “green” ones were supporters of Mobutu (Bebe Beshelemu 2006). There were two main reasons for this close relationship between the socalled “independent” press and political parties—in some ways a reminder of the situation during the first flourishing of the press back in the 1950s. Firstly, emerging political figures needed the means to make themselves known: the press gave them the platforms they needed to address readers, or, as they saw them, potential voters. Secondly, media outlets and journalists sought protection in an environment that still posed threats (both political and economic), despite the proclaimed new freedoms. The privately owned press undeniably faced many economic, socio-cultural, geographical, and political obstacles that limited its audience and impact. 2.2
Economic Constraints to the Development of the Press
The first obstacles were economic. While the old state media had been entirely financed by the government and so did not care about profitability and financial sustainability, the new “independent” press had to provide for itself. However, the usual sources of revenue such as sales and advertising were problematic. The potential readership was limited by low literacy rates and poor purchasing power (the price of a newspaper equated to that of a meal). Daily survival was a permanent worry for most of the population, therefore purchasing a newspaper, even if only once a week, was quite an investment, and newspaper circulation remained very low.6 During the fervor of the early democratic transitions, some private weeklies in French-speaking Africa could sell over 20,000 copies, but these figures gradually declined, such that ten years later, these same publications had print runs of only 2000–5000. Advertising revenues were also low, with few companies willing to spend money on promoting their products in a context where potential 6 The situation varied depending on the socio-economic context of each country: in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon, some privately owned newspapers had circulations of 15,000 copies or more (Le Messager reported peaks of 80,000 copies in the early 1990s, Notre Voie reported printing 50,000 copies). In Burkina Faso, Gabon and Benin, the top newspapers totalled around 5000–7000 copies whereas in Niger and Togo, the norm was between 2000 and 3000. In Chad, Mauritania and Central African Republic, circulation figures were as low as 500–2000. However, these figures are not reliable, being based on the publishers’ statements which were often inflated.
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consumers were scarce. As a publisher from Benin said at the Windhoek Conference: “How can we sell advertising in a country where there are no shops?” (Martin 1992, 338) Furthermore, a large part of the African economy was still in the hands of state-run companies, with monopolies in their sectors, and which advertised exclusively on government media. As for private companies, they feared displeasing the government if they subsidized a press generally considered to be close to the political opposition. At the same time, production costs were high in countries where all the materials and equipment needed to print a newspaper were imported and heavily taxed. In these difficult economic conditions, most publications disappeared after only a dozen or so issues. These resource challenges led many publishers to rely on alternative funding. The first source of ready cash was politicians and parties who needed communication channels through which to express themselves, but also to settle scores with their rivals (Faye 2008). This, often covert, support led to many cases of libel and newspapers were accused of defamation, blackmail, and various types of corruption (Adjovi 2003). The second source of funding came from the growing practice of “advertorial reporting”, in which politicians, government agencies, and companies paid journalists and newspaper publishers to cover their activities and events. Freebies and “brown envelopes” (Skjerdal 2010) became so widespread that specific terms were invented for it by journalists, such as “okra” (“gombo” in French) in several West African countries (i.e., the vegetable added to a sauce to make it slippery and easy to swallow), “per diem” in Senegal, “coupage” (“cutting”) or “transport ” in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), “camora” in Congo-Brazzaville, “nèm nèm” in Guinea, and “giti” in Rwanda. Whether they were governmental or private organizations, local or international NGOs—all adopted the habit of slipping an envelope of cash to journalists for positive coverage or to encourage the publication of an interview. Sometimes, part of the money or a second envelope was made available to the publishing company or to the newspaper publisher. Sensationalist tendencies also started to emerge. In order to survive, many newspapers started to publish scandals or shocking revelations, which were often purely fabricated. In Senegal, a series of popular, cheap tabloids emerged, with titles such as Le Populaire, Tract, Frasques, Mœurs, Scoop, and Révélations, with very little concern for professional ethics (Wittmann 2006). In Côte d’Ivoire, newspapers habitually published
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punchy headlines on the front page, with no corresponding content on the inside. These practices and trends in the newspaper business had two consequences. Firstly, what had originally appeared to be a money pit, turned out, for some publishers, to be a very profitable field. This meant that staffers often left their newsrooms to create their own publications, in pursuit of personal profit, which led to overload in an already very limited market. Secondly, lawsuits multiplied as a result of much libelous and seditious content. By the end of 1991, in, for example, Benin, the judiciary had ruled on more than 50 defamation cases, and in almost all cases, it was the press who lost. In general, these trials resulted in heavy fines imposed on newspapers that could not pay them, so they had to close down. In Cameroon and Gabon, for instance, where hundreds of cases went to trial, legal proceedings were just used to silence voices that did not please the government (Atenga 2007). 2.3
Socio-Cultural, Geographical, Professional, and Political Obstacles
In addition to economic obstacles, socio-cultural factors also limited the expansion of the privately owned press. Most newspapers were published exclusively in French (with the exception of Rwanda and Burundi—two countries with a single local language, and of Mauritania where part of the press was in Arabic), although most countries had very low literacy rates of just over 20 percent (with the exception of Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon). In addition, newspaper content was almost exclusively political, focusing on state transformations and the opportunities offered by the democratization process, which were mainly the concerns of the urban elite. Most of the political polemics taking place in capital cities were of little interest to predominantly rural populations. Besides, newspapers did not circulate much beyond a few main towns because distribution was hampered by the lack of road and air transport infrastructure. A limited number of copies were sent to provincial cities on the basis of personal and informal arrangements between publishers and transport companies. Earnings from these sales were not dependable, given the difficulty of sending money back to the capital, in countries where banking systems were embryonic at best.
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Upcoming young staffers in newsrooms also lacked appropriate training, and while some publishers or senior editors had previous experience in the state media, most of the new journalists were young people, freshly out of university, with degrees in other disciplines, and with no professional experience. Generally, they were attracted to journalism either because of a need to express themselves, or simply to find a casual job. As a result, they were unaware of either journalistic ethics or press law, which easily got them into trouble (Tudesq 1995, 135). These emerging new professionals focused on disseminating opinions, criticizing government, and on practicing “brown envelope” journalism. Few resources were available to allow for lengthy investigative reports or for developing skills in researching, collecting, and cross-checking information. Most newsrooms could not provide transport and support for reporting beyond capital cities. Contacting sources and employing local correspondents was problematic, as fixed telephone lines were almost nonexistent (mobile phones had not yet been developed).7 Quite often, journalists in the capital remained dependent on the international media to find out what was happening in their own country. For instance, in 1991, when the first Tuareg armed rebellion broke out in northern Niger (1000 km from the capital), Radio France Internationale was better informed about the conflict than the Nigerien media itself. Finally, journalists continued to face pressure and repression of a political nature, despite official declarations about press freedom. The old tools of repression seen during the colonial period were mobilized, once again, to control the press, namely: restrictive legislation; manipulation of trials; direct harassment and threats against journalists; imprisonment; and obstacles to access to information. This was the case both in countries under new leadership (e.g., Benin, Mali, Niger and Congo-Brazzaville) and, all the more so, in countries that remained under autocratic rule (e.g., Burkina Faso, Togo, Gabon, and Guinea). For instance, in Cameroon between 1991 and 1993, 146 issues of 16 different newspapers were seized by the authorities. The next chapter will discuss how these repressive measures were used and adapted to preserve the new “democratic” façade of the political and media systems. 7 In the wake of this modest expansion of the print media, some privately owned news agencies were also established, but their economic survival was even more problematic, as they did not address the audience directly, therefore, they were of no interest to advertisers. These initiatives were swept away by the arrival of the Internet.
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Towards the end of a decade of press pluralism (the 1990s), AndréJean Tudesq (1998, 190) summed it up with the following mixed assessment: “The press has its martyrs, in Africa more than elsewhere; the African media also have their black sheep and have become hot beds of corruption… Whether for its verbal excesses, contradictions, and propaganda, suspicions around paid-for information or simply lack of competence, or for repetition of the same narratives, the media’s credibility is at stake.” Hence, the dramatic drop in newspaper circulation seen after only a decade of press freedom was not only the consequence of economic problems but also because readers lost interest and trust in the content.8 In the meantime, another branch of media had developed which provided free access to information in a wide variety of languages, namely independent radio stations.
3 Liberalized Radio Sector: Political Sensitivities and Challenges Burkina Faso, Mali and Zaïre were the three countries that pioneered the development of independent radio broadcasting in Francophone Africa. In 1991, Burkina Faso licensed the first privately owned radio station in the region (Horizon FM) and ten years later, the country had more than 20 such stations. By 1993, dozens of independent radio stations were on-air in Mali, many of them based in small villages.9 In Zaïre too, 8 The written press in French-speaking Africa in the early 1990s has been compared with newspapers at the time of the French Revolution two centuries earlier. According to Daubert (2009, 155), “the dynamics of press freedom in French-speaking Africa can be likened to a speeded-up version of the French press over the half century [following the French Revolution]. In general, the scenario is the same: political openings are followed by an explosion of newspapers, sales soar to new heights before falling; press freedom is then eroded, or even cancelled for a while, before gradually gaining ground, before settling down more permanently. The similarity is sometimes close to mimicry: the same editorial techniques for circumventing prohibitions, the same types of misconduct and the same strategies of resistance to oppression and censorship.” Other researchers have criticized this comparison as ethnocentric (Capitant 2008a). 9 The Panos Paris Institute (IPP), a French international NGO (1988–2015) which supported media pluralism in Africa, published pioneering research about the changes and new actors in the media sector in French-speaking Africa from 1990 onwards. Its publications were of great importance for researchers, media support organizations, both international and local.
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community and religious radio stations were created in large numbers during the 1990s. In other countries, the liberalization process was slower, and, by the turn of the millennium, there were still only a handful of independent stations per country. 3.1
Licensing Independent FM Radio: A Sensitive Political Issue
The reasons why radio was liberalized later than the written press were both technical and political. From a technical point of view, the spectrum of available frequencies is always limited, which means that a process of frequency allocation has to be devised and implemented by each country, and, with it, a legal and administrative framework, in order to apportion this valuable public resource fairly. Indeed, many different operators coveted these frequencies, not only private promoters, but also international broadcasters wishing to broadcast on FM in major African cities, as well as the government-controlled state radio networks which had regional, rural, and local stations. Public regulators were established, aimed at organizing the licensing process on the basis of fair and rigorous criteria. However, in most countries, it was a long while before the legal framework and the relevant regulatory institutions were fit for purpose. From a political point of view, most governments were obviously reluctant to open up their airwaves. Indeed, they knew that radio was by far the most popular medium and the only one that could reach large segments of the population in rural areas (Tudesq 2002). Some countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Benin therefore chose first to open the FM frequency spectrum to international broadcasters and deliberately to postpone the granting of licenses for local initiatives. Gradually, five types of broadcasters developed. Firstly, private commercial radio stations were launched, with mainly musical programming, before starting to provide news. Secondly, the number of faith-based stations grew and were mostly Catholic and Protestant, with a minority being Muslim (Damome 2014). Beyond capital cities, most new broadcasters were registered as “community-based”. The third category of radio focused on local concerns and supported development in its various aspects: advice to local agricultural producers; educational programs;
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and debates about local issues. Fourthly, international broadcasters (e.g., RFI, Africa n°110 and the BBC) were allowed to operate on FM in all major African cities, whereas they had previously been available only on shortwave. The concern of these international radio broadcasters was to retain their audience while offering the same signal clarity as to their competitors, the new local commercial FM stations. As early as 1991, RFI was broadcasting out of Dakar and, within 20 years, it had 107 FM transmitters in Sub-Saharan Africa, 82 of which were in French-speaking Africa. Over roughly the same period, the BBC established 70 transmitters, 42 of them in French-speaking Africa. The fifth type of broadcaster was subsidiary channels of the state-owned media. No doubt worried that their formerly captive audiences could now turn to new commercial stations, the state media launched new FM channels in major cities, such as Arc-en-Ciel in Ouagadougou, Fréquence 2 in Abidjan, Atlantic FM in Cotonou, and Dakar FM in Senegal—all with a more relaxed feel than their parent-media, the established state broadcaster. This liberalization of the airwaves took place amid a political transformation, right across the African continent, in which radio had become an increasingly strategic commodity. Elections had become the preferred mode of access to power, and political parties and candidates needed to find a communication tool to reach the bulk of voters. Moreover, many countries had started a process of decentralization, which aimed at transferring authority to the local level and closer to the people—a process strongly encouraged and supported by international donors. Therefore, it was important, in political and administrative terms, to be able to control local radio stations outside the capital cities. First, political leaders wished to be able to spread their messages “at home”, in the regions or towns where they were from, or where they wished to influence local opinion. The most obvious example is the DRC: the number of broadcasters exploded ahead of every election, following the introduction of multiparty democracy (i.e., in 2006, 2011 and 2018). For instance, on 10 Created in 1981 by the Gabonese government, with French state support, Africa n°1 was the continent’s first French-speaking pan-African radio station. Although it was very popular during the 1990s, it saw a decline in 2002 when its main shareholder, the French public company SOFIRAD, withdrew. Subsequently, the Libyan Head of State Muammar Gaddafi, wishing to position himself as a Pan-Africanist leader, became the majority shareholder. After Gaddafi’s death, the station weakened and eventually closed. Its Paris-based parent company, which remained autonomous, was renamed Africa Radio in 2019, and had ambitions to expand on the African continent once again.
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the eve of the 2018 elections, 742 radio stations were officially licensed, many of them created by political figures in their own constituencies. Second, decentralization conferred more importance to local authorities, as well as to the circulation of information at the local level. In Burkina Faso for instance, many local radio stations were created in the context of administrative changes linked to decentralization. Successful commercial newspaper publishers also launched their own radio stations. For instance, Sud Quotidien established a radio network in Senegal, La Gazette du Golfe created Golfe FM in Benin, Anfani gave birth to Anfani FM in Niger, and the owner of the daily newspaper Le Potentiel in the DRC created Radio 7. Thus, the first private multimedia companies were created, most of which soon invested in television as well. By 2010, all French-speaking Sub-Saharan African countries had liberalized their radio sectors, with the exception of Mauritania. But the process was not all plain sailing: it took Cameroon ten years to finally adopt a law authorizing independent broadcasting (2000), and Guinea only licensed its first privately owned radio station in 2006. In some countries, such as Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon, some private backers appropriated frequencies and started to broadcast without official permission before the proper legal frameworks were in place (Frère 2009a), while in Côte d’Ivoire, commercial broadcasters were granted licenses, but were banned from covering political issues (Sendin 2013, 182). 3.2
The Power of Radio
African governments were understandably cautious about opening up their airwaves, since radio was, and still remains, the most widespread medium in Sub-Saharan Africa (Gunner et al. 2011). In most Frenchspeaking countries, it continues to have a reach that far outstrips the press, television, or online media, especially in rural areas. Radio overcomes the barriers of distance and illiteracy, while production costs are much lower than for print or television. A radio set is affordable for most listeners, meaning that radio ownership rates for all of Sub-Saharan Africa increased dramatically from about 1 million in the 1950s to over 100 million in 2000 (Fardon and Furniss 2000). The use of local languages makes radio accessible to all citizens, thus enabling it to become a player in the social and political changes underway on the African continent.
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From the beginning of the 2000s, radio’s intersection with the new technology of mobile phones increased the capabilities of local broadcasters even more. After three decades of serving as a channel for propaganda and development, radio started to play a more democratic role amid the new pluralist politics of the 1990s onwards (Capitant 2008b). Many of the first independent broadcasters positioned themselves as “watchdogs” of the democratic process. For example, during the 2000 presidential elections in Senegal, Sud FM posted correspondents in dozens of polling stations in order to monitor voting and to broadcast the results as soon as available. This bypassed the electoral commission, thereby preventing any fraudulent manipulation of the figures. It was these results that forced the outgoing President Abdou Diouf to resign his seat to opposition leader Abdoulaye Wade (Tudesq 2002, 150). This was hailed as a positive democratic exercise and was replicated by radio stations in many other French-speaking countries, especially during elections. In places where radio stations have not been sufficiently well-endowed to afford a network of correspondents, several stations have banded together, on occasion, to ensure country-wide coverage and have thus created “media synergies” (Frère 2011). New radio stations positioned themselves as “the voice of the voiceless”, and as a forum in which civil society and citizens could be heard. Both commercial and non-profit community radio gave a mouthpiece to social groups that had hitherto been excluded from state media, such as trade unions, non-governmental associations, and activists. Local teachers, health workers, and leaders of farmers’ groups were asked to host programs on community radio. Participatory programs were an immediate success, since they allowed listeners to call and ask questions live on air, communicate their problems, debate with guests in the studio or with other listeners, or simply greet their friends and make music requests. For example, in Burundi, Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), which was launched in 2001 as the country was emerging from civil war, utterly identified with this community-centered role: every day, citizens would come to the RPA studios in order to voice their grievances, hoping that the station would broadcast their stories and that their issues would be solved by the relevant authorities (RPA was no longer able to maintain this role after it was burnt down in 2015, after the attempted coup). It would appear that people trusted these independent broadcasters more than the police or the judiciary. Thus, the radio was transformed from
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an instrument of top-down communication (and domination), to a much more horizontal tool. These new radio stations also became “mediated” spaces between literacy and orality, acting as “crossroads” between different types of media and audiences (Capitant 2008a, 213). On-air press reviews, particularly those in local languages, became very popular and afforded newspapers a much greater reach than their physical circulation alone. Announcements of births, marriages, and deaths, weather forecasts, and official communiqués by local authorities gradually spread from the public to independent radio stations. Similar to independent newspapers, these new radio stations invented a fresh language and tone for themselves that was more casual than the state propaganda emanating from national broadcasters. For their part, international broadcasters felt the need to catch up, and so developed strategies to enhance a sense of “proximity” with listeners; for example, by expanding their use of African languages.11 Many development organizations (NGOs), whether national or international, also identified these new broadcasters as tools for “education” and as a means to bypass state media to disseminate messages about health or civic issues. Several of these NGOs started to produce their own radio content and to sponsor programs produced by independent broadcasters on a range of topics matching their specific concerns. Selling airtime and programs to development organizations rapidly generated substantial benefits for independent radio outlets, and the revenue from such sales and sponsorship became necessary for their survival, especially for community stations. Finally, the radio continued to be an important entertainment tool, broadcasting popular music and songs. While some commercial outlets focused on international pop music (not usually welcome on the schedules of state radio stations), a number of community radios played an important role in collecting and disseminating local musical heritage and oral tradition. Furthermore, sports programs—at the crossroads of news and entertainment—became increasingly popular (Tudesq 1998, 134–137).
11 International broadcasters have had different strategies regarding local languages.
While the BBC has had a long tradition of broadcasting in four African languages (Hausa, Somali, Kiswahili and Kinyarwanda/Kirundi), and added six new languages in 2016, RFI has only recently begun broadcasting in Hausa (2007), Swahili (2010), Madenkan (2015) and Fulfulde (2019), for a limited number of hours a week. The Voice of America currently broadcasts in 10 African languages. See Fiedler and Frère (2016).
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However, despite the enthusiasm generated by the liberalization of the airwaves in French-speaking Africa—both locally and internationally—a tragic episode was soon to occur which would remind the world of the extremely negative role that radio propaganda could play. In 1994, in Rwanda, the first privately owned radio station in the country, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), actively spread hate speech against the Tutsi community and played a practical role in the carrying out of genocidal killings (Chrétien 1995; Thompson 2007).12 This tragedy had two major consequences for the radio sector in Francophone Africa. Firstly, many authoritarian governments used this case as an excuse to further postpone the licensing of independent radio stations. Secondly, the many international organizations and foreign aid agencies that had been supporting emergent independent African media, on the basis of its role in promoting democracy, came to the bitter realization that privately owned media were not necessarily independent media, and they did not all aspire to democratic ideals. Indeed, outlets like RTLM could also contribute to spreading the deadliest of propaganda, in local languages that were not understood by foreign diplomats. Consequently, external support was redirected towards training projects for journalists rather than core support for media outlets. International NGOs also created their own studios to maintain control of radio production processes and, in conflict-affected countries, they supported the establishment of new radio stations devoted to peace and reconciliation. For instance, in Burundi, next door to Rwanda, the first independent radio stations were launched in the midst of civil war, explicitly to promote peace—these were: Radio Bonesha (1996), Radio Publique Africaine (2000) and Radio Isanganiro (2002). Almost entirely dependent on foreign funding, such radio stations aimed at bringing together warring communities and at promoting a better understanding of each other’s points of view. New “humanitarian” radio stations were also established in countries where the United Nations had peace-keeping missions, such as: Radio Ndeke Luka (2000) in the Central African Republic, Radio
12 The actual role played by RTLM in the genocide of the Tutsi community has,
subsequently, been hotly debated. On the one side it is asserted that RTLM’s broadcasts speeded up and exacerbated the genocide, whereas on the other side, it is felt that the genocide would have happened with or without the presence of RTLM—it made no difference. The issue of hate speech and its possible impacts is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.
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Okapi (2002) in the DRC, ONUCI FM (2004) in Côte d’Ivoire and Mikado FM (2015) in Mali.13 The development of independent radio broadcasting in Africa has therefore given rise to many debates on the positive or negative impacts of this medium: some observers stressed its potential for community transformation and participation (Jallov 2015); while others worried about its ability to indoctrinate through the dissemination of political and religious propaganda (Senghor 2015). 3.3
Radio Pluralism and the Fight for Survival
While radio broadcasting has expanded markedly in French-speaking Africa over the past three decades, various obstacles hinder the development of many stations, to this day. Ten years after the Windhoek conference, the UN organized another conference in Namibia, which adopted the African Charter on Broadcasting, in 2001, and, as part of this, participants recognized “the existence of serious barriers to free, independent and pluralistic broadcasting and to the right to communicate through broadcasting in Africa”.14 First, numerous technical problems have continued to plague the sector. Despite digital technology making broadcasting much easier, radio stations still need to import expensive equipment from outside Africa, such as transmitters, mixing desks, computers, etc. European companies were initially the main suppliers but commercial relations with Dubai and China have seen recent growth, enabling African media entrepreneurs to access cheaper devices. However, maintenance is often a challenge, especially for small stations in remote towns, since there is little local expertise available to repair equipment. Access to electricity is also problematic
13 Two of these stations have now become independent from the UN: ONUCI FM, in Côte d’Ivoire, became La Radio de la Paix in 2017 and is now managed by the local Houphouët-Boigny Foundation for Peace. Radio Ndeke Luka, in CAR (first launched as Radio MINURCA in 1998) was for a long time backed by UNDP and the Swiss Fondation Hirondelle but since 2009, it has been managed by a local organization, the Ndeke Luka Foundation, with continued the support of Fondation Hirondelle. In 2014, the UN created a new, separate, radio station in Bangui called Guira FM. 14 The full text of the Charter is available on the website of MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa), at https://crm.misa.org/upload/web/african_charter_on_broadcasting. pdf (consulted on 1 May 2020).
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in Sub-Saharan Africa—with some French-speaking countries particularly lagging behind. Power shortages are commonplace and many radio stations are dependent on generators, particularly in rural areas.15 As a consequence, many community radios have tried to find alternative ways to generate their own power, ranging from solar to bioenergy (Deflander 2015), but the amount produced is generally low and the need for fuel generators persists. Second, various economic challenges have confronted the radio sector since the 1990s and continue to do so. Similar to newspapers, independent radios have found themselves in a constrained advertising market and they face financial problems as a result of a lack of commercial opportunities. In French-speaking West Africa, the annual budget of most local community radio stations, around the mid-2000s was about $20,000 USD. Many of them have survived thanks to partnerships with international and local non-governmental organizations or religious networks. This not only poses a problem of long-term sustainability but also a question of control over the broadcast content (Capitant 2008b). In Burundi, independent radio stations such as RPA, Isanganiro and Bonesha were dependent on the international support for up to 80 percent of their budgets—that is until they were destroyed in 2015 (Nindorera et al. 2013). The question of how to achieve financial sustainability also continues to preoccupy the managers at Radio Okapi in the DRC, given that the UN peace-keeping mission (MONUSCO) that established the station, should soon be withdrawing from the country: the budget required (around $10 million USD annually) is about ten times higher than those of the main local commercial radio stations.16 Third, even though governments have tended to postpone the liberalization of the broadcasting sector, arguing that the legal framework had to be organized first, the process has actually been more akin to deregulation rather than establishing appropriate rules. Many radio stations 15 In 2017, there were significant disparities in access to electricity: over 60 percent of the population had access in Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Senegal and Gabon, and between 20 and 30 percent in Burkina Faso, DRC, Niger and Central African Republic, but barely 10 percent of the population in Burundi and Chad https://donnees. banquemondiale.org/indicateur/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS (accessed 1 May 2020). 16 However, seen another way, this budget is tiny (less than 1 percent) in proportion to the cost of the DRC UN mission as a whole. The approved budget of MONUSCO for year 07/2019–06/2020 was $1,086,018,600 (Source: United Nations Peacekeeping https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/monusco, accessed 2 September 2020).
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operate very informally, in a gray area, with staff without proper contracts, poor wages, no budgetary transparency, and no accountability to anyone. As a result, the continent has a multitude of low-cost radios, which are the result of economic and/or political investments aimed at immediate profit, with no concern for proper management. In this context, skilled staff are difficult to retain, whether in newsrooms or on technical teams. Community and religious radio stations rely mainly on volunteers and often have no qualified staff. Therefore, the capacity for producing quality local content, relevant to the priorities of the audience, remains low. Finally, privately owned radio stations have been under political pressure in almost all Francophone Africa, over the last three decades. Not only have governments failed to establish economic environments conducive to independent broadcasting, but they have often put broadcasters directly at risk. Besides threatening or arresting journalists, another tool used by authorities has been to arbitrarily cut off radio signals or jam frequencies. Broadcasters operating outside capital cities are especially vulnerable and are often compelled to keep on the good side of local authorities who provide them with information and sometimes transport, premises and/or power (i.e., electricity). In return, the local governor or mayor will expect the local radio to promote their policies and give them visibility. Particularly in conflict zones (e.g., DRC, CAR and Chad), many local community radios have been the target of armed groups who have tried either to control or to destroy them (Frère 2009a). Notwithstanding all these problems, in many French-speaking African countries today, radio pluralism embodies the very notion of freedom of expression itself. While it is not possible for most citizens to read newspapers, let alone have their opinions published, listening to several radio stations has become a daily routine, and expressing oneself on-air is a reality.
4
Television: From an Elite to a Popular Medium
With the availability of foreign TV satellite broadcasting, the television sector started to become more plural, in urban Africa, in the early 1990s (Ba 1996, 14). In 1989, only the French-language channel TV5,17 17 TV5 was created in 1984 by five French-speaking public television channels: TF1, Antenne 2, France 3 (all three in France), RTBF (Belgium) and TSR (Switzerland). TF1 withdrew in 1987 following privatization. In 1991, TV5 Afrique was launched, which was
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and the American channels CNN International and Worldnet18 could be received in French-speaking Africa. But five years later, thanks to privatization and deregulation of the broadcasting system, some 20 foreign channels were available via satellite. However, the continent had only about 300,000 satellite dishes at this stage, and reception was limited to a small, urban elite able to afford the necessary technology. Nevertheless, the process of introducing satellite broadcasting effectively ended the monopoly of state-run TV. 4.1
The Gradual Development of Local TV Outlets
Local privately owned television stations did not really develop until the early 2000s, with the notable exception of Zaire, where some of the earlier ones were licensed: Antenne A (1991), Télé Kin Malebo (1992), Canal Kin (1993) and Raga TV (1996) were the pioneers in Frenchspeaking Africa. In 1997, LC2 was created in Benin. This early experience in West Africa served as a model for subsequent experiments in Burkina Faso (Canal 3 and SMTV created in 2002), Niger (Télé Ténéré in 2000) and Senegal (2STV in 2006, Canal Info and RDV in 2007). In 2003, a Malian entrepreneur, Ismaël Sidibé launched Africable from Bamako, the first satellite TV station aiming to cover all of Sub-Saharan Africa (despite broadcasting only in French and actually covering only 13 countries). Other pan-African TV stations focusing on the news were created at this time but were mostly based outside the continent.19 Whether commercial or denominational (there were very few successful attempts at community television), the new privately owned TV stations faced a difficult environment: television production is expensive, and the number of potential consumers remained limited until the mid-2000s. specifically for the African continent but then in 2006, TV5 Afrique and its 8 networks were renamed TV5 Monde. The French government covers almost 70 percent of TV5 Monde’s budget. 18 Worldnet Television and Film Service was an American public channel, created in 1983, intended for broadcasting outside the United States. It merged with Voice of America in 2004. 19 TéléSud was created in 1998 (but was subsequently closed in 2019) and Africa 24 (belonging to a Cameroonian entrepreneur and the government of Equatorial Guinea) was launched in 2009, both of them based in Paris. Euronews established Africanews in 2016 in Congo-Brazzaville and France 24, created by the French government in 2005, has special news programs for Africa.
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When the first private TV channel LC2 was created in Benin in 1997, the number of TV sets in the country was estimated at only 60,000 out of a population of nearly six million (Dioh 2009, 43). Television remained an urban and elitist medium, dependent on reliable power, and consumed collectively (unlike radio, which became an individual medium thanks to transistors, and then mobile phones). Many commercial television channels were created by preexisting radio stations, strengthening the media groups which owned them. In Benin, Golfe TV joined Golfe FM in 2003. Télé 7 was added to Radio 7 in the DRC; Télé Renaissance to Radio Renaissance in Burundi; and DRTV to Digital Radio in Congo-Brazzaville. In Senegal, Walf TV belongs to the same group as Walf FM (and the daily Walfadjiri), and the musician Youssou N’Dour20 owns RFM (Radio Futurs Médias), TFN (Télévision Futurs Médias) and a daily newspaper (L’Observateur). In Cameroon, the very popular Equinoxe Télé belongs to the same group as Radio Equinoxe and the daily La Nouvelle Expression; while Vision 4 is the TV of the Anecdote group which owns the radio station, Satellite FM and the newspaper, L’Anecdote. Human and technical resources are often shared between outlets in the same group. Television stations with religious identities have also grown from the same foundations as their corresponding radio stations: indeed some, in the DRC or in Burkina Faso, also focus on information, and even have daily news bulletins, despite being primarily denominational. In addition to local television channels, viewers in African capitals gradually started to access satellite TV packages for a monthly fee. As early as 1991, about a dozen foreign companies, from Europe, the United States, and Japan, entered the satellite market. Prices were relatively high, so many local manufacturers created and sold handmade satellite dishes and hacked into the signals illicitly (Misse 2002, 106). In French-speaking Africa, Canal Satellite (a subsidiary of Canal+ in France), dominated the market for about 20 years. Despite being much more expensive than the local channels, it was a status symbol, similar to owning a car or having air conditioning (Balima 2009). The South African company MultiChoice (providing the DStv pay-TV service) did not really expand into
20 Youssou N’Dour was appointed Minister of Culture in 2012. He left the Senegalese government 17 months later, but still acts as special advisor to President Macky Sall.
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French-speaking Africa. Conversely, the Chinese company, StarTimes,21 has recently become dominant in the countries where it is available because it is much more affordable. Since the mid-2000s, Arab channels (mainly Al Jazeera and Al Arabya) have made a remarkable breakthrough, particularly in countries where the population is predominantly Muslim, such as Chad, Niger, Mauritania and Mali. The digital switchover has been slow in French-speaking Africa, and most countries still broadcast mainly on analogue signals. Despite this, most audiences now have access to unprecedented choice in terms of TV news. Even so, the situation varies markedly between countries as regards local TV news providers. For example, in 2017 the DRC had 539 registered local TV stations (more than 50 in the city of Kinshasa alone), while the whole of Burundi had only five local stations. In urban areas, television consumption often exceeds that of radio, but consumption patterns differ, with television generally being watched in the evening, especially for news and entertainment, while radio tends to reach its audience in the morning.22 While the independent written press has been analyzed mainly for its contribution to the democratic debate, and radio has been perceived above all as a means of influencing and mobilizing the greatest number of people, the emergence of independent television in French-speaking Africa has revived the debate on acculturation and foreign cultural domination. Indeed, commercial television channels often fill airtime with highly popular entertainment programs, such as Brazilian or Mexican telenovelas , and American or Nigerian serials. In countries where migration to digital (DTTV) has progressed more rapidly, such as Côte d’Ivoire, StarTimes and Canal+ have competed to make programs that will attract 21 StarTimes (launched in 1988), is the only private Chinese company that is allowed to invest in broadcasting beyond China. It has a hold on all of the following: household equipment (decoders and Digital Terrestrial Television [DTTV] sets); infrastructure (it has signed contracts with several African states, including Chad, to establish the necessary infrastructure to launch DTTV); on distribution (satellite or digital pay-TV) and on production (financing its own programs). Working closely with the Chinese government, StarTimes controls a whole range of activities traditionally implemented by different companies. 22 There is very little reliable data available about audience habits in French-speaking Africa. This issue will be discussed further in Chapter 7. The data available indicate that audiences turn generally to a couple of local TV stations first (including the state broadcaster), then to international stations including those focused on entertainment (e.g., Novellas TV, Trace) and news (e.g., France 24), available on the French Canal+.
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African audiences, while local TV companies have not yet been able to benefit from these new broadcasting opportunities to increase their home-grown offer. The overwhelming presence of foreign producers in African television is the subject of various different analyses. Some researchers, such as André-Jean Tudesq and Abdoul Ba, highlight the consequences in terms of “acculturation” (a negative term in French that evokes the loss of one’s original culture to be replaced by a foreign one). For Ba (1996, 173), the ubiquity of international images “has contributed to imposing a dominant culture by marginalizing endogenous cultures and erasing cultural identities”. On the other hand, others, such as Jean-François Werner, are more interested in local “appropriation” or “reinterpretations” (the way local cultures create their own interpretations of, and uses for, foreign cultural content).23 Werner (2012, 103) observes, on the basis of an anthropological reception survey conducted in Dakar, that viewers have their own way of relating to this content and have “a personal interpretation based on their life experience and their current interests…”. 4.2
Cost Issues in TV
Local TV production remains limited mainly because of lack of resources, which leads to significant dependence on programs from abroad, whether for information or entertainment. For over a decade, French-speaking African TV channels broadcast a large amount of content received from Canal France International (CFI), a public company established by the French government in 1989, which provided free content to African TV channels, up until 2015.24 In 1995, these foreign programs represented between 20 and 80 percent of all content (news, documentaries,
23 It should be noted that French academic literature generally uses the term réappropriation whereas English refers to this process rather as “reinterpretation”. In English, “cultural appropriation” is the confiscation of another’s culture, which is very different in meaning to the French réappropriation, even though it sounds similar. 24 Current affairs content for Africa and worldwide was provided to CFI by AITV
(Agence Internationale d’Images de Télévision), another French public company, which closed down in 2014. From 1999 to 2003, CFI had its own TV channel for African audiences, but it was closed due to competition with TV5 Monde. In 2015, CFI stopped providing content and devoted itself exclusively to media-support projects, mainly funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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and entertainment) broadcast by national television stations in Frenchspeaking Africa (Balima 2009). Local production gradually increased during this period, especially in terms of music videos, debates, and talk shows, but by 2009, the content on most independent television stations was still less than 50 percent home-grown (Balima 2009, 463). Producing locally was, and continues to be, much more expensive than buying packages of foreign programs. In 2000, a study showed that state TV in Burkina Faso (RTB) paid 28 million CFA francs ($36,000 USD) to buy 188 episodes of the Brazilian telenovela “Mulheres de Areia” (“Sand Women”), the cost of which was covered by sponsorship from a spices brand. The same year, RTB invested 300 million CFA francs ($383,000 USD) to co-produce 12 episodes of the first Burkinabe sitcom, “A Nous la Vie” (“Life is Ours”) (Balima and Frère 2003, 150). Covering daily current affairs is also costly. TV outlets cannot afford to hire and equip local correspondents, or to send reporters into the field outside the capital city, which means their coverage is often limited to what occurs in the city center. Even though smartphones have now made it easier to shoot and send footage from provincial towns, many TV stations do not devote much airtime to such content anyway, for reasons linked to the “brown envelope” phenomenon. Just as for press and radio news, many television stations expect to be paid by their sources. Thus, the midday or evening news invariably consists of a series of reports about activities organized by officials (including presidents and prime ministers), or by national and international organizations, all of whom have requested, organized, and paid for coverage. News programs also include a lot of debates, with guests invited to discuss a topic in the TV studio, which is a much more affordable format than reports and investigative journalism from the field. Some original formats have been created: in 2013, two Senegalese rap artists started newscasts in “rap” mode: their aim was to attract youth who did not have any interest in TV news. The success was striking, and the model was copied in other Francophone countries. Given their limited financial resources, privately owned television stations generally cannot afford satellite broadcasting and are available exclusively in the capital city. Covering the whole country is a challenge even for state TV stations, which have existed for decades and receive substantial state funding, so it is often out of the question for independent outlets. The most popular programs can be put online, and some of them reach rural areas through social networks. But generally, even in
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localities that TV signals reach, the issue of access to electricity prevents most households from watching TV, unless they can afford a generator or solar panels. This cost, added to the purchase of a TV set, makes it 20 times more expensive to watch television than to listen to the radio. Because of its urban audience, television has seldom been considered a tool for bringing about social change and has received much less support from international organizations than radio. However, many examples show TV’s potential to mobilize people, especially in the big cities. In Cameroon, in 2008, major demonstrations broke out in Douala in support of Equinoxe TV, after its signal was cut off as a result of its fierce criticisms of Paul Biya’s regime. During elections in the DRC in 2006, television channels close to the two opposing presidential candidates, Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba, broadcast violent images that allegedly led to violent clashes in Kinshasa (Frère 2011). Also, in Côte d’Ivoire, reports by Radio Télévision Ivoirienne (RTI) contributed to tensions between communities before and during the civil war that started in 2002 (Sy Savané 2012). Finally, it has been assumed by some that, because they still have a limited audience and are mainly used for entertainment, independent television stations are subject to less pressure from the state than independent radio stations. But, in fact, television has always been a major concern for the ruling elite. Heads of state and political figures are extremely sensitive to the information and news broadcast by independent television stations, even more so when it comes to monitoring privately owned African TV channels that can be accessed abroad via satellite or paid-for TV packages. And, in many countries, press conferences by government officials or other types of ceremonies can be delayed until the TV crews from these independent outlets arrive. Nevertheless, television seems to be less of a target of repression in French-speaking Africa than radio stations or newspapers. Television has suffered fewer suspensions, bans, trials, and threats, perhaps because it is positioned and perceived differently in the public sphere. The press has more freedom a priori, as the conditions for establishing a newspaper are quite simple, but because many newspapers are linked to political struggles, their opinion-oriented content often has the potential to disrupt the state. Radios are known to reach a much broader audience, and some of them act as “watchdogs” and as “voices of the voiceless”, hence raising tensions with local or national government actors who rarely appreciate criticism “from below”. By contrast, independent television
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stations are generally more consensual. This is because: firstly, in many countries (Congo-Brazzaville and Chad for instance), the only privately owned TV outlets allowed belong to individuals close to the regime; and secondly, independent commercial backers tend to invest considerable sums in setting up their media companies and are therefore cautious not to take too many political risks that could potentially lead to suspension or closure, and heavy financial losses. In the few countries where privately owned television stations are clearly instruments of political opponents, television channels can easily be financially stifled or suspended for falling foul of the laws applied to the TV sector. In the DRC for instance, the Kabila regime (2001–2019) suspended up to fifteen television stations in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi belonging to political challengers such as Jean-Claude Bemba, Adolphe Muzito or Moïse Katumbi. They were allowed to re-open only when Felix Tshisekedi became president in 2019. The development of digital TV, as well as the way internet-enabled mobile phones have transformed information flows will, no doubt, contribute to television switching from an urban and elitist medium to a popular and far-reaching one. In several countries, such as Cameroon, new TV channels broadcasting on YouTube have become popular, especially ones established outside the country—these tend to provide views and opinions that would otherwise not circulate on local media.
5
The Digital Era: Internet and Mobile Telephony
The circulation of information in French-speaking Africa has been transformed since the mid-2000s by two technological innovations: mobile telephony and the Internet. These information and communication technologies (ICTs) have raised new hopes and utopic visions of social and political transformation. “Techno-optimists” have hailed these tools as a technological leap forward for the continent, leading to rapid progress in development (Dahmani 2003, 7). International organizations (e.g., International Telecommunication Union [ITU], the United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], and the African Union [AU]) have argued that, thanks to ICTs, Africa will finally be able to provide quality health care for all, guarantee accessible education, eradicate poverty,
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promote gender equality, empower women, and strengthen democratic governance.25 However, as early as 2002, some authors tempered this enthusiasm and highlighted the many paradoxes associated with the use of ICTs in French-speaking Africa: allowing greater access to information, but possibly reinforcing exclusion and inequality; providing new openings to the world but disseminating problematic content; requiring significant investment while neglecting other basic needs (Brunet et al. 2002). International organizations were accused of taking “an approach to ICTs marked by technological determinism, confusing technological progress with social progress, reduction of the digital divide and reduction of the development divide” (Laborde 2004, 27). Others underlined that, if technologies were presented as a solution to basic problems (access to water, healthcare and education), the development of the required technological infrastructure also provided huge markets for private companies and so profit-making issues should also be taken into account (Dahmani and Ledjou 2012). The impact of these new technologies on democratic governance is difficult to prove. As early as 2002, Michael Leslie identified three potential contributions of the Internet to the consolidation of democracy in Africa: “making citizens more aware of what is happening in the political arena, thus helping them to increase their power”; multiplying available sources of information; and allowing greater transparency of government services available online (2002, 124). However, he concluded that Africa had a very modest record regarding these three possibilities, while noting that “citizens who are already organized and pursuing a deliberate strategy are taking advantage of the Internet”. Twenty years after the Sub-Saharan African “spring”, the so-called “Arab Spring”, described as the “fourth wave” of democratization (Diamond 2011), highlighted the importance of mobile phones and social networks for mobilizing demonstrators. The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings were quickly labeled “web revolutions” (“revolutions 2.0” in French); a label which was later criticized as ignoring the underlying sociological changes that led to the unrest. However, technology has 25 See the Declaration of Principles of the World Summit on the Information Society (Geneva 2003–Tunis 2005): “Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new millennium”. Available at https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop. html (accessed 4 May 2020).
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undoubtedly facilitated the expression of dissident voices, the circulation of information within groups that were already well-organized, and the coordination of their actions (Gonzales-Quijano 2012; Khamis and Vaughn 2014). When popular uprisings broke out in Burkina Faso in 2014 and in Burundi in 2015, the mobilizing impact of mobile phones and social networks was again the subject of discussion. So far, there is no evidence that ICT penetration correlates with good governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the words of Imen Khanchel El Mehdi, ICTs remain “limited in terms of improving governance, which remains largely dependent on exogenous factors independent of ICTs” (2011, 82). But these technologies clearly provide a new space for contestation, which is why many governments in French-speaking Africa have recently hindered or suspended access to Internet and to mobile phone services, when faced with protests or during tense elections. As for the impact of ICTs on economic development, it has also given rise to as many optimists as it has pessimists (Loukou 2011; Dakouré 2014). The issue of the impact of these technologies on societies in Frenchspeaking Africa is too broad for this book and is addressed in other works (Chéneau-Loquay 2000, 2004; De Bruijn et al. 2009).26 What is of interest, here, is the way these technologies have transformed the media and the daily practice of African journalists. 5.1
The Internet: Slow to Impact Media in French-Speaking Africa
The growth of the Internet has been (and remains) relatively limited in Africa, compared to other continents.27 The first news websites were launched by newspapers in the early 2000s, mainly oriented towards their diasporas and mainly just duplicating the same content as their print editions. These websites have often built their audience thanks to
26 For a broader view of daily use of ICTs in society, see, for instance, papers devoted to Africa in the journal TIC&Société, or the recent special issue of Communication et Langages (n°205, September 2020). 27 Internet penetration in Africa was estimated at 39.3 percent in January 2020,
with major differences between countries. In the 17 countries of French-speaking Africa studied, the average was 24 percent, with Gabon (58.8 percent), Senegal (58.2 percent) and Côte d’Ivoire (45.3 percent) on the high side, while Chad (6.3 percent), DRC (8.3 percent) and Burundi (9.7 percent) being very low (see www.internetworldstats. com/stats1.htm).
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web portals that provided access to a large number of national newspapers, such as www.abidjan.net, www.lefaso.net, www.maliweb.net, most of which started to develop their own content after a few years (Paré 2010). One of the initial impacts of the Internet on the media landscape in French-speaking Africa has undoubtedly been the increased participation of diasporas in local debates. Online discussion forums have allowed expatriate nationals abroad to reconnect with local politics (Mattelart 2009). In countries where the inner political sphere has been strictly controlled (such as Rwanda, Congo-Brazzaville, or Central African Republic), the political opposition in exile has created news websites based abroad and has thus been able to spread alternative information. While providing a different perspective on national news, these sites have quickly raised issues about the reliability of the information conveyed, as well as questions of responsibility for the content circulated. For example, in Burundi, the director of the private news agency Net Press was arrested and jailed in 2003 because of a hypertext link on his website to another site based abroad containing offensive comments about the government. Online news providers have multiplied from the mid-2000s onwards, but they face problems of profitability and therefore sustainability. At first, only a few companies such as banks, telecoms, and money transfer operators, were interested in advertising on these sites, in order to reach diaspora markets. But as local access to information websites increased and overtook the diaspora audience at the beginning of the 2010s, new opportunities for funding arose. The financial needs of news websites are often lower than those of television, the press, and even of radio, since they operate at a lower cost. Therefore, some of these sites have managed to consolidate and have started competing fiercely with the printed press to reach the same urban, educated, and wealthy publics. Radio and television stations have also developed their own websites, but their sites are often little more than shopfronts, with minimal scope for streaming or downloading. The minimalist online strategy of well-established print and broadcasting media in French-speaking Africa contributes little to the already scant amount of African content on the Internet. African languages are particularly underrepresented on the web and Africans use the Internet mainly to consume content produced by others. Online news has allowed some new figures to emerge as opinion leaders. In the early 2010s, some young journalists became well known for their blogs, such as Ramata Soré in Burkina Faso or Cédric Kalonji in
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DRC. But in recent years, social networks (especially Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter) have become the favorite platforms for journalists to distribute their own photos, videos, and ideas, besides those which they produce for their own newsrooms. For instance, in the DRC when the “M23” rebels took Goma in November 2012, images of armed men in the city were first distributed by radio journalists on social networks. And in Burkina Faso in September 2015, civilian resistance to an attempted coup by the presidential guard could be followed live on the Facebook page of Lefaso.net and on the Twitter account of the news website, Burkina 24. Some Facebook accounts have been targeted by governments, due to their significant influence. In Cameroon, for example, the three most popular Facebook pages (by number of followers) are: TGV de l’info (whose promotor, Paul Chouta, has been in jail for libel since 2019) (80,000 followers); Coup Franc, run by a former Cameroonian journalist, now in exile in France; and the account of Boris Bertolt, previously employed at the Mutations newspaper, and now also based in France. It is hard to say whether these people are journalists, opponents, opinion leaders, or whistleblowers. Most appear to be able to blend more than one activity and are thus interrogating the already fragile professional identity of journalists in French-speaking Africa, as discussed in Chapter 5. These new web activists also pose a genuine challenge to the state, and opinion leaders such as Naïm Touré from Burkina Faso (95,000 followers) have been incarcerated several times and Mohammed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir was jailed for more than five years in Mauritania for posting content on Facebook considered problematic by his government, under the influence of religious leaders. Governments have become more sensitive to online information as Internet access in French-speaking Africa has gradually grown. In the early 2000s, Internet cafés or “cybers ” represented an initial step in widening local public access to online services, but these have now disappeared as their clientele—largely the elite—have invested in private Wi-Fi at home or in Internet-enabled phones. While smartphones are still the preserve of the elite, some brands from Dubai or China are now available in African markets for around $30–50, making them more accessible. Some basic models of mobile phones provide access to Facebook or Bluetooth technology through which information can circulate. Telecommunications operators have clearly understood that this is a lucrative market, and so mobile phone companies have grown rapidly and have adapted their subscriptions and prepaid packages to suit local consumers (Keita 2015, 4).
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5.2
The Rapid Expansion of Mobile Telephony
The spread of information technologies has taken place in Africa against a backdrop of telecommunications deregulation and privatization. Strongly encouraged by international organizations and institutions (World Bank, IMF and ITU), countries privatized their public networks to supposedly enable them to “modernize infrastructure that has become obsolete and therefore unable to meet new needs” (Dahmani 2003, 23). International commercial mobile phone operators have taken over the continent, with an eye to its strong growth potential: MTN and Vodacom (South Africa), Zaïn-Celtel-Airtel (Kuwait, then India), Orange (France), MOOV (United Arab Emirates), Millicom (Luxembourg) and so on. African states have tried to retain a stake in the market either by developing their own operators or by having shares in foreign companies wishing to establish themselves locally. By 2012, there were more than 200 mobile phone operators on the African continent, with commercial companies contributing to the installation of the submarine and terrestrial optical fiber cables for broadband access (Fullsack 2011, 2012). In just a few years, African countries have achieved rates of mobile phone penetration that exceed 50 percent, far outstripping the number of fixed lines, which are now obsolete. While prepaid services are more expensive than monthly subscriptions, 95 percent of users in Sub-Saharan Africa prefer the former, as the vast majority have very low and unreliable incomes. In French-speaking Africa, access to mobile telephony is still an issue in some countries, especially those with acute poverty and political instability (e.g., Burundi, DRC, Niger, CAR and Chad),28 but in others, access has surpassed the 100 percent mark. Indeed, in most countries, quite a number of people have more than one mobile subscription, using different phones to call on different networks, thereby avoiding extra costs of calls between networks and navigating unstable network signals. This explains why countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon or Senegal have more than one mobile phone per head of population. Mobile phones are used to perform many functions, including financial transactions, in countries where most people are outside the banking system. Mobile phones have become an essential commodity for most
28 The figures provided by the ITU for mobile phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants (2018) are as follows: 5653 in Burundi, 4512 in Chad, 4338 in the DRC, 4064 in Niger and 2741 in CAR.
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households, with this new tool accounting for 10 percent of African households’ monthly expenditure in 2009 (Dahmani and Ledjou 2012). They have also profoundly transformed the daily practice of journalists, for whom the mobile phone has become an essential work tool. 5.3
Connected African Journalists
Information technologies have generated changes at various levels in the daily activities of African journalists: data collection, production and distribution, archiving, training opportunities, and methods for protecting press freedom have all been strengthened through mobile phones and the Internet (Frère 2009b). Regarding information collection, the widespread use of mobile phones now makes it easy for reporters to contact sources, experts, witnesses, and authorities. As mentioned above, during the presidential elections in Senegal in 2000, it was the use of mobile phones by journalists enabling them to quickly check and publicize the election results that brought about “to a certain extent, the advent of alternation of government power-holders” (Coulibaly 2002, 155–156). Mobile phones also allow local people to contact journalists in the capital with news, pictures, and videos relating to incidents and events taking place in remote locations.29 For independent media that are unable to subscribe to international news agencies, the Internet provides access to a huge amount of free information and data. Journalists can just surf the web to fill in regional or international news sections or programs, as well as to find graphics, pictures, and footage, sometimes with little regard for copyright issues. Given that most media companies do not have in-house information and documentation services, journalists can, instead, connect to the web and download official statements, reports from international NGOs or
29 The French public media group France 24 has established a network of “observers”, many of them based in Africa. They collect images, videos and testimonies submitted by citizens, and after a process of fact-checking and verification, France 24 distributes this content on their site in four languages (French, English, Arabic and Persian) and features it in a special weekly TV show. Photos and videos that are fake, as well as pictures and videos that have been widely shared online, but have been faked, manipulated or taken out of context are also published with the label “debunked”, and with an explanation of how the item has been manipulated.
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international organizations, as well as publications by civil society organizations. For example, Congolese journalists in Kinshasa now have easy access to reports published by the United Nations about their own country, such as the well-known Rapport Mapping which is issued regularly, and which gives the positions of belligerents in the conflict zones in the east of the country—zones that are out of bounds for local media. In countries where certain areas are under threat from terrorism, such as Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad, reports from local and international NGOs (such as Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, the International Federation of Human Rights or Amnesty International) help journalists’ compile data and analyses. Furthermore, Facebook and WhatsApp groups provide an easy means to disseminate these resources. The world over, there is an issue of reliability and legality of content shared online and used as sources by journalists. But in the African context, problems of news reliability arise even more, because possibilities for cross-checking and verification in the field are limited, and because scoops and sensational information are incentivized by competition in a limited market. Some governments, regulatory bodies, and professional organizations have tried to raise awareness about “fake news”, and to promote techniques for journalists to cross-check facts and documents shared on social media to verify the reliability of sources. But warnings emanating from public institutions can seem suspicious to many journalists who suspect governments of hiding the truth; indeed, as we will see in the next chapter, state institutions have often been used by governments to try to prevent truths from being disclosed to the public. Sometimes, when governments have pointed to genuine problems, they have had little leverage. For instance, in Burundi, the National Communication Council (CNC) issued a ruling on 26 August 2002 prohibiting “Burundian media websites recognized by Burundian law, from hosting reports and other communiqués by political organizations promoting hatred and violence”. However, it also acknowledged that the problem would continue “as long as there are no measures to prevent the production and distribution of these texts at source”. Fifteen years on, the Burundi government’s capacities to hinder online news has increased and, in 2017, the CNC blocked access to the websites of several media (located inside and outside of the country), all of them considered to be giving too much attention to the political opposition. Besides facilitating access, digital technologies have also widened the distribution of information and data. Sharing content online and through
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social media allows the media to reach new audiences that are geographically remote. In an exceptionally large country like the DRC, it is the Internet that allows the daily press, published in Kinshasa, to be read in provincial cities. The Internet is also how the UN-funded Radio Okapi (in DRC) can reach the diaspora and areas of the DRC itself, where it is not broadcast on FM. In Burkina Faso, radio Omega FM, which is broadcast on-air and via Internet streaming, played a major role in spreading information during the October 2014 uprisings because, although it was only available on FM in the capital, it was available in some remote areas via the Internet. Omega FM’s influence was such that, when a military coup attempted to disrupt the political transition process in September 2015, the station’s premises were burnt down. In Burundi, after the main independent radio stations were destroyed in May 2015, more than 100 journalists went into exile in neighboring Rwanda, where they established new studios and started producing news programmes (Inzamba and Humura Burundi) that are uploaded to the Web and circulated through social media. As space for freedom of expression inside Burundi was effectively annihilated in 2015,30 the views of the political opposition or civil society in exile, as well as facts about human rights abuses committed by the government, army, and police can now only circulate through digital channels. Digitization has also improved media houses’ capacity for archiving their output, thus helping to solve the amnesia that has long afflicted the sector, since newspapers, radio and TV stations in Africa have, until now, found it difficult to keep and store their own newspaper copies, radio, and TV programs. These archives have been useful for many independent radio stations when accused by the government of disseminating problematic content—enabling them to demonstrate that there are no grounds for prosecution. Finally, the contribution of ICTs to the daily work of organizations defending press freedom locally and internationally deserves highlighting. In the DRC, Journaliste en Danger (JED) has been defending press 30 The weekly Iwacu newspaper was the only independent media outlet that continued to operate in Burundi after 2015. However, access to its website was blocked by the Burundian government in October 2017 (excepting for the very few Burundians with Virtual Private Network [VPN] access). Its website has nevertheless remained accessible thanks to the France-based press freedom organization, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), which provides access to a secure mirror site as part of its “Collateral Freedom” project (https://rsf.org/en/collateral-freedom).
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freedom for more than two decades. Mobile phones and the Internet have completely transformed the way this NGO operates. Back in 1999, a journalist facing problems in a remote province had to send a letter to JED’s headquarters in Kinshasa, which could take a month; then JED would try to alert its network of foreign partners and diplomats by fax (each page costing about $2.50 USD to send). By contrast today, it takes only a few minutes for JED to be alerted about attacks on journalists anywhere in the country and to share this news around the world, almost free of charge (Frère 2009b, 231–232). However, the integration of ICTs into African newsrooms is still problematic for financial reasons. The cost of maintaining and developing websites is a real issue, while the benefits remain low. Online journalism is supposed to allow for and strengthen key media features such as multimediality, interactivity, and hypertextuality. But this requires human resources to create content and maintain digital media platforms. Because of a general lack of resources, many radio stations have given up maintaining a website and costly online streaming, and the print media has tended to minimize its presence on the Web. Multimediality also requires a strategy and financial resources, so few media groups have a centralized and comprehensive system allowing their personnel to access the entirety of their media products. As regards interactivity, with increasing user participation comes the responsibility for controlling and moderating audience contributions. For example, in Burkina Faso, Lefaso.net sometimes must delete thousands of comments, because the staff do not have time to check them before making them accessible online (Frère 2014). Some media do not provide any space for comments, because they know they will not be able to ensure such monitoring. For the same reasons, hypertextuality is very limited on most news websites in French-speaking Africa. Today’s technological changes have affected African newsrooms as well as the audience, and this follows on from two decades of significant upheaval in the media’s relationship with the political sphere, and major changes in the media market. Similar to the emergence of freedom of expression at the beginning of the 1990s, these technological changes have created challenges in terms of legal and regulatory frameworks, market regulations, journalists’ professional identities, and the participation of (and interactions with) the audience. All this has had a profound influence on the media systems and landscapes of Africa.
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Conclusion
This chapter has shown how the emergence of democratic reforms in the early 1990s completely transformed the media landscape in Frenchspeaking Africa, with the creation of thousands of new independent and community media being perceived as necessary for the consolidation of democracy. While political reforms have had varying degrees of success, leading to mixed results for the so-called “democratic transition”, the advent of media pluralism is undeniable. Newspapers, radio, television and online media have been liberalized everywhere. But the environment in which they are now operating is ever-changing and is marked by significant upheavals in global geopolitics, local political developments, cultural transformations linked to globalization, and technological innovations (i.e., digitization, Internet and mobile telephony) that affect the way information is produced and received. Of course, different pathways have been taken by different countries, for instance, Mauritania in 2020 had only two private radio stations— (Tenwir FM and Mauritanid FM) and four private TV stations (Sahel TV, Al Mourabitoune, Chinguitti TV, Alwatanya) (2020) and the DRC had more than 500 of each, but the following chapters will show that there are still common features between these apparently different media systems. French-speaking African countries have abandoned the authoritarian media systems that prevailed during the 30 years following independence and a new configuration has clearly emerged. It is difficult to accurately describe these new media systems, characterized as they are by plurality, liberalized media markets, and the multiplication of commercial, denominational, and community outlets. The media now operate in a market where privately owned and independent outlets are permitted, but can we say that we are dealing with a truly liberal media? The media in Africa may now be plural, but each type of media faces constraints that prevent it from providing an inclusive public space. What is more, accessibility to different media is uneven for different communities (i.e., urban/rural, rich/poor, educated/uneducated, women/men) and financial and political constraints still limit freedom of expression in many countries. Relationships with audiences—readers, listeners, viewers, and Internet users—have changed as media users now have a wide choice of information sources but can also participate more actively in the production of information.
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What we can clearly see is a paradigm shift, since all dimensions of the media have undergone major changes, and the model of “representative democracy” is now the touchstone, or at least the dominant discourse. The following chapters will pay particular attention to our five dimensions, which can help to characterize, distinguish and emphasize some differences, but at the same time, underline similarities of these new “liberalized” media systems. We will see how interactions by the state with the media have changed but have also retained some “authoritarian” trends (Chapter 4). We will analyze the changes brought about by press freedom in terms of journalists’ professional profiles and understandings of professionalism (Chapter 5). Then, the next chapter will show the impact of competition in media markets and the types of interactions with the business environment that the media economy is built on (Chapter 6). And, finally, we will reflect on the relations between these new pluralist media and their audiences (Chapter 7). The cross-cutting dimension of “political parallelism”, which is anchored in the four foregoing perspectives, will be underlined in each chapter.
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CHAPTER 5
The Media and the State in French-Speaking Africa
The perspective outlined in the three preceding chapters underscores a constant in French-speaking African media: state intervention. Since the dawn of media on the continent, intervention by the state has appeared in different guises depending on the era: legislation and regulation, repression (through the use of security forces), legal sanctions (the courts), a monopoly of expression deemed legitimate (control of public media), etc. Though the process of political and media liberalization of the 1990s changed how the state intervenes in the media sector, it still remains an important stakeholder, mainly through three key players: the government (and more precisely ministries of communication), parliaments, and media regulation institutions. Focusing on the first of our five dimensions for approaching media systems, this chapter analyzes the relationship between the media and the state two decades into the twenty-first century. It begins with a description of the issue of freedom of the press, a discussion of its inevitable curtailment, and the overall situation in French-speaking Africa. The subsequent sections delve into four mechanisms deployed by the state: legislation and regulations, regulatory bodies, state-run media, and government funding for the privately-owned press. The sixth and final section addresses the new forms of restrictions and pressures that appear or persist, despite official press freedom.
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Freedom of the Press: French-Speaking Africa Measured Against International Standards
The relationship between media and the state begs the more overarching question of the freedom of the press. The amount of press freedom has often been correlated with the level of democratization of a political regime (Dahl 1971; Voltmer 2006, 2013): pluralistic and independent media are a fundamental component of democracy. This is not a question of debating the precise definition of the freedom of the press, nor its relationship to democracy, but rather to identify the present-day challenges linking these two phenomena in French-speaking Africa. Freedom of the press implies that the media have the power to undertake economic activity and disseminate the content they want without restrictions (except as outlined by law). It also grants citizens access to these media (McQuail 2000). According to Guy Berger (2007), the democratization of the African media landscape has pushed governments to act on three levels: to gradually move away from state monopoly control of institutions and content toward allowing citizens to establish their own media; to meet citizens’ legitimate expectations for non-partisan information from state-owned media and state-held information; and to accept dissent and criticism by journalists, within the limits of the law. This three-pronged encroachment on the status quo has met with resistance from governments. Nonetheless, it is taking place to various degrees across French-speaking Africa, which allows us to assert that freedom of the press is effectively present in the region in multifarious forms. 1.1
A Widened Public Sphere
Freedom of the press comprises two dimensions: the freedom of entrepreneurship (a topic we will address in Chapter 6 dedicated to the economics of the media) and the freedom to express and disseminate ideas, opinions, and information. Independent African media, and now new digital media and social networks, have redefined the public sphere through their role as the locus for expression and discussion. This redefinition took place in three ways and was brought about by both individual and collective forces:
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First, privately owned media gave a voice to civil society organizations – unions, associations, churches, and NGOs – that were, up until that point, silenced by the state media. In many countries, these organizations had, since the 1980s, slipped through cracks left behind by crumbling states: churches and local groups had often filled the power vacuum and provided essential services, such as health and education. The emergence of privately owned media increased these organizations’ visibility and audience, expanding their role from serving as complements to failing local governments to being potential countervailing forces to political power (Ronning 1995). Since the political openings of the 1990s, international donors, led by the United States and Europe, have openly started to strengthen the capacity of both the media and civil society to monitor government activity, and, although these civil society groups remain a hodgepodge of citizen advocacy structures and other consortia whose objectives are not always clear, at least these alternative groups now have a public voice. Second, thanks to privately owned media, individuals are now able to participate actively in public debate through a channel other than that offered by conventional organized groups like political parties and unions. Community, local and faith-based radio stations were the first to open their airwaves to the public, and as mentioned in the previous chapter, technological advances accelerated and amplified this trend. Participatory radio programs (Grätz 2014), online discussion forums (Frère 2015a, 2015d), and social media (Falisse and Nkengurutse 2019; Riley 2019) have become spaces for citizens to engage political figures and hold them accountable. And finally, the freedom of Francophone African media has been reinforced by a movement of international solidarity that has outlined the contours of a “global public space”. A number of international organizations and associations have paid particular attention to the problems of African journalists since 1990. Press freedom organizations (Reporters Without Borders, Index on Censorship, Article 19, Committee to Protect Journalists), journalism associations (International Federation of Journalists, Union des Journalistes d’Afrique de l’Ouest), publishers’ associations (WAN-IFRA1 ), and other human rights groups (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Federation of Human Rights) have ensured that
1 WAN-IFRA is the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and is so named since 2009 when WAN merged with IFRA, the research and service organization for the news publishing industry.
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information regarding human rights violations involving African journalists are widely publicized. Local organizations defending press freedom have also been created, and their work and campaigns have gained visibility thanks to their connections with these international associations. This support has been, and continues to be, essential in strengthening the press in countries with repressive governments.
A new level of freedom has been attained and the relationship between the media and these other actors (local civilian society, international civil society, and individual citizens) reflects this reality. Can we now say that the media has become a real countervailing force within the context of this newfound freedom? The behavior of the political class has certainly changed given their newfound concern that their dirty deals and malfeasance may be exposed. In several countries (Burkina Faso, Senegal), officials in high office have been forced to resign after the press implicated them in financial scandals or violations of human rights. However, a free press denouncing wrongdoing is rarely sufficient to change modes of governance. As was underscored as early as 1995 by the Nigerien publisher of Le Démocrate (“The Democrat”), “The press is not strong enough to prevent governments from misappropriating funds. We don’t scare those in power. The strength of the press is tied to civil society’s capacity to act on the problems denounced by the press. If this capacity is nonexistent, the press is useless” (cited by Frère 2000, 419). Nevertheless, recent examples show that the increased engagement of audiences in public debate, combined with more interest in investigative journalism in some countries, may create situations where online debates have a direct impact on local politics (Frère 2015d). Whatever impact media may have on the state, a certain level of freedom has emerged, even in those countries which have experienced an “authoritarian restoration”,2 post-democratic coups d’états, or armed conflicts. The polemical gymnastics that once voiced doubts about the
2 This concept has been hotly debated by political scientists. First used by Jean-François Bayart, as early as 1990, “authoritarian restoration” was later largely used to describe countries where, after a period of political opening, regimes (be they new or the same ones), developed authoritarian practices once again. But political scientists insist on the fact that a restored authoritarian regime is never a copy of the previous one, and that “transitions” allow many actors to reposition themselves and adopt new strategies which change the political and social environment. For a discussion on the topic, see Politique africaine n°146 (2017), entitled “Restaurations autoritaires ?”.
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relevance of media pluralism in Africa have been relegated to the dustbin of history. 1.2
Assessing Freedom of Expression in French-Speaking Africa
As mentioned earlier, African governments have always had an insincere relationship with freedom of expression. They ratified declarations and charters protecting press freedom, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UN, 1966), and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (OAU, 1981) well before they actually recognized freedom of expression.3 Within the new “democratic” framework that they signed up to 30 years ago, former dictators and newly elected heads of state allowed liberalization, but knew that any new freedom allowed and even required a circumscription of that freedom, at the same time, to guarantee that it benefitted the largest number of citizens and did not impede individual and collective rights. This explains and justifies why the state can continue to intervene in the media sector, in various ways, e.g. to ensure equal access to information by all citizens, to protect individuals and communities from possible media biases or press offences, etc. During the 1990’s, all Francophone African states implemented changes in the legal and institutional frameworks within which the media operated, however incremental those changes were, and however reluctantly and slowly they were implemented. The goal of this process may have been to impose on journalists a “responsibility” within the framework of the freedom granted, but it also often (in the name of this necessary “responsibilization” of stakeholders) controlled the direction pluralism was to take.
3 In Francophone Africa, the Covenant was ratified by Benin (in 1992), Burkina Faso (1999), Burundi (1990), the Central African Republic (1981), Cameroon (1984), the Republic of Congo (1983), Côte d’Ivoire (1992), Gabon (1983), Guinea (1978), Mali (1974), Mauritania (2004), Niger (1986), Rwanda (1975), Senegal (1978), Chad (1995), Togo (1984), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1976). The less binding African Charter has been ratified by Benin (1989), Burkina Faso (1984), Burundi (1989), the Central African Republic (1986), Cameroon (1989), the Republic of Congo (1982), Côte d’Ivoire (1992), Gabon (1986), Guinea (1982), Mali (1981), Mauritania (1986), Niger (1986), Rwanda (1983), Senegal (1982), Chad (1986), Togo (1982), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1987).
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Whatever the intention may have been, the actions taken by the states were scrutinized closely by international organizations monitoring free press around the world. Currently two main evaluation mechanisms exist: one in the United States by Freedom House4 and one in France by Reporters sans frontières (RSF or Reporters without Borders).5 ,6 Another index, the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), covers media freedom as part of a set of measures that monitors governance performance in African countries. While it has the advantage of being founded by an African (Mo-Ibrahim is a Sudanese businessman) and blends three different sources on media,7 it is not specialized in media only. Other organizations have tried to capture and reflect the degree of media freedom, but without trying to quantify it or to rank countries against each other, but rather to evaluate the degree of development of the media sector within each country.8 Freedom House’s evaluation tool is based on an assessment by a team of analysts of the question “are there free and independent media?” in a given country. This weighs up 12 questions covering (among others) issues of censorship, restrictive laws, surveillance of journalists, financial independence of media outlets, government influence, journalist safety, and gender issues. Countries are scored from zero (least free) to 4 (most free).9 In 2019 no French-speaking African country was in the category of
4 Freedom House published a yearly “Freedom of the Press” report from 1980 to 2017. After 2017, it became a subcategory of a general report called “Freedom in the World”. 5 The methodology and results of these evaluations are available online on the institutions’ website: https://freedomhouse.org, https://rsf.org. 6 Another US organization, IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board) used
to publish a Media Sustainability Index but this has not covered Africa since 2012. However, IREX intends to publish a new “Vibrant Information Barometer” from 2021 onwards. See www.irex.org. 7 The Ibrahim Index combines analysis by Varieties of Democracy (www.v-dem.net) and Global Integrity (www.africaintegrityindicators.org/data) as well as RSF scores. 8 For example, detailed country-by-country reports by the Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org), the African Media Barometer developed by the Friedrich Ebert foundation in Germany (https://fesmedia-africa.fes.de/), Unesco’s Media Development Indicators (https://en.unesco.org/programme/ipdc/initiatives/mdis), and the European Journalism Centre’s Media Landscapes project (https://medialandscapes.org/). 9 A new scale was adopted by Freedom House in 2018 making it difficult to compare country’s present scores with their past performance.
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states considered entirely “free”. RSF is the only body monitoring media on a daily basis through local correspondents—i.e., journalists and mediasupport organizations on the ground in Africa. RSF’s analysis is based on obstacles media have to deal with as they perform their work, including the physical, psychological, and legal hurdles facing journalists. In 2020, only two Francophone African countries (Burkina Faso and Senegal) were considered unproblematic by RSF (Table 1). These assessments and rankings have met with much criticism from both poorly ranked countries and researchers (Becker et al. 2007). Attention has been called to the lack of methodological rigor, subjectivity of assessments (and possible biases), and ideological definition of press freedom (Schneider 2014; Giannone 2014; Price et al. 2011). For example, Freedom House’s approach is borrowed from a neoliberal (and American) notion of press freedom in which the state should minimize its presence in the media sector. In contrast, a more “social” (and European) approach considers democratic states to have both the obligation to authorize and establish a framework of freedom, and the responsibility to establish an environment favorable to the development of professional and responsible media to promote democracy. It is obvious that concepts of press freedom vary across the planet, including among Western states considered established democracies. These assessments also rely on a uniform picture of levels of freedom at country level, whereas, in some countries, there might be significant differences between media in the capital city and other areas of the country. For instance, Burkina Faso was classified as “free” in 2020 by RSF, but the community radio stations broadcasting in northern and eastern areas experiencing Islamic extremism and terrorism, were threatened and forced by these groups to stop broadcasting programs related to women’s rights, western-style education, or family planning. The methodological pitfalls of such rankings are also evident in the fact that results may vary, if not outright contradict each other. In the past Rwanda was a case in point: RSF ranked it near the bottom, while IREX considered it passable. The financial backing of these organizations to perform these global studies has also been criticized: IREX’s Media Sustainability Index (MSI) was essentially financed by the American government. A new challenge has also arisen for these organizations with the expansion of new media, and the changes in ways journalists disseminate information, as well as in how populations access it.
36 44 74 66 77 57 79 55
Benin Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Central African Republic Congo (Brazzaville) Congo (D.R.C.) Côte d’Ivoire
(partly free) (partly free) (not free) (not free) (not free) (partly free) (not free) (partly free)
Freedom house (2014) Scale of 0 to 100 0 = best 100 = worst
3 3 0 0 1 1 2 3
Freedom house (2019) New scale adopted in 2018 of 0 to 4 0 = least free 4 = most free
29.24 (84) orange 26.79 (46) yellow 42,.93 (145) red 39.63 (133) red 33.84 (110) orange 33 (107) orange 44.31 (150) red 30.45 (86) orange
Reporters without borders (2014) (the higher the score, the less the press freedom, national ranking in brackets)
Press freedom and media development scores of Francophone African states
Country
Table 1
35.11 23.47 55.33 43.28 42.87 36.56 49.09 28.94
(113) red (38) yellow (160) black (134) red (132) red (118) red (150) red (68) orange
Reporters without borders (2020) (the higher the score, the less the press freedom, national ranking out of 180 countries in brackets) On the RSP Press Freedom Map Black = (very serious situation) Red = (difficult situation) Orange = (problematic situation) Yellow (satisfactory situation) White = (good situation)
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70 64 37 48 52 79 48 75 65
Gabon Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger Rwanda Senegal Chad Togo
(not free) (not free) (partly free) (partly free) (partly free) (not free) (partly free) (not free) (not free)
Freedom house (2014) Scale of 0 to 100 0 = best 100 = worst
Country
1 2 2 2 2 0 2 1 2
Freedom house (2019) New scale adopted in 2018 of 0 to 4 0 = least free 4 = most free
31.38 (95) orange 32.56 (102) orange 36.33 (118) red 25.27 (55) orange 23.85 (47) orange 56.57 (161) black 27.77 (71) orange 40.17 (135) red 28.5 (80) orange
Reporters without borders (2014) (the higher the score, the less the press freedom, national ranking in brackets)
37.20 34.34 34.12 32.54 28.25 50.34 23.99 39.70 29.33
(121) red (110) orange (108) orange (97) orange (57) orange (155) red (47) yellow (123) red (71) orange
Reporters without borders (2020) (the higher the score, the less the press freedom, national ranking out of 180 countries in brackets) On the RSP Press Freedom Map Black = (very serious situation) Red = (difficult situation) Orange = (problematic situation) Yellow (satisfactory situation) White = (good situation)
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Despite their weaknesses, these rankings do offer the potential to record the daily incidents that define the relationship between media and other political and economic actors. They can also at times help bring about changes in the way that states manage the sector. In Rwanda, for example, the transformation of legal, institutional, and professional frameworks in 2013 was the result of a desire by the Rwandan government to improve its poor rankings of previous years. It replaced state controls with self-regulation, and relaxed constraints previously imposed on journalists (like the need for a diploma in journalism), through new legislation.
2
Changes in Legal Frameworks: Reflections of the Evolution of the African State
One of the most important elements to consider when evaluating how the state intervenes in the media sector is the legal framework. All the new African constitutions adopted during the democratic transition period enshrined freedom of the press “within the limits set by law”; these constitutions paved the way for laws to protect media freedom from that point onward (Berger 2007). 2.1
A Flood of Legal Changes
At the beginning of the democratic transition process (with parliaments elected through free and democratic elections), creating legislative and regulatory measures for a new pluralistic media environment was considered a priority. Laws that had previously regulated the media (often dating from the era of independence) were replaced by new laws intended to redefine press freedom in general and how it was to be carried out. New laws also reorganized broadcasting and established regulatory bodies for the whole communications sector. Sometimes the legal framework was adapted ex post, as in countries like Mali and DRC where community and commercial radio stations had proliferated before the new legislation had been passed. The 1990s saw a flood of new legislation created by various Francophone African states whose new laws governing the press and broadcasting contained many common components: press freedom was enshrined in law; rules were established for how a media outlet could be created, distributed, or broadcast nationally; editorial limits and responsibilities were laid out; and press crimes and offenses were defined along
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with their penalties (see Table 2). Some provided journalists guarantees with respect to; access to information; granting protection of sources (professional secrecy); and providing a freedom of conscience clause. But with these new freedoms came limits. These statutes imposed limits on the activity of the media by establishing administrative constraints (e.g., on the ownership of the means of communication, copyright, licensing costs, etc.), or regulations concerning media outlets (e.g., requirement to meet a quota of professionals, journalistic status, etc.) (Limpitlaw 2012). They were also designed to control content by defining press offenses, which often stem from the penal code (e.g., respect for persons, protection of minors, sound morals, defamation, insulting the head of state, national security, etc.) and may contain a number of professional principles in the name of citizens’ access to balanced, honest, and thorough content. Honesty, fact-checking and a distinction between news, opinion, and advertising are explicit in some laws. And finally, some laws also control program diversity by imposing broadcast quotas on the different types of broadcast media. The table above shows all the press laws adopted in the 1990s across Francophone Africa. They have been updated since then in some countries but not in others. In a minority of cases, such as in Côte d’Ivoire, the law was changed in line with changes in the media landscape (e.g., new technology), and in many countries, amendments were added when the state-controlled media yielded their monopoly to independent outlets. More specific amendments have also been made to address, for example, the status of journalists, the regulation of broadcast licenses, access to information, election coverage, and security measures implemented in countries facing terrorist threats. 2.2
Significant Restrictions Still in Place
Despite notable progress, vestiges of authoritarianism have persisted. For instance, in Burundi and Togo, regimes have seized the chance to change the law to limit freedom of expression. Burundi’s 1997 Act (replaced in 2003, then in 2013, 2015, and 2018), for example, imposed a triple down-payment before a new daily was allowed to publish, making it very difficult to do so (Ntahe 2009). In Togo, the 2002 Act (amended in 2004 and 2020) allowed the state to apprehend a newspaper vendor if the publisher at fault could not be found. While these texts have been changed, significant restrictions are still in place in the DRC, where the
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Table 2
Initial press legislation adopted in the 1990s in Francophone Africa
Country
Initial reform
Benin
Law #77/10 (August 20, 1997) Re: The liberalization of the broadcast sector and penal code governing offenses by the media Law #56/93/ADP (December 30, 1993) Re: Penal code governing information Law of March 21, 1997 Law #90/052 (December 19, 1990) Re: Freedom of social communication Law (May 27, 1998) Law (July 2, 1996) Law (June 22, 1996) Re: Terms and conditions governing press freedom Law (December 27, 1991) Law #007/2001 Re: Code governing broadcasting, cinema, and written communication Law (December 23, 1991) Law (January 15, 1992) Decree(July 25, 1991) Law (March 30, 1993) Law (November 15, 1991) Law (September 3, 1992) Law 29/PR/94 (August 22, 1994) Law 43/PR/94 (December 12, 1994) Re: broadcasting Law 98–004/PR (February 11, 1998) Re: Press and Communication Act
Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon CAR Congo (Brazza) Congo (DRC) Côte d’Ivoire Gabon Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger Rwanda Senegal Chad Togo
Congolese media are saddled with an outdated press law from 1996, adopted under the Mobutu regime, which contains several controversial articles, notably one requiring journalists to reveal their sources in the event of judicial proceedings (M’Baya and Muggaga-Mushizi 2006). In addition, penalties for media offenses are often severe, calling for long jail terms even in the most progressive countries. In all Francophone African countries journalists have served prison terms over the last 30 years. One of the first cases was in Benin, where Edgar Kaho, the managing editor of Le Soleil (“The Sun”), served 10 months in prison from 1993 to 1994 for having published articles accusing the wife of President Nicéphore Soglo of corruption. In Cameroon, where President Paul Biya has remained in power since 1982, jail terms for journalists are commonplace: the independent press pioneer Pius Njawe, editor of Le Messager (The Messenger”), was sentenced to two years in 1998 for
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“refusing to disclose his sources” after he published a piece about the health of the president (Atenga 2007). Two Cameroonian journalists have died in custody: Bibi Ngota (editor of Cameroon express ) in 2010, and Samuel Wazizi, in 2019. The latter was an Anglophone journalist, working for the Cameroonian television channel CMTV, while covering the “Anglophone crisis”.10 Accused of “terrorism” by the government, his death was then kept a secret from his family for 10 months. In Burundi, four journalists from the media company Iwacu were jailed from October 2019 to December 2020, for trying to cover a rebel incursion into the northwest of the country, but their trial established that they had no links with the rebels. Local correspondents with Radio France Internationale have also been jailed for months in Cameroon (Ahmed Abba in 2015) and Burundi (Hassan Ruvakuki in 2013), despite strong pressure from the international broadcaster (and French diplomats) to have them released. Adding to the complexity of the issue, many court cases are not based on media-related laws, but rather on infringements of the penal code, whether directly based on media offenses or not. Defamation, verbal abuse, national security threats, inciting violence, racial hatred (or divisionism and genocide in the case of Rwanda), or public insurrection give rise to as many charges and prison sentences against African journalists. In Cameroon, the penal code makes libel a criminal offense and states that “no proof may be offered of the truth of a defamatory charge, where it concerns the private life of the person defamed”. In Burkina Faso, which has been troubled by terrorist attacks since 2016, changes were introduced in the Penal Code in June 2019. New clauses impose up to 10-year jail terms for anyone convicted of “any act tending to demoralize security forces” even during “peacetime”. They also forbid citizens, journalists, and social media activists from publishing or disseminating information on terrorist attacks or military operations without official authorization. Journalists’ associations, which were not consulted about these changes, fear that these new clauses will prevent them from reporting, for instance, on abuses committed by the army against the local population.
10 Cameroon has experienced demonstrations, protests, and strikes in its Englishspeaking region, protesting the political and linguistic imbalance in state institutions, since November 2016. Government repression and lack of dialogue has fueled uprisings and demands for federalism and secession.
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Faced with rapid changes in the way news is disseminated, many governments have passed further laws since about 2015, which limit freedom of expression online and on social networks. For example, in Guinea a new law on cybersecurity and the protection of personal data was passed in 2016, criminalizing insults on the Internet, the dissemination and communication of “false information”, as well as the production, distribution, or transfer to third parties of data “likely to disturb law and order, public safety or compromise human dignity”. A Cyber Crime Law was also adopted in Niger in 2019, targeting social media users, condemning the dissemination of “any data likely to disturb public order”. These laws are ostensibly to protect the public from hate speech, cybercrime, and from false or misleading information circulating on the Internet. However, in several cases, they have been used to censor and to create a climate of fear among citizen journalists, bloggers, and media published or streamed online. Most of these cases involve journalists critical of the authorities or those close to opposition parties. For example, in Benin, the investigative journalist Ignace Sossou was arrested and sentenced to a fine and 18 months in prison in 2019 for tweeting about an official speech by Beninese public prosecutor, Mario Mètonou,11 and in Niger, Samira Sabou, a popular blogger, was arrested and arbitrarily jailed for 48 days in 2020 under Niger’s new “cybercriminality” act of 2019—her “crime” was defamation of the President’s son, Sani Issoufou Mahamadou. The many guilty verdicts against private media actors at odds with the state highlight two major factors impeding the consolidation of the rule of law in Francophone Africa: the lack of an independent justice system and the chronic failure of states to properly apply their own laws. The existence of liberal laws does not prevent a state from denying press freedom if it sees fit to do so. For one, a law is effective only so far as the justice system applying that law is independent. If a state rules with impunity, and appointments to the courts and promotions are at the mercy of the executive branch, justice is rarely blind (Gueye 2009). Furthermore, the legal frameworks in these countries are often
11 Sossou’s sentence was subsequently reduced to six months and he was released in June 2020, partly in response to an international outcry by human rights groups and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention which said Benin broke international law (www.icij.org/inside-icij/2020/10/jailing-of-benin-investigative-journa list-broke-international-law-un-body-finds).
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fragmentary and poorly applied. Initiatives to consolidate new “democratic” governments and to show-off their “democratic credentials”, often backed by financial donors, have often resulted in an energetic production of legislation with little follow-through. 2.3
Journalists’ Legal Battles
In many French-speaking African countries, professional associations have thrown themselves behind two causes: decriminalization and access to information. The campaigns for decriminalization—to end prison sentences for press offenses—have often been supported by international organizations,12 and have borne fruit in several countries—not necessarily the most democratic ones. For example, in Togo (2004), Central African Republic (2004), Chad (2010), Niger (2010), Mauritania (2011), Côte d’Ivoire (2017), and Burkina Faso (2015), prison sentences have been removed for certain press offenses. In Senegal, President Macky Sall claimed that he supported the decriminalization option in the new Press Law of 2017, but part of the National Assembly was against it, and it was rejected. Public announcements have also been made for effect: Gabon, for example, spilled a lot of ink proclaiming the decriminalization of certain press offenses without following through with clear legislation. One of the reasons given by governments to justify keeping custodial sentences is the irresponsibility of certain journalists and the inability of the profession—through self-regulation—to take to task those professionals guilty of serious violations. The cases of the RTLM in Rwanda in 1994 and the media in Côte d’Ivoire fueling hatred before and during the 2002 war are often cited, to resist demands to relax penalties. It should be recognized that serious infractions (defamation, slander, attacks on a person’s honor or reputation, xenophobia, etc.) are frequent occurrences in some countries like the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon, hence the frustration experienced by organizations defending press freedom like JED (Journaliste en Danger) in the DRC, who find themselves in the delicate position of having to defend individuals whose professional conduct
12 An example is the Declaration of Table Mountain, which was made by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the World Editors Forum in 2007. This condemned repressive laws against journalists in Africa and called for (inter alia) African governments to review and abolish all laws that restrict press freedom. The Declaration is available in its entirety at www.wan-ifra.org.
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may seem “untenable”, in the name of free expression (Frère 2009b, 98–99). International standards and institutions have gradually started to pay more attention to these cases. In December 2003, in Arusha, Tanzania, the media were “put on trial” in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Three figures from the Rwandan media (Ferdinand Nahimana, one of the founders of Radio Télévision Libre Milles Collines [RTLM], Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, a main financial backer, and Hassan Ngeze, editor of Kangura) received lengthy sentences for, among other things, “incitement to commit genocide”. And a fourth defendant, from Belgium, Georges Ruggiu, was sentenced to prison in a parallel court case. Before this Rwandan case, the last time a media professional had been accused of inciting genocide was in the Nuremberg Trials, and the lower ICTR court judgment makes explicit reference to this case in which two Nazis stood accused of disseminating propaganda in support of the Jewish genocide.13 International courts (special tribunals and the International Criminal Court—ICC), have imposed new constraints on journalists the world over and have potentially put an end to the impunity enjoyed by certain propagandists calling for crimes against humanity. One of the first to feel this new pressure was Joshua Arap Sang, who was responsible for the Kenyan radio station Kass FM. He was charged by the ICC in 2011 for the role his media played in the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007– 2008 (although the charges against Sang were dropped in 2016 due to lack of sufficient evidence). This Kenyan case notwithstanding, these judicial proceedings and lawsuits can be dissuasive by demonstrating that the protection some journalists enjoy locally can be overruled by the international community. Progress toward decriminalization still has a long way to go, in a context where journalists can infringe press laws and penal codes, and where many governments and their puppet judicial systems can refer to the law’s vague wording or special security provisions, and thereby restrict press freedom. The second legal battle journalists have fought, with the support of international partners, is for new laws allowing access to information. In February 2013, the African Commission adopted a Model Law on Access to Information for Africa. Even though not binding of member states, this 13 The judgment in its entirety is available at: https://unictr.irmct.org/sites/unictr. org/files/case-documents/ictr-99-52/trial-judgements/en/031203.pdf.
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was a significant event, as it was the first time the African Commission had adopted a model law on any subject (Shyllon 2018). In 2018, mainly English-speaking African countries, such as Kenya, adopted domestic laws integrating “access to information” (ATI) into their legal frameworks, thus providing a tool for democratic participation, good governance, and accountability, which could be crucial for journalists’ daily work. As part of campaigns to promote ATI at the continental level, journalists’ organizations from English-speaking Africa (alongside civil society organizations) have voiced their claims much more clearly, even though there has been some resistance to change, and some of the laws adopted are considered unsatisfactory by campaigners. French-speaking countries have lagged behind on this issue.14 Most of these governments, having become used to keeping most information secret regarding their internal workings, have been reluctant to adopt any laws requiring more transparency. The practice of investigative journalism, for which access to information is crucial, is also much less common in Francophone Africa. In the few countries where ATI laws have been adopted, they have had little impact. Issues of terrorism and state security, weak advocacy by civil society for citizen’s rights to information, as well as a lack of resources to actually make information accessible to the public—on top of ingrained government secrecy—may explain the lack of enthusiasm by Francophone states to proceed with this issue. And when they have done so, the laws they have adopted still restrict access to material of “public interest”, such as, in Rwanda, restrictions to information that may “destabilise national security” or “impede the enforcement of law or justice”. Only Côte d’Ivoire has established a functioning “Commission d’accès à l’information d’intérêt public et aux documents publics” in order to respond to requests from journalists and the public. 2.4
Media Regulators: Independent Adjudicators?
The liberalization of the media sector not only called for legal frameworks to be overhauled, but also raised a host of other issues: How to check whether the media are complying with administrative and legal boundaries? What institution can guarantee equal access to publicly funded 14 Prior to 2013, only nine Sub-Saharan countries had adopted laws on ATI (including only one Francophone country: Niger). Five years later, 12 other countries had followed, but only three of these were French-speaking countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Rwanda).
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media by all political parties, civil society, and citizens? (Samb 2008). In response, media regulators were set up as independent administrative bodies to organize and manage the liberalization of the broadcast sector. Benin was the first to establish an independent public regulator in 1991. Such agencies (which were deemed essential in Europe in the 1980s with the liberalization of the broadcast sector), did not previously exist in Africa given state monopolies and single-party systems. The Conseil national de l’audiovisuel et de la communication (CNAC) of Benin therefore played a pioneering role by regulating access to public media during the 1991 elections. Following this temporary experiment, the Haute autorité de l’audiovisuel et de la communication (HAAC) was created in 1994 in Benin (Adjovi 2000) and several more Francophone African states created similar regulatory bodies shortly afterwards (see Table 3). As the Nigerien journalist Idimama Kotoudi put it (2006, 8), “It became necessary for each state to find ways to control the vagueness born of liberalization to ensure that it did not lead to anarchy on the airwaves; that newborn media could be extended a sustainable lifeline through healthy competition, in the service of a pluralistic society and democracy”. 2.5
The Mission of Media Regulators
The raison d’être of these new regulatory bodies was, from the outset, three-pronged: to organize the liberalized media sector; to monitor how norms are respected by media actors; and to guarantee the freedom of the press and its professionals (La Brosse 2013). In the Francophone tradition, an independent regulatory agency guarantees a pluralistic media and the presence of a diverse social presence and opinions in public media. Though state intervention is most justifiable in the broadcast sector for technical and practical reasons, some of these bodies also have a role to play in the written press. And, in contrast to the situation in most English-speaking countries, they spend a lot of time dealing with media content. Regulatory bodies play a political role in that they must guarantee that all bodies—governmental and non-governmental—have access to the media, and must ensure a diversity of socio-economic and political views and voices. They also play a legal role in that they guarantee the existence of a regulatory framework suited to the fulfillment of press freedom and are responsible for managing stakeholders’ respect for that freedom.
Conseil national de la communication (temporary agency) Haute Autorité de l’audiovisuel et de la communication Conseil supérieur de l’information • Conseil supérieur de la communication Conseil national de la communication Conseil national de la communication Haut Conseil de la communication • Haut Conseil de la communication de Transition • Haut Conseil de la Communication Conseil supérieur de la liberté de communication Haute Autorité des médias (temporary agency) • Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel et de la communication Two distinct agencies coexist: • Commission nationale de la presse • Conseil national de la presse • Autorité nationale de la presse Conseil national de la communication audiovisuelle • Haute Autorité de la communication audiovisuelle Conseil national de la communication • Haute Autorité de la Communication Conseil national de la communication • Haute Autorité de la communication Two distinct agencies coexist: Conseil supérieur de la communication • Haute Autorité de la Communication Comité national de l’égal accès aux médias d’état Haute Autorité de la presse et de l’audiovisuel
Benin
HAPA
CNC HAC CNC HAC CSC HAC CNAEME
CNAC HAAC CSI CSC CNC CNC HCC HCCT HCC CSLC HAM CSAC CNP CNP ANP CNCA HACA
Acronym
(continued)
2006
1992 2018 1995 2015 1992 2015 1993
1991 1992 1995 2005 1992 1990 1998 2014 2017 1997 2003–2006 2011 1991 2004 2017 1991 2011
Inception
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Mauritania
Mali
Guinea
Gabon
Côte d’Ivoire
Congo (Brazzaville) Congo (DRC)
Burundi Cameroon CAR
Burkina Faso
Communications regulatory bodies
Media regulatory bodies in Francophone Africa
Country
Table 3
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Conseil supérieur de la communication • Observatoire national de la communication • Conseil supérieur de la communication Two agencies coexist15 : Haut Conseil de la presse • Media High Council Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority Haut Conseil de la radio et de la télévision • Haut Conseil de l’audiovisuel • Conseil national de régulation de l’audiovisuel Haut Conseil de la communication • Haute Autorité des Médias et de l’Audiovisuel Haute Autorité de l’audiovisuel et de la communication
Niger
1993 1999 2001 2002 2013 2013 1992 1998 2006 1994 2018 1996
RURA HCRT HCA CNRA HCC HAMA HAAC
Inception
CSC ONC CSC HCP MHC
Acronym
media sector. The power to grant licenses was transferred to the agency that manages telecommunications (RURA), following the Anglo-Saxon model. It is therefore RURA that represents Rwanda in international networks of regulators.
15 In 2013 in Rwanda, the Media High Council was stripped of its regulatory functions and became a support institution for the
Togo
Chad
Senegal
Rwanda
Communications regulatory bodies
(continued)
Country
Table 3
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These bodies also have a technical function, as they play a role in the allocation of frequencies on the broadcast spectrum. Some regulators also oversee the economic and financial aspects of media, considering that pluralism can only exist if all media outlets (even the smallest, most fragile ones) are financially viable. Also, regulatory bodies have a socio-cultural impact, ensuring that local cultures are visible, by, for example, ensuring that a minimum percentage of local and educational programming is broadcast. Finally, upholding pluralism also has geographical implications, as regulators must ensure that media are accessible across the whole national territory so as to offer equal news access to all (Guyot and Tiao 2007). In their capacity as independent adjudicators, most media regulators in French-speaking Africa are technically equipped for monitoring media content, deal with possible litigation and sanction offenders who do not respect their administrative or legal obligations. The arrival of the digital age has complicated these agencies’ roles; some address the regulation of the Internet while others oversee the switchover to digital radio and television. Consequently, the sharing of tasks and responsibilities with telecommunications regulators has proven problematic. The regulatory model in Francophone Africa is fundamentally different from Anglophone African states where the media regulatory bodies have often fused with the telecommunication agencies and only concern themselves with technical issues, not media content (La Brosse and Frère 2012). These agencies, several of which went through a number of changes, have varying levels of autonomy vis-à-vis the state and differ according to their legal status, mandate, authority (consultative or decisional), and competence (La Brosse 2009). Some oversee the written press, others do not; some are enshrined in their country’s constitution, while others were established through legislation; some can impose sanctions, while others exist in a purely consultative capacity. Some of these bodies may also give guidance to other actors such as: on journalistic codes of practice and professional conduct and their enforcement; advertising guidelines; and the nomination of public service media officials. 2.6
Questionable Efficiency and Credibility
The efficiency of Francophone African regulatory bodies is highly variable and depends, essentially, on the political will to grant them independence
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and to allocate them sufficient resources. As a rule, they face a multitude of obstacles that weaken their legitimacy and their capacity to act. The first issue facing many of these agencies is their lack of independence. In some countries, they function as a weaponized extension of the state to silence troublesome media, as Agbobli and Loum have shown in the case of Togo and Senegal (2016). Their bias is often obvious, and many are seen as political actors defending the government and senior officials. In Gabon, for example, the CNC was largely responsible for silencing the opposition newspapers Misamu and La Griffe (“The Claw”). In Burundi, during the 2010 local elections, the president of the CNC, Vestine Nahimana, was also a candidate for the party in power (CNDDFDD) and held her position throughout her campaign, which served to substantially diminish the regulator’s credibility. In Niger, the regulatory agency is infamous for its apathy and politicization (Kotoudi 2006, 39). Who sits on the board of these regulators and how they are appointed determines how independent they are. In countries such as Cameroon, where the head of the institution and its members are appointed by the president of the republic, autonomy from the government is unlikely (Ngangum 2020). Some regulatory bodies also suffer from insufficient financial and human resources (La Brosse 2009). While Burkina Faso’s well-funded CSC runs Francophone Africa’s best media-monitoring center, and Benin’s HAAC budget of 1.5 million e and a hundred or more employees give it leverage, most regulatory bodies lack resources. CongoBrazzaville’s CSLC and CAR’s HCC had no headquarters for years and occupied a few spare rooms in the building of other government ministries. Burundi’s CNC, created in 1992, had no operating budget until 2007: its sole full-time employee’s salary and its basic computer equipment were paid for by international development NGOs (Institut Panos Paris 2005). The Cameroonian regulatory body’s budget in 2009 was no more than 75,000 e. Despite the need for technical expertise in regulating media, skills are too often sorely lacking, especially in the context of the digital broadcasting and convergence revolution. Compounding these difficulties is the often-antagonistic relationship with existing ministries of communication or information, which disapprove of another actor elbowing in on a jurisdiction they have long considered their own. For example, the 2003–2006 transition period in the DRC was noteworthy for its constant power struggle between the regulator and the ministry of information. In Rwanda, the HCP (purely
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consultative from 2003 to 2010), was undermined by the contradictory decisions of the ministry of information; a situation which led to the resignation of the first president of the HCP, journalist Privat Rutazibwa. In Cameroon, the NCC conflicts not only with the Ministry of Communication (MINCOM) but also with the Ministry in charge of Territorial Administration (MINAT) (Ngangum 2020). In addition, regulatory bodies often experience difficult relationships with the media themselves. On one side, the state media, their political footing assured, do not like being monitored, reprimanded, or sanctioned by the regulator. In the DRC during the 2006 elections, the state broadcaster (RTNC) was sanctioned several times by the regulator (HAM) for being too biased in favor of the incumbent, President Kabila, but refused to comply. In Rwanda, the director of ORINFOR (the Rwanda bureau of information and broadcasting, which oversaw all public media) ignored all summons by the regulator (HCP). The former president of Burkina Faso’s regulator, (CSC), Luc-Adolphe Tiao, recognized that “in almost all African countries, public media are run by a ministry. This situation often creates conflicts of jurisdiction that curtail the regulatory bodies’ ability to take action” (cited by Kotoudi 2006, 41). On the other hand, independent media have a tense relationship with regulatory bodies, considering them enemies rather than independent adjudicators. These tensions are sometimes tied to the fact that regulatory agencies have taken a lead in the contentious area of journalistic ethics and codes of conduct (often legally, given the expansion of their powers granted by law), whereas this was formerly the purview of professional organizations. In Benin, the regulator (HAAC) has repeatedly meddled in professional codes of conduct, even after journalists created their own self-regulating association, Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias (ODEM). In Côte d’Ivoire, the CNP (now ANP) has exerted its growing power regarding ethics, progressively weakening the self-regulatory body, OLPED (Karimu 2018). But privately owned media have reproached the regulatory body for being unbalanced and for mainly sanctioning independent media, while sparing the state broadcaster (Agbobli and Loum 2016). The issue is tricky: according to Samba Koné, President of the ANP since 2020, “the journalists who transgress ethics are generally those close to the political opposition. Those newspapers close to the government infringe ethical codes much
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less, because they are supporting a process. They are doing communication for the government more than for the sake of journalism” (quoted by Karimu 2018, 90). Lastly, few regulatory bodies (with the notable exception of those of Burkina Faso, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire) practice “accountability”, a cornerstone of democracy: they publish no minutes of their decisionmaking (something citizens would normally have the right to see), they publish no annual accounts, and do not respond to queries from the public. This could be interpreted as the growing pains of young institutions that have yet to fully appreciate the necessity to be accountable to the public; more likely it reflects a congenital defect tied to their birth in a context in which pluralism has long been constrained and is not yet fully accepted by the state. 2.7
The Achievements and Challenges of Regulation
The existence of these regulatory bodies is an institutional democratic achievement, as it makes firm the notion of free expression while also demonstrating the need to frame this freedom within the rules. As independent administrative bodies, these agencies are meant to answer the democratic imperative of neutrality outside the politicized boundaries of the executive and legislative branches. Even where they have not been able to stem the flow of hate speech (Institut Panos Afrique de l’Ouest 2004; Frère 2006) and where they are considered an added menace to press freedom, an independent public management of the media sector is henceforth recognized. The reflections and discussions raised by their very existence helps strengthen democratic debate, even where their influence is relatively weak. Two issues in particular are crucial in determining the future of regulatory bodies in French-speaking Africa. The first is strengthening their credibility, which can only be earned, by reinforcing their independence and the technical expertise of their personnel. The second is globalization and information technology (which transform information flow and allow convergence), changes that often overwhelm Francophone African regulators. They are unable to monitor online newspapers, blogs, websites, social media, or digital TV platforms and show no sign of being able to keep up with the new means of consumption made possible by smartphones.
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In light of social media and new global information flows that ignore national borders, individual national regulators that just oversee traditional media within national boundaries, seem increasingly irrelevant and out of step with contemporary Africa. For instance, in Congo-Brazzaville, all the websites and social media accounts of the political opposition are managed by the Congolese diaspora abroad, allowing local regulator no control opportunity. And in Mali, Chad, and other countries in the Sahel region, the French government appears to be behind false Facebook accounts, set up by the French army in order to counter jihadism and Islamic extremism.16 In the future, regulation will have to be done with an eye to cooperation with institutions in other African countries.17 Cooperation between regulatory bodies is becoming necessary as international regulations impose increasing obligations on individual countries in a market dominated by enormous private interests and where information has become global.
3 State Media or Public Media---An Unlikely Transformation Another post-1990 change in government involvement in the media sector pertains to state media. For over 30 years (1960–1990), the latter had a monopoly, focused largely on promoting state agendas under the command of a Minister of Information. As symbols of national sovereignty, they employed journalist/civil servants assigned to be “soldiers of progress” or promoters of a “revolutionary militancy”. Changes in the 1990s made it necessary to reform state institutions to make them vehicles of “public service”, reflecting a new political pluralism, especially in countries where “transitional” elections brought new leaders into office. Ministers of information were turned into ministers of communication. For government media, changes were necessary.
16 See report in Le Monde https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2020/12/26/lamise-en-cause-de-la-france-dans-de-la-guerre-informationnelle-en-afrique-suscite-des-rem ous_6064560_3212.html accessed December 29 2020. 17 There are two large networks that unite the regulatory bodies of Africa (ACRAN - African Communication Regulatory Authorities Network: www.acran.org) and Francophone regions (REFRAM, Réseau francophone des Régulateurs des Médias: www.ref ram.org).
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Competition from independent press and radio cut into audiences so radically as to call into question the very necessity of a state press. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, a process to privatize the national daily, Fraternité Matin (“Morning Brotherhood”), was initiated (Sy Savané 2003, 30–34), and in Senegal the privatization of the daily Le Soleil (“The Sun”)was also considered. Regarding broadcasting, it appeared necessary to open up the national airwaves to more political pluralism. Access to foreign media via satellite and the establishment of privately owned and international broadcasters on the FM band, followed by the arrival of the Internet made it nearly impossible to control divergent views, as well as news coming from abroad; often at odds with what was broadcast on state media. In those countries where there was no political change, the remaining leaders were experiencing a crisis of legitimacy that was reflected in the massive drop in the reach of their instruments of propaganda. Circulation figures for government publications dropped in spectacular fashion and were replaced in part by automatic subscriptions paid by various government agencies. Government radio and television lost their audiences to diversified private broadcasters who offered a more open and interactive tone. “What use is radio that nobody listens to?” asked the head of Burkina Faso’s Radiodiffusion-Télévision in 2003. “And what use is TV nobody watches? Without getting obsessed with viewer ratings, government radio and television must battle daily to win their audience share in this new broadcast landscape, otherwise they may find themselves becoming obsolete information and communication tools” (cited by AIF 2003a, 33). 3.1
A Three-Pronged Revolution
As a result of the trends reported above, most state media in Frenchspeaking Africa started in the mid-1990s on a threefold path of reform: legal, economic, and editorial (Tozzo 2005). At the legal level, steps were taken to facilitate the transition toward a management more independent from government. In some countries, government radio, television, and press outlets were legally removed from under the direct control of the ministries of information or communication and made autonomous or set up as independently managed public bodies, often called Établissement public à caractère administratif (EPA). This was the case, for instance, in Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali, and Niger. In Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, public media were established
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as “state companies”, which means that the state entirely controls their budgets.18 Therefore, even where these changes were made, the government remained in control, appointing the media directors and giving financial support. The legislation necessary for true reform has simply not been implemented. Most state radio and television stations have never gained complete autonomy and have remained trapped in limbo (presented originally as a temporary situation) with control of neither their budget nor their personnel. “Freedom from state control” was generally reduced to the fact that government media were now responsible for increasing their own revenue from advertising, and had more control over their staff. This meant a radical change, since they had never before had to concern themselves with profitability. The employees remained civil servants, but the public media could now hire extra staff and pay them from their own budgets. The most significant change had to do with editorial content which now could be open to societal concerns, and had to make the public feel as if it was being heard. L’Essor (“The Rise”) in Mali and Sidwaya in Burkina Faso (both state publications) began inviting critical voices from civil society, opposition parties, and trade unions to contribute to their newspapers. This move to more openness sometimes led to symbolic changes like Benin’s government-run newspaper, Ehuzu, which changed its name to La Nation (“The Nation”) to distance itself from its previous revolutionary identity. Several state media created a second FM radio station in the capital to compete with new commercial stations that were becoming popular with urban youth (as we saw in the preceding chapter). The shift toward an ethos of public service initially had a great impact on professional practice. It was not simply a question of opening the airwaves and pages to all opinions; of guaranteeing equal access to all parties and candidates during election campaigns; and of welcoming the voice of minorities; it was also an attempt to take responsibility for the information rights of those whose needs are not necessarily met by private concerns. However, Émile Tozzo (2005, 100), who studied the transformation of “state” media into “public service” media in Francophone Africa, concluded that these experiments mostly ended in failure. Still
18 In English-speaking countries, the status of public media are different, as they follow a model of “corporations” or “limited company” which implies more financial independence.
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under the domination of the ministry of communication or information, and with a management remaining answerable to the state, “public service” media news is now composed of a succession of items covering the activities of governmental bodies: journalists are told to cover such and such a ceremony, airtime is co-opted by ministers to justify or explain an issue, editors are pressured to block the broadcast of unfavorable news. Meanwhile, public education and development issues are still addressed only from a governmental perspective. Furthermore, state media today remain largely focused on urban, capital-centered news at the expense of topics of interest to rural communities19 and election coverage by state media remains systematically biased in favor of the incumbent and his or her party (Frère 2009a). 3.2
Reasons for Failure
The first reason for the failure to transform state media to more public service media was political. The process experienced many setbacks, given that governments—even those that were pluralistic and democratically elected—continued to regard state media as their own. Externally, the democratization processes weakened in the late 1990s as more and more countries experienced problematic situations including war, instability, crises, and authoritarianism. Where military regimes retook power or dictators managed to get themselves elected “democratically”, the heavy hand of the state was once more felt in public life. Where there was armed conflict (Rwanda, Burundi, CAR, Congo-Brazzaville, DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, among others), state media were reined in and forced to serve as a state propaganda mouthpiece in the name of patriotism or national security. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso also reinforced their control over national media following the rise of radical Islamic armed groups affiliated to Al-Qaida and ISIS. Benin and Senegal were the only two countries where transition to democracy was effective and not interrupted by any violent conflict,
19 The situation is somewhat different in countries like Burkina Faso or Niger which
have long enjoyed a strong rural radio unit, within the national broadcaster, either with its own frequency, or at the center of a network of rural stations in the countryside. Despite receiving little esteem from their colleagues working in the main newsroom, some of these rural units continue to produce relevant and interesting programs (about agriculture, health, and education) in local languages for the rural population.
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but even here, the new leaders, after voicing their openness to checks and balances, often did little to advance independent and autonomous institutions, discretely undermining the very agencies they had previously supported. Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal and Laurent Gbagbo in Côte-d’Ivoire, for example, denounced for decades the ostracization they suffered at the hands of the state media when they were the political opposition, only to develop the same reflexes when they came to power: adopting state media as their personal mouthpiece and excluding their political opponents and civil society. Reclaiming control of state media was often achieved through personnel appointment. Those who had been selected to implement reform were replaced by management appointees friendlier to the government. In Senegal, Mactar Silla (who had once undertaken a significant reform of the RTS) and El Hadj Kassé (editor-in-chief of Le Soleil — formerly the privately owned Sud Quotidien), who had been given the mandate to oversee the transition of the state paper to autonomous management, were removed to make room for members of the Wade clique. Another strategy employed by political leaders has been to redirect resources elsewhere. In several countries, the equipment once belonging to public service media was commandeered by the office of the president for use by the head of state’s personal communication team. In Chad, the president and prime minister were allocated a sizable communication team and budget, while the public television station experienced cuts, so by 2010, the president’s press team had a bigger budget than the Chadian Ministry of Communication, which oversaw the entire state media. The president’s communication unit eventually filled the daily evening TV news entirely with their own content, completely sidelining Chadian TV’s (TVT) own journalistic team.20 In Benin, the Minister of Communications had his own press service, also providing content to the national television about the daily activities of all his colleagues in government (Tozzo 2005). In Congo-Brazzaville, as the public service newspaper La Nouvelle République (“The New Republic”) was taking its last breath, the private publication, Les Dépêches de Brazzaville, friendly to the head 20 The situation has since changed: in September 2019, the Chadian government inaugurated the new premises of Onama (Office national des médias audiovisuels), a huge building with high-tech equipment. The whole project, estimated to have cost 37 million USD, was supported by the Chadian state.
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of state, Denis Sassou Nguesso, received substantial funding and became the informal mouthpiece of the presidency. These situations often broke the will of professional journalists in state media who had championed change toward public service during the 1990s. The second reason for this transformation failure relates to internal resistance and obstacles to change to a more public service remit. Initially, state media personnel lacked the competence to carry out these transformations; liberalization often led to the exodus of the most qualified personnel toward the private sector where the pay is better. To this day, public sector salaries remain low, and in some countries (DRC, Togo, CAR), irregular. This has led many journalists, like other civil servants, to undertake parallel income-earning activities like teaching, commerce, farming, import–export, consulting in communications, and technical maintenance services. These “sidelines” often became state media personnel’s principal income source. In Congo-Brazzaville in 2009, Radio Congo employed 448 staff, yet no more than 10 employees could ever be seen in the halls of the large empty building. Journalists interviewed at the time (Frère 2008, 14) were fond of calling the newsroom “the radio station without chairs”, because barely 10 people could find somewhere to sit in this huge building. Elsewhere, the best journalists fled state media for ministries where new press services were being created, aiming at promoting their activities, or became communications consultants. In Benin, when it was proposed that journalists of the ORTB not be allowed to combine their jobs as journalists with positions of press officer or consultant for ministries and political leaders, there was a huge uproar. The management realized that if they did so, there would be no staff left to cover elections, for instance (Tozzo 2005). In such a context, ambitious public service reforms have been dropped for lack of the necessary skills, personnel, or motivation. Furthermore, the professional “ethos” of these state journalists did not change in many cases. For instance, in Burkina Faso, journalists from RTB and TNB, though they have been given wider freedoms, have continued to restrict themselves to the coverage of presidential activities and official ceremonies, partly because “that’s what they have always done” (Yameogo 2016), partly perhaps in the hope of official advancement and recognition by powerholders. Nevertheless, in 2016 and 2019, journalists from the public media in Burkina Faso went on strike, demanding not only better salaries and more equipment, but also more agency and less political pressure from the government in their daily work. In 2016, the Minister of
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Communication, Remis Dandjinou (himself a former director of an independent TV company), reminded journalists from the state media: “You cannot ride in the presidential plane and criticize the work that is done (by the government) at the same time… The TNB’s mission is to support the government”. And he concluded that those who did not agree with this could simply leave the public media and create their own private outlets. The absence of any internal drive to institute greater freedom was also due to labor unions which stubbornly defended the jobs of state media employees, but did not denounce the lack of freedom. This meant that staff numbers in the bloated public media did not change, but pay remained low and personnel often inactive; for many civil servants, retaining a position is considered vital even if it does not pay a living wage. The use of publicly owned media equipment for private benefit grew. In Burkina Faso, for example, it was not uncommon to find a crew from the national television studio at baptisms or weddings filming events for profit using RTB equipment. Third, progress was hobbled further by poor infrastructure and equipment. Private sector competition surged in the middle of the technological revolution with new operators deploying the newest and most powerful digital technology. State media, on the other hand, still operated with analog equipment donated by foreign NGOs in the 1970s and 1980s (Dioh 2009) and needed to invest large sums to update their equipment. Most national media faced funding shortfalls and lack of equipment, which forced them to fill their programming slots with music videos or productions from Nigeria or Ghana, or telenovelas from Central and South America. In the DRC, journalists leased their own private equipment to the state television station (the RTNC) to enable it to function, as it only owned two cameras after 2008. Poor management, too, has been endemic in many state media departments, hindering potential progress toward public service (Okala 1999). In Cameroon, for example, CRTV posted lower profits than the government newspaper, the Cameroon Tribune, despite strong advertising revenue: it was common knowledge that the head of CRTV appropriated a large part of this advertising revenue and distributed it in a clientelist manner—typical of neo-patrimonial behavior in the very same country in which Jean-François Bayart developed his concept of “politics of the belly” (1989). In the DRC, an audit of the RTNC in 2005 found that less than 20 percent of the government-approved budget made it to the national radio and television coffers.
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Changes in foreign support are a final factor which did not help state media turn toward a more “public service” orientation. For decades, the French administration had provided financial support to French-speaking government media, trained journalists and had even sent expatriate staff to help them operate. In 2005 in CAR, there were still two French fulltime experts helping to operate the national television. But after the first China-Africa Summit (FOCAC) in 2000, China began to implement a fast-growing policy, aimed not only at establishing its own media in French-speaking Africa, but also at becoming a player in media development aid, and especially toward state media.21 The Action Plan (2010–2012) adopted clearly stated that the priority was to reinforce cooperation between “governmental information services” and mentioned an annual training session aimed not at journalists but at “African civil servants” (Morin-Allory 2011). In 2006, the new premises of the Guinean public broadcaster were inaugurated (thanks to a 600,000 USD donation from China). Chinese companies also built and equipped the new buildings of the national broadcaster in Gabon (worth 40,000,000 USD) and in Congo-Brazzaville (15,000,000 USD).22 Western donors are not willing to make such investments anymore. These projects go hand-in-hand with the promotion of a type of journalism aimed at “positive” approaches to news, which means support to government policies—a far cry from a “public service” approach. 3.3
Steady Audience Numbers
In spite of their problems and deficiencies, state media remain vital within the African media sector. A 2005 study in 18 African countries revealed that in most cases, the populations polled had more faith in state media than in the privately owned ones (Moehler and Singh 2011). These numbers should be taken in context, however, as they concern mainly English-speaking countries (only three Francophone African countries appear in the study—Benin, Senegal, and Mali—and tellingly, in 21 Chinese strategies and activities toward African news media have raised much interest among English-speaking researchers (Banda 2009; Gagliardone et al. 2010; Wasserman 2015; Umejei 2018), but very little in the French-speaking media research community. 22 It’s important to note that Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville, and Congo are three resource-rich countries (oil, gold, timber), and that China has invested in any other types of infrastructures in these countries as well as media.
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the first two of these, the majority considered private media more credible). In Burkina Faso, in 2013 for instance, a study showed that state radio only reached 4.2 percent of the Burkinabè public, substantially behind the private Savane FM (54.8 percent) and RFI (16.2 percent) (Yameogo 2016). Nevertheless, it should be recognized, that state media have benefited from the loss of credibility of privately owned media following various public trials and sensational blunders. Ethical missteps by commercial media and their blatant political biases have brought about a return by consumers to state media whose programming (like official news programs) retains a following (AIF 2003b). State media remain useful. Rwanda and Burundi are two contrasting cases in this respect. A study conducted in the African Great Lakes region in 2011–2012 (Frère 2012) demonstrated that, in Rwanda, state radio and television had a wide audience, while in Burundi, they were still popular, but less so. The reasons given by the Rwandan listeners were as follows: conversely to commercial media, the national broadcaster covers the entire country; it broadcasts employment offers, results of national exams for government jobs and calls for tenders; the journalists are more experienced than those in the private sector; the programming devoted to Rwandan history and culture is appreciated; and, last but not least, it represents the official voice of the country. In Burundi, on the other hand, where independent radio stations have historically been more popular than state radio, and enjoyed much more freedom than the ones in neighboring Rwanda, state radio was still valued for similar reasons: it is the only station available in numerous rural areas; it values local culture; and sometimes seems more thoughtful than commercial radio, which is perceived to have drifted toward sensationalism. It is clear, then, that the situation varies from one country to another, but state media remains resilient, despite more plural media landscapes, especially in countries where either they have improved their offer in terms of pluralism (Burkina Faso, Senegal), or where the privately owned media lack credibility or the freedom to produce a qualitative alternative. Typically, citizens will favor independent radio, but they will dial in to state media to hear the official view on national and local events.
4
State Funding of Private Media
Another way the state intervenes in the media is through public funding of private media. This practice is uniquely Francophone, inspired by policy in France, and is considered incongruous by journalists in Anglophone
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Africa. The French tradition asserts that the state can fund private media in so far as they perform a public function by providing the nation with news, even if their goal includes profitability like any other private enterprise. From this perspective, news production is not a conventional commercial commodity, and public funding can help maintain a balance and pluralism in the media landscape by eliminating excessive concentration of ownership in the hands of a few individuals, by protecting media from moneyed self-interest, and by allowing more sustainability for precarious media whose voices contribute to pluralism and the survival of democracy.23 Financial aid can be direct (subsidies, support for equipment, or modernization) or indirect (reduced rates and taxes for postal or telecommunication services, and reduced business income taxes) (Nielsen and Linnebank 2011). This approach is at odds with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which historically—apart from state-owned broadcasting—asserted that media activity constitutes a segment of the economy like others, and should develop within its own market dynamics without government aid. As Patrick Le Floch and Nathalie Sonnac (2010, 10) noted, “The notion that news may be considered a general public service, a para-public organization lying outside strict market laws, has never been considered objectionable in France like in Great Britain or the US”. Benin—once again a pioneer in the field—is the country where funding for private media first passed into law in 1992 (although not implemented until 1997). In Senegal, legislation for state funding was passed in 1994 (Faye 2015); in Mali in 1996; in Burkina Faso in 1997; and in Guinea in 2001. In other countries, like Chad, for example, government funding has been sporadic, or in the DRC or Congo-Brazzaville where media has received state aid only once (Table 4). The creation of public funding schemes for private media in Frenchspeaking Africa has engendered numerous controversies. Disagreement is often centered on the criteria used to select the media outlets to be subsidized, the terms and conditions of allocation and distribution, and the amount and type of aid available. The inability of allocation bodies
23 “Pluralism” can be understood in two different ways. Internal pluralism means that one single media outlet may be opened up and may disseminate different views and reflect different movements. External pluralism means that even if the media landscape is composed of one-sided media, the public has access to a great diversity of news available on the market.
Cameroon
Burundi
2002 (2 sessions)
2003 (2 sessions) 2004–2014
100 million F.CFA (152,450 e)
210 million F.CFA (320,143 e) 150–200 million
2013
(annual) 2013 1997–2014 (annual) 2012
400 millions F.CFA (609,800 e) 300 million F.CFA (457,000 e) 100 million F.BU (56,000 e) 50 million F.BU (28,000 e)
Burkina Faso
1997–2013
350 million F.CFA (457,000 e)
Benin
Years distributed
Amount of aid
Public funding of the private press (official figures reported up to 2014)
Country
Table 4
(continued)
Press Law (2013): «Burundian press and communication bodies shall receive promotional funding. Resources for the funds are derived largely from: a. annual state budgetary donations; b. donor funding». (Article 24) Not legislated Supplementary «exceptional funding» was allocated during election campaigns
Not legislated
Organic law of the HAAC (1992) The HAAC must «guarantee a framework of state aid to the public and private press». (Article 6)
Legal foundation
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2002 2005
39 million F.CFA (59,455 e) 60 million F.CFA (91,469 e)
300 million F.CFA (457,347 e)
300,000 $.
Chad
Congo (Brazzaville)
Congo (DRC)
1998
2001
(annual) 2001 2003 2013
F.CFA (228,000–305,000 e) 10 million F.CFA (15,245 e) 10 million F.CFA (15,245 e) 25 million F.CFA (38,112 e)
CAR
Years distributed
(continued)
Amount of aid
Country
Table 4
2005 Press Law: «The state shall directly or indirectly subsidize communication bodies that contribute to the public right to information». (Article 80) Press Law (1994): «It is the duty of the state to aid directly or indirectly news agencies who contribute to the right of the public to information». (Article 32) 2001 Press Law: «Public or private news and communication concerns may benefit from direct or indirect aid from the state». (Article 8) 1996 Press Law: «The state may subsidize directly or indirectly private news agencies in the form of preferential pricing... » (Article 17)
Legal foundation
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Côte d’Ivoire
Country Allotted only once, under the L.D. Kabila presidency
Since 2007, an annual budget of $1 million ($2 million since 2009) is voted on, but has never reached the beneficiaries 446 million F.CFA (680,000 e) 1.5 billion F.CFA (2.3 million e) 450 million F.CFA (686,000 e) 745 million F.CFA (1.1 million e) 720 million F.CFA (1 million e) 900 million F.CFA (1.4 million e) 900 million F.CFA (1.4 million e) 2015
2013 2014
2011 2012
2010
2009
Years distributed
Amount of aid
(continued)
2001 Law on broadcast communication:
Decree # 2007-677 (December 28, 2007) determines the funding, organization, and operation of the Fonds de soutien et de développement de la presse (established by Law # 2004-643 (December 14, 2004) addressing the Régime juridique de la presse (Article 102)
Legal foundation
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Mali
1996–2014
(annual) 1998
(152,000 e) 200 million F.CFA
2014
2012
(120,000 e) 300 million F. Guinean (35,000 e) 3 billion F. Guinean (361,000 e) 100 million F.CFA
2009 (followed by a two-year hiatus)
2002–2008
(annual) 2001
(762,245 e) 300 million F. Guinean (36,113 e) 400 million F. Guinean (48,000 e) 1 billion F. Guinean
Guinea
2003–2014
500 million F.CFA
Gabon
Years distributed
Amount of aid
(continued)
Country
Table 4
Decree # 03-264/P-RM (July 7, 2003) lays out the conditions of eligibility, allocation, and management of public funding to the press (including state media)
Not legislated
«Communication enterprises, because of the specificity of their mission, may benefit from certain economic, fiscal and social benefits. A special fund to support activities of organizations in the communication sector shall be the object of a law… » (Article 224)
Legal foundation
186 M.-S. FRÈRE
Mauritania
Rwanda Senegal
Niger
(305,000 e) 91 million F.CFA (138,729 e) 200 million ouguiyas
40 million F.CFA (61 000 e)
80 million F.CFA (122,000 e) 200 million F.CFA (304,898 e)
(571,513 e)
Amount of aid
Country
1994–2001
2009 (allocated in 2011) 2013 (allocated in 2014)
2003-2004
2012–2014
2012
Years distributed
(continued)
Law #96-04 (February 22, 1996) addressing social communication organizations and journalistic and technical professionals :
Statute #017-2006 (October 2006) on press freedom (Article 31 dedicates state funds to the press) Law # 2011-024 addressing l’Aide publique à la presse privée Statute #2010-035 (June 4, 2010): « It is the duty of the state to aid directly or indirectly general news enterprises who contribute to the public right to information». (Article 41)
Legal foundation
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Togo
Country
Table 4
(continued)
(57,168 e) 75 million F.CFA (114,000 e) 350 million F.CFA (533,572 e)
2010
2009
2006 2007
2012–2013
2010–2011
2008–2009
2006–2007
2002–2005
150 million F.CFA
(228,000 e) 300 million F.CFA (457,347 e) 400 million F.CFA (609,796 e) 500 million F.CFA (762,245 e) 700 million F.CFA (1,067,140 e) 50 million F.CFA (76,224 e) 37.5 million F.CFA
Years distributed
Amount of aid
Code de la presse (July 2004) «The state confers onto the press certain economic benefits that may come in the form of aid in the collection and treatment of news by means of preferential tarrification and taxation... » (Article 5)
« An assistance fund serving social communication organizations is hereby created by law, whose operation is determined by the Finance Ministry». (Article 58)
Legal foundation
188 M.-S. FRÈRE
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to provide oversight has been roundly denounced, not to mention their susceptibility to corruption. The grant-schemes have also been accused of being politically oriented, favoring outlets close to the government or aiming at getting media support for official policies and agendas. For example, in 1998 in the DRC, Laurent-Désiré Kabila allocated 100 million USD to a handful of Kinshasa media outlets selected for political reasons (Institut Panos Paris 2004). In Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade (President 2000–2012), more than doubled the amount available to the private press, “but he expected a quid pro quo from the press in the form of political support for his regime” (Faye 2015, 23). The written press benefited from direct aid first because it appeared earlier and, it was judged that newspapers played an active role in public debate, and they had little access to alternative (advertising) revenue. When privately owned radio stations were established, they requested support as well, especially community radio stations which are not supposed to broadcast commercials, while serving the community. Privately owned commercial radios and television stations also asked for their share as soon as they appeared on the scene. The proliferation of media outlets, these days including online media, has now made the amount received by each one completely insignificant. 4.1
No Shortage of Disputes
Who receives aid is often a matter of some discord. Originally, state funds were distributed in a rather haphazard manner to all media outlets, but their sharp increase in number called for a more targeted selection strategy. In countries where aid was regular, criteria for selecting beneficiaries were put in place that included the vocation of the outlet (general news, non-denominational); content disseminated (original articles and content); personnel (minimum number of employees, their status, and types of contracts); frequency and size of publication or broadcast range; price; and presence in various regions of the country. In Burkina Faso in 2019, a total of 400 million CFA (737,000 USD), had to be shared between 96 outlets, selected on the basis of an application form: there were 129 applicants in a media landscape which officially numbers 241 outlets (including 11 dailies, 14 bi-weeklies, 24 bi-monthlies, 25 monthlies, 18 news websites, 130 private broadcasters, and 19 privately owned television channels). Obviously, most did not even apply.
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The amount and type of aid has also led to a great deal of protest. Direct financial aid, which was originally favored, was replaced in many countries with material support; at times excessive or poorly suited to media outlets’ actual needs. Indirect, as an alternative to direct, financial aid is unpopular with both the state and beneficiaries: the state for reasons related to the difficulties of managing this type of process, whereas the beneficiaries are loath to make their management decisions and their finances transparent in the negotiating process. In most countries, the overall amount of aid has not increased significantly over the years while the number of media outlets has surged, leading to a situation in which organizations receive only symbolic sums. In Mali, where community radio receives aid, 30 million F.CFA (46,000 e) was shared between 325 stations in 2012. “Each radio station received only enough to pay the monthly salary of a novice journalist according to the salary scale defined by the labor agreements” (Friedrich Ebert Fondation 2012, 8). In Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Senegal, and Cameroon some media heads appropriated these public funds for personal use rather than for their enterprises, generating frustration in the newsrooms. Public monies have also served to splinter the media sector: where rampant precarity exists, the simple availability of funds can lead to an opportunistic and artificial creation of media outlets. In Benin, for example, press enterprises have multiplied just before new grant allocations, which explains in part why Cotonou (with a population of barely 800,000) boasts 60 dailies with haphazard publication cycles. Weeklies became dailies only to receive more money without having the means to expand their staff, nor having conducted any assessment of market viability. Illegal and fraudulent documents, dressing up the enterprise’s history, and falsifying budgets and personnel costs have become rampant even in countries that made attempts to clean up the selection process (Friedrich Ebert Fondation 2011, 59). In some cases, personnel may be hired before application deadlines and laid off immediately after receiving aid. And finally, the integrity of the allocation committees themselves (often integrated within regulatory bodies or managed by the Ministry of Communication) has been questioned. Consequently, there have been calls to reform these state-funding mechanisms so as to ensure that such mechanisms, originally designed to increase pluralism and diversity, do not become tools that require local media to bow to politicians. With that in mind, Côte d’Ivoire established the Fonds de soutien et de développement de la presse (FSDP) which also includes support to professional
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organizations. In 2016 Burkina Faso created a specific body, the FAPP (Fonds d’appui à la presse privée), aimed at allocating this state aid. Even in Senegal, where the 2017 press law provides for a Fonds d’appui au développement de la presse, such a fund has still not been properly set up, despite being officially linked to the ministry in charge of communication. Almost 25 years have passed since the beginning of these experiments. What can we glean from these efforts to offer public funds to privately owned media? On the upside, they have helped establish pluralism, improve enterprise structures, raise the level of professionalism, and improve production and publishing techniques, thanks to the equipment donated. But, in many countries, they have divided the media, generated conflicts whenever grants have been allocated, and provided an occasion for governments to exert political pressure on the beneficiaries.
5 New Forms of Control and Institutional Pressure The examples discussed above highlight the reality that despite manifesting openness, Francophone African states still attempt to control free expression. Repression of journalists and media by those in power still exists to varying degrees in many countries in the forms of assassinations, arrests, prison, beatings of journalists, seizure of material, being taken off air, etc. Media rights activists report how states have “privatized” violence against journalists and show how the state (including security forces, the army, and the police) does not have a monopoly on repression but that journalists are also targeted by rebel movements, private militias, and criminal gangs. But certain types of pressure are more discrete. States, including those in French-speaking Africa, often claim to have democratic institutions and rules, and to have demonstrated their “democratic goodwill” by adopting new more liberal press laws, trying to reform government media, establishing new “independent” regulatory bodies, and even allocating subsidies to privately owned media. But most of these initiatives remain highly problematic, as described above. Many governments have been extremely skillful at diverting these processes to serve their own political aims. In this last section, we argue that “democracy” has even provided new tools and new excuses for rulers to intervene in the media sector. Other forms of repression have emerged that disrupt the work of the media, while labelled as “democratic” constraints that are more acceptable in the eyes of Western donors and
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foreign ambassadors. In reality, the democratization process, and the institutional reforms that have taken place in its wake, have provided tools embedded in democratic architecture that can also serve as instruments of repression (Frère 2015b). Six such tools are identified below: legal proceedings, taxation, administrative constraints, regulations, official government communications, and the manipulation of the advertising market. 5.1
“Democratically Correct” Instruments of Repression
Repression by legal means has already been mentioned. Before 1990, the judicial system was openly a political tool, but, since 1990, Frenchspeaking countries have adopted new constitutions and laws establishing its independence. With supposedly independent courts, some countries have learnt how to use these democratic laws to silence media that have displeased a regime. For instance, after adversarial legal cases in which every party is heard, heavy fines and costs can be levied on media, which threaten their future existence and serve as a deterrent to other media outlets. The targeted media outlet can rarely be accused of any form of misconduct, yet the sanction is forbidding. A strict respect of the judicial proceedings has also been cynically used in trials addressing crimes and violence against journalists. The assassination of Burkinabè journalist, Norbert Zongo, is a case in point. He was killed in 1998, and though the state could not avoid an investigation, it ensured that the resulting court case ended in an impasse almost perfectly justified in law (Frère 2010). The same scenarios followed the assassination of Franck Ngyke (La Référence Plus ) in 2005 and Serge Maheshe (Radio Okapi) in 2007 in the DRC in which there were “simulacra of trials based on intentionally shoddy investigative work”, according to Journaliste en Danger (JED 2008, 13). Such cases strengthen the feeling of impunity and therefore the self-censorship of journalists, while advertising to the outside world that the case has been taken seriously and has followed due legal process. The second “democratic” instrument adopted to exercise pressure on private media is taxation. In several countries, among them Chad and Cameroon, audits have been carried out to pressure media by forcing them to close (often temporarily) for non-payment of taxes. Legally, these companies are indeed supposed to fulfill their tax obligations, as provided by law. In a context where many private media operate in an “informal” economy (see Chapter 6), authorities can easily find anomalies in tax
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filings when they want to. Nevertheless, auditors are not dispatched to the doorsteps of all media companies: those more favorable to the regime but equally lacking in fiscal responsibility get a pass. For instance, in the DRC, Nyota TV and RT Mapendo, in Lubumbashi, belonging to leading opposition figure, Moïse Katumbi, were suspended from 2016 until 2019 for “not having paid their annual broadcasting fees” (RSF press release, February 1, 2016). The international organization, Reporters without Borders, claimed that they did not want to “go into depth in this case”, but said they suspected a lack of equity. Recently, the government of Benin announced it would increase taxes on mobile phones but journalists objected, arguing that mobiles had become central for reporting local news from the provinces, as well for emergencies (such as violations of human rights by the police or the local authorities), and therefore should remain affordable. Thirdly, the legal provisions needed to manage a liberalized media landscape may also be used to constrain the media. While it is reasonable for anyone wishing to start a radio or television station to obtain official authorization, the paperwork necessary for accreditation in the broadcast sector has become so complex (Cameroon) or so vague (Congo-Brazzaville) that it becomes impossible for media outlets to be in complete compliance with the legal authorization procedure, making them vulnerable at any moment to being fined or having their licenses revoked. In Burundi, in 2016, one year after the independent broadcasting sector had been all-but destroyed, the CNC government allowed two radio stations to re-open, but on condition they sign a compulsory “agreement” (“acte d’engagement ”) in which they agreed to provide “balanced and objective information” that would not threaten the “country’s security”. Presented as an administrative formality, this agreement in fact ensured that no media would criticize the government. Media regulators constitute a fourth “democratic” means of control: although a necessary function of the democratization process, they, too, can often become a tool of repression. In the DRC before the 2006 elections, the regulator (HAM) suspended local language broadcasts at certain radio stations, citing its own inability to monitor content in these languages; perhaps not coincidentally, these banned programs had served as a mouthpiece for the political opposition and their supporters. In December 2016 in Cameroon, in a single day, the NCC imposed 24 sanctions targeting 14 publishers, one radio manager, and 15 journalists from different outlets, all accused of “unfounded, offensive and
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insinuating allegations” toward government officials, businessmen, or individuals (Ngangum 2019). Such decisions, even when they may have foundation, have a chilling effect on the media sector and push journalists toward self-censorship. Another “democratic” tool that has been manipulated by Frenchspeaking states is the issue of “access to information” (ATI). Under ideal conditions, democratic government institutions (the office of the president, ministers, parliament, etc.) are meant to be publicly accountable and provide citizens and independent media with the information they might need regarding their activities. The establishment of specialized units in all such institutions is therefore not only useful, but a democratic necessity. In Francophone Africa, these units exist but are used mainly to organize press conferences and disseminate the information that the government is willing to impart. In no way do they demonstrate that they are able or willing to answer any queries from the press (e.g., providing data about education, health, or economy). Hindering access to information, while creating and operating communication units, is a subtle form of press freedom repression, that blurs the difference between information and communication. Regarding access to information, Internet shutdowns have become commonplace. French-speaking African states are relatively liberal—they are not China after all—so they generally allow Internet access, but they use arguments about hate speech, cybercrime, or possible instability during elections to suspend Internet access, social networks, and even mobile phones. Internet shutdowns have become more and more frequent and they hamper journalists’ work at crucial political junctures. In Burundi, the Iwacu newspaper was forced to ban all comments from readers appearing below their online articles. Subsequently, access to the Iwacu website located in Burundi was blocked, and the paper had to collaborate with RSF to establish a “mirroring” website outside of the country. Chad has also blocked access to the most popular websites, whose views do not match those of the government. Internet shutdowns grew in 2016 (Congo, DRC, Gabon, Chad, Mali) and 2018 (DRC, Chad Cameroon, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire). In Cameroon, since the beginning of the “Anglophone crisis”, all communications were suspended to and from the provinces, especially those affected by conflict, from January to April 2017 and again in October 2017. Given the importance to journalists of social
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networks (mainly WhatsApp) for obtaining information, footage, and eyewitness accounts, there was a real black out, although some media have been making great efforts to continue covering the violence in these areas. And lastly, advertising is of capital importance to ensure the viability of media outlets in a liberalized media landscape, but behind a veneer of liberalization, states are still able to covertly control market forces. In both Rwanda and Mali, media outlets have complained of being targeted by “advertising boycotts” engineered behind the scenes by the government, which directs the advertising budgets of public institutions toward friendly media. Regime such as those in Cameroon, Gabon, or Togo, may also make it clear to private businesses how they may fall out of favor with the government if they advertise in media the regime does not like. 5.2
“Pluralist Authoritarian” or “Liberal Authoritarian” Media Systems?
What name should we give to systems that appear to be both “liberal” (in the sense that there is a free market, dominated by commercial media) and “pluralist” (because there is a diversity of opinions expressed either internally or externally), but which definitely display authoritarian behavior? These media systems just reflect, with varying degrees, the political system itself. Political researchers have noted that despite institutional reforms, multiparty systems, and elections said to be free and transparent, most African regimes are still able to stay in power and stop the media serving as a countervailing force. A plethora of terms have been coined to describe these types of regimes: Fareed Zacharia speaks of “illiberal” democracies (1997), Andreas Schedler of “electoral authoritarianism” (2006), Marina Ottaway of “semi-authoritarian” regimes (Ottaway 2004), Larry Diamond of “hybrid” regimes (2002) or “pseudo-democracies”, and Paul Brooker of “semi-dictatorships” (2009). All of these concepts, nuances aside, reflect a single reality: some political regimes allow multiple political parties, and free expression, organize regular elections, but still weaken independent media and political opposition to guarantee their grip on power. Most importantly, they are not (even if they pretend to be) “in transition” to democracy: they are semi-authoritarian and their strategy is just to remain so.
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The media systems in Francophone Africa reflect the semi-authoritarian nature of politics.24 The law, which is meant to uphold the exercise of free expression, becomes a weapon in the hands of malevolent justice. The regulator becomes a censor, including online media and access to the Internet. State media give the illusion they are serving the public interest, when in fact they remain propaganda tools serving a single political party or even one man. As for public funding of private media (when it is indeed available), more often than not it becomes an instrument to pressure or destabilize professional solidarity. And finally, so-called democratic mechanisms (public communication, taxation, free market, Internet availability, etc.) are used to weaken oppositional views. In such a context, we argue that the media systems in Francophone Africa can be qualified as being “liberal authoritarian”, or “pluralist authoritarian”, which might appear contradictory at first glance, but does reflect the fact that they, too, comprise both democratic qualities and dictatorial practices (Frère 2015b, c). The geo-political context now favors this type of hybrid governance. African states have long been sensitive about foreign perceptions of their domestic affairs (particularly by their development partners) but the situation with regards to democracy and human rights has taken a clear step backward since 2009 when China became the continent’s most important economic partner. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ 2011) has underscored how the Chinese model has inspired African heads of state to push their arguments favoring “positive” media supporting the “development efforts” of the state and quash opposition (Keita 2011). This argument, much like the one paraded in the 1960s, is used to justify the repression of those “anti-patriotic” elements who criticize corruption, growing inequality, and persistent poverty. Furthermore, the growing influence of Turkey and Russia on the continent, even though they have no “local media support” programs so far, is unlikely to help promote more democratic media models. In such a context, the usual Western donors involved in media support (EU, France, USA, UK, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries) often find
24 The same goes for elections. Although they may be organized regularly, they are used to maintain incumbents in power. Recent elections in Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire (both in October 2020) are cases in point, although the December 2020 election in Niger is an exception.
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themselves in the awkward position of lending legitimacy to governments in the semi-authoritarian model. “Democratization” projects such as those that support journalism training and election-reporting in countries like Burundi or Benin are problematic and donors are conflicted. Donors that once could attach conditionality on human rights or freedom of expression to their aid can no longer do so, since new donors like China and Russia set no such conditions. Many traditional donors in such “fragile” countries turn a blind eye and largely accept a “good enough governance situation” (Molenaers et al. 2017). In this uncertain context, journalists have to constantly assess how much agency they have and how far they can go. To avoid fines, the loss of employment, or other financial pressures, they often prefer softening what they have to say and limiting the scope of their investigative work. In addition to the censorship that stems from the political apparatus (government, armed forces, the judiciary, etc.), indirect pressure is also exerted on journalists in their day-to-day work based on well-established journalistic routines that we will explore in the following chapter. As a result, many journalists are turning to social networks, where they can sometimes express themselves in a different voice from that of the media outlet they work in during the day. Social media can give them more freedom.
6
Conclusion
The liberalization of the media sector in the 1990s signaled a transformation of the role of the state and changes in the interaction between journalists and government. Thirty years later, the media systems that have emerged can be labelled “liberal”, “pluralist”, but also “authoritarian” at the same time. Pluralism exists, press freedom is acknowledged, and media outlets are created and operate in a free market and within a regulated framework, but governments still deploy direct as well as covert strategies to limit the freedom of the media. In semi-authoritarian political systems, governments know the importance of a free press to their democratic façade, which is why they have adopted and established various mechanisms inspired by Western democracies: tolerant legal frameworks; “independent” media regulators; apparent efforts to turn state media into public service media; public funding for the privately owned press; and ministerial communication units to allow public access to information.
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But, at the same time, there is no political will to give these mechanisms genuine democratic content, independence, and capacity to act. Of course, the situation respecting press freedom is not the same in all countries, as underlined by the rankings done by international NGOs. The degree to which French-speaking African states can be called “semiauthoritarian” and their media systems described as “liberal pluralist authoritarian” varies. In Senegal since the 2000 elections, in Burkina Faso after the fall of Blaise Compaoré in 2014, democratic elections have brought changes at the top, which, in turn have reflected a stronger pluralism in the media. Conversely, in countries such as Chad, Congo or Cameroon (where the same president has been in office for more than 30 years), and in countries such as the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, CAR, Côte d’Ivoire (where wars have pushed governments to view the media either as their mouthpiece or their enemies), the tendency for control is much more significant, and therefore the media systems have become more polarized. The more the regimes tend toward authoritarian practices, the more those media with divergent views will tend to take strong oppositional stands, will openly support the political opposition (inside of the country or in exile—as is currently the case for Congo-Brazzaville and Burundi), and will therefore get into trouble. “Political parallelism” is therefore increasing in countries where state media do not open their pages or airwaves to divergent views. This pushes opposition political parties and individuals to create their own outlets to promote their opinions, and to migrate to social media to express themselves. And of course, these media platforms will be increasingly crushed, until their journalists either become disheartened or exile themselves internally (through self-censorship) or externally (by leaving the profession or even their countries). The next chapter will describe the evolution of the profession in such a context.
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CHAPTER 6
Journalism and Changing Professional Identities
The proliferation of private media in French-speaking Africa has profoundly transformed journalists’ role in society and how they perceive themselves, approach their profession, and organize themselves. “Professionalism”, as defined in our fourth dimension, came to encompass completely different types of practices, values and identities, as journalists gained autonomy and agency and claimed to adopt news norms. News professionals today claim the right to carry out new missions: to countervail state power, to facilitate democratic debate, to serve as democratic watchdogs, to battle impunity, to link with civil society, to be the voice of the voiceless and of the community. Before 1990, journalists were civil servants at the beck and call of the state, of one party, or even of one president-for-life. Today’s journalists have a wider range of motivations and a far broader profile. They also form a formidable professional group: with the growth of pluralism, public and commercial media, professionals today number in their hundreds and even thousands in some French-speaking African countries. Being a “professional” journalist does not refer to fixed shared knowledge, or common doctrines and principles, unlike those found in professions such as medicine or law. Although international charters have been adopted that outline the rights and duties of professional journalists, such as the 1956 Declaration of the International Federation of Journalists and
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the 1971 Munich Declaration of the Duties and Rights of Journalists, these are not legally binding.1 In French-speaking Africa, the political and professional changes of the past three decades have pushed the news producers to think collectively about who they are, what they are doing (or should be doing), and which aims they want to reach. Thus, this chapter will examine this community of news producers. To that end, it will explore journalistic identity and the values invoked; internal norms that frame the profession (ethics); and how these norms are upheld (self-regulation). It will also look at the group dynamics of official organizations (associations and unions) and the powers they wield; the role of professional training (i.e., journalism degrees) as a route into the profession; and the legal status of journalists, which ultimately reflects the media’s place in society.
1
Journalism: A Multi-faceted Job and a Blurred Identity
The professional journalists that emerged in the early 1990s in Frenchspeaking Africa were different from the previous generation of journalists. An illustration of this contrast can be found in the press legislation of Burundi. Article 6 of the press law passed in 1976 asserted: “The work of Burundian journalists must always be patriotic and reflect the ideals of the party, which is the entity solely responsible for the existence of the nation”. In 2013, a new law redefined a journalist as “any person exercising their profession in one or more press houses or press agencies and whose steady and paid work consists in collecting, writing and disseminating information through the media”: a sizable difference in definition.
1 Several media sociologists in the Francophone sphere have published seminal work about initiatives by journalists to be recognized as a guild, since the beginning of the twentieth century (Ruellan 2007; Neveu 2004). These works describe how the adoption of a code of ethics, the establishment of professional associations, and the launch of specialized training have contributed to establishing journalism as a specific “profession”. The aim behind this “professionalizing” has also been to guarantee self-governance and therefore limit state and legal intervention in the media sector (Charon 2000; Grevisse 1998). Despite these attempts to establish “boundaries” to the profession, “journalism” remains a very flexible and “blurred” practice (Ruellan 2007). These authors are probably the most cited, in works about ethics in Francophone Africa.
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Some of the pioneers of private newspapers and radio were former civil servants from the state media, seeking more freedom or benefiting from early retirement packages in an economic context where the World Bank was pushing African states to reduce the personnel in their civil service. They were soon joined by young graduates in search of work, as finding government jobs was no longer an automatic thing. These young journalists were often, as the Ivorian publisher Diégou Bailly put it (2001, 170), journalists “en attendant ” (“just for now”, i.e., who saw journalism as a stepping stone to something better).2 But some of them were also motivated by investigative journalism ideals and were willing to serve as a countervailing force to the state. Many of this new generation of reporters turned their backs on the old practice of “state” journalism and embraced new roles, as practiced by their colleagues in Western democracies.3 To borrow Pippa Norris’ classification (2010), some became “watchdogs” (advocates of public interest, ensuring leaders are accountable by uncovering corruption and wrongdoing), “agenda setters” (highlighting social problems and informing public figures of society’s needs), and “gatekeepers” (collecting together all points of view and contributing to the plurality of voices in the public sphere). But many were also very engaged in political debate, supporting political parties or actors, and acting more as “populist disseminators” (Hanitzsch 2011), “active-militants” (Donsbach and Patterson 2004), either “radical” (criticizing dysfunction and abuse so as to bring about societal change) or “collaborative” (supporting public figures and their actions) (Christians et al. 2009). All these typologies, built around Western journalistic practices, are useful for characterizing some of the roles news professionals play in
2 To cite Diégou Bailly (2001, 170): “For what exactly? For now before carrying on with studies? For now until you can find a ‘real’ job? For now until you are appointed head of communications for a cabinet minister… or become the cabinet minister yourself? For now until you find work with a candidate looking for a PR lackey for the next campaign? For now what….?” 3 The plural form is necessary here, as journalists can play such different roles in society, and many typologies have been established to try to classify these different professional aims. See Weaver and Wilhoit (1986), Donsbach and Patterson (2004), Norris (2010), Hanitzsch (2011), Christians et al. (2009). These classifications have been criticized for both their weak research methodology and their lack of applicability across cultures.
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French-speaking Africa, but none of them actually cover the wide range of positions that they really occupy in their societies.4 Katrin Voltmer and Herman Wasserman have demonstrated how “domesticated” forms of journalism appear in emerging democracies that reflect the local cultural and political context (Voltmer and Wasserman 2014). In Francophone Africa, this context is influenced by history. For instance, journalism of national unity and development suffuses the idea of a journalist as “educator of the masses” that is put forth by certain media. As we have seen in the previous chapters, in many countries, newspapers, radio and television stations were created by political parties and actors, mainly to act as a propaganda tool during elections: in the DRC and in Côte d’Ivoire, for instance, the very high degree of political parallelism has configured journalism as a political activity, performed by people who claim to be both journalists and political militants—what Marie Fierens has called “double agents” (2017). Thierry Perret (2005a) also underscores the militancy of many African journalists, who are often extremely politicized, and their predominant role in the service of a party, a political figure or of a particular community. Political changes have also brought out other professional stances: the “watchdog journalist” is also a human rights defender who takes big risks when dealing with semi-authoritarian leadership; the “voice of the people” is a journalist who wishes to reverse information flows from “top-down” to “bottom-up”; the “opinion leader” is a journalist whose column, radio or TV show (and now posts on social media) look at current events in a different way5 ; the “peacemaker” is a journalist playing a particular role in the resolution of conflict; and the “humanitarian” journalist is hired and paid to both contribute, and give visibility to, the work of international aid organizations. We should also mention the role of “investigator”, a model that has been promoted by many international
4 Herman Wasserman (2013) in South Africa and Peter Mwesige (2004) in Uganda have tried to apply these Western models to professional practices in their respective countries, while Florence Brisset-Foucault (2009) has attempted to identify models of journalistic practice in “alternative” African media. 5 Sylvio Waisbord (2000) shows that, on the American continent, while opinion journalism is generally despised and considered as a primitive form of the profession that has not yet evolved towards objectivity and factuality, in Latin America, factual journalism has served dictatorships. And it is opinion journalists who have taken the greatest risks to inform and circulate ideas.
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“media development” NGOs, through training, prizes for investigative reports, and support to “investigative journalism” associations.6 In this context, some journalists choose to write under a pseudonym: this strategy of “disguised” journalism can not only help protect the author, but can also provide journalists from state media with a way to escape from government propaganda and to present alternative ideas; or it can help hide the fact that the newsroom is only composed of one or two individuals (Tcheuyap 2014). The constraints of the media market have also contributed to the emergence of other types of media “professionals”: the “gomboist” (brown envelope or “gombo taker”), who lives on bribes because of his/her poor or non-existent salary (Ndangam 2006, 2009); the “affairiste” (Adjovi 2003) who engages in business relations with politicians or businessmen, acting as their mouthpiece and publishing favorable news content that will secure benefits for their media outlet; the “sensationalist” (Wittmann 2006) who bows to commercial imperatives and the need to attract a popular audience in a competitive environment. The “just for now” journalist also reflects the precarity of working conditions: it means there is a steady turnover of personnel within commercial media, but it also influences that journalist’s relationship with political and business interests, since being hired as a company’s “communications officer” may often be his or her ultimate intention. The multiplicity of community radios has also created thousands of rural “community” news makers, who follow the issues facing their communities, very often at the same time as their regular jobs as schoolteachers or local NGO staff members. A number of studies have analyzed professional attitudes, beliefs, and practices in various French-speaking Sub-Saharan African countries. These studies are largely national or local. Of note are studies by Thierry Perret (2005a, b) on Malian journalists, Emmanuel Adjovi (2002) in Benin, and Thomas Atenga (2014) on journalists from Cameroon. Mor Faye (2008) has produced a study comparing the situation in Senegal, Togo and Benin, while Marie Fierens (2017) has compared journalists from the DR Congo and Côte d’Ivoire. Lassané Yameogo (2016) has analyzed practices and strategies of journalists from state media in Burkina Faso and Pierre N’Sana (2019) has compared the way news professionals 6 These same international partners are, in some cases, powerless to defend the African journalists’ rights and physical integrity, if they are threatened because of the information they have disclosed.
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work at different geographical levels (local, national, international) and in different types of radio stations while covering the conflict in Eastern DRC. N’Sana has identified 10 different “forms of journalism” practiced by these media professionals in a war context. These studies are fundamentally qualitative and based on interviews, and examine both the function of journalists in these various countries and how they perceive their role. They show that journalists are a product of their milieu and that journalistic cultures vary between groups. But also, that there is always a gap between the journalists’ representations of their job (based on their own assertions) and their practice. This gap has been noted by researchers who have crossed-checked interviews with content analysis of these journalists’ actual output (Elongo Lukulunga 2011; N’Sana 2019). Several studies address the culture and environment which has spawned the institutionalized practice of news that is paid for by sources.7 They look at formal and informal interactions that characterize what Emmanuel Adjovi (2002) calls “market journalism” or what Rigobert Munkeni (2009) labels “allocation of resources” which is tied not only to low salaries, but also to high levels of institutional corruption in some countries, and social pressures that make such practices more or less acceptable. Thierry Perret sees these practices as part of a communal culture of “gift and reciprocity”8 in which “favors and gifts are powerful traditional regulators”, and where “corruption, if indeed it is corruption, is therefore very hard to qualify as such” (Perret 2005a, 194–195). The Burkinabè scholar Serge Théophile Balima has argued that journalism is not “universal” (2006, 196). He wrote that “journalism is inextricably linked to the contours and weight of the sociocultural context” in Africa like elsewhere. He believes, in the context of his native Burkina Faso, that “types of journalism which communicate and accompany official activities” are normally more acceptable by government and by public alike, than “news-type journalism” which is “perceived negatively as akin to insurrection or opposition”. Such a perception is certainly somewhat outdated, and patterns of media consumption, described later, 7 The practice is also widespread in English-speaking Africa and goes by the euphemisms “brown-envelope journalism,” “greasing palms,” or “cocktail journalism” (Lodamo and Skjerdal 2009, 134–154). See also Chapter 3. 8 Referring to Marcel Mauss’ Essai sur le don, 1925. See English translation of Mauss’s 1925 essay: Mauss, Marcel: The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchanges in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge, 2002.
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in Chapter 6, show clearly that audiences are, in fact, eager to access independent news and investigative journalism and admire those journalists who attempt to produce fact-checked and verified news, or who monitor governments and denounce abuses (Frère 2015b). Now more than ever, journalism in French-speaking Africa is clearly a profession with multiple identities.
2
A Formalized Professional Code of Ethics
Though professional representations and practice may vary and evolve differently depending on context, frames of reference are similar, because remarkably comparable new codes of ethics have been adopted across Francophone Africa in recent years.9 Under colonization, such ethical codes never appeared necessary, as organized local journalists’ guilds did not exist as such. After independence, journalists were mainly civil servants working in the state media, and therefore had no need for any formalized ethical code other than their allegiance to the state. If a formalized ethical code existed at all, as in Côte d’Ivoire for instance, it was completely out of step with prevailing practice, much like the legislation governing the press that officially proclaimed a policy of free expression. However, with democratization and the liberalization of the press, new professional models emerged that brought about the adoption of new formalized principles to help guide the implementation of press freedom, guarantee professionalism, and protect the public interest. Codes of conduct were adopted in Burkina Faso in 1991, in Burundi in 1993, in Côte d’Ivoire in 1995, and more recently in the DRC in 2004 and Rwanda in 2005. Now, all Francophone African states have adopted texts outlining the fundamentals of journalism: truthfulness, responsibility, independence, honesty, respect for human dignity, and, in some cases, professional solidarity. Some codes may also address matters such as professional confidentiality; plagiarism; cross-checking and verifying sources; neutrality and balance; separating advertising and news content; refusing payment, gifts, or other benefits offered by event organizers; addressing serious omissions, etc.
9 In French, these codes are generally called, “codes de déontologie”: “deontology” refers to written principles on which the profession has agreed, while “ethics” (“éthique”) refers to the personal conscience of each journalist (Grevisse 2010).
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Besides these formal codes of ethics, journalists say they may refer to their personal conscience for sometimes breaching these rules and even the law, in order to access or disseminate information. Especially in French-speaking African countries dealing with war or terrorism, journalists know that the dissemination of news by the media may have a profound impact and they must therefore consider the short- and long-term consequences when rendering their version of the facts. 2.1
General Principles and Local Variances
Every country and every organization can adapt its code of conduct to its own history and to the specific concerns of its own professionals. In Burundi, Rwanda, and the DRC, three countries where media fanned the flames of hatred during war, ethics codes adopted following these crises allude to this traumatic past (Frère 2015a). In Rwanda, for example, the code adopted in 2005 (and amended in 2011) proclaimed in its preface: “Drawing lessons from a deplorable press that was shamelessly partisan and incited hate that resulted in the 1994 genocide, the media community resolves to adopt, promote and conform to principles put in place to build a strong, independent, dynamic, and responsible press”. The three codes include clearly their “refusal to incite hatred” (art. 2 Burundi), admonish journalists to “stop inciting violence in any shape or form, including hate, tension, and animosity based on race or religion” (art. 13 Rwanda), and to “ban (…) hate speech (religious, ethnic, tribal, regional or racial) and all promotion of negative values” (art. 5 DRC). However, most codes of conduct adopted by French-speaking African countries over the last 20 years have been predominantly inspired by international models with little accounting for local context. These are rigid in nature and rarely take into account technical and social change: for example, the Internet has caused problems that are impossible to address with existing codes, and what is acceptable morally varies from one era and region to another. Furthermore, a code copied from another country and unsuited to the local context will remain inoperative because, in any case, such codes are not legally binding and rely on journalists’ personal commitments: therefore, they need to make sense for those who have to put them into practice. For example, in Côte d’Ivoire in 1993, media professionals adopted a code of conduct in which article 9 recommended journalists “abstain from all attacks on social morals that could
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incite tribalism, xenophobia, revolution, and criminality…”.10 However, this principle did nothing to prevent several newspapers publishing xenophobic content and hate speech, to the extent that the UN Security Council (in 2004) pointed to the “hate media” of Côte d’Ivoire in its Resolution 157211 (Sangare 2017; Moussa 2012). In most Francophone African states, written codes, often promoted by foreign donors and partners, do not accurately reflect the problems of the media sector and consequently result in a wide gap between established theoretical norms and the practices accepted within the profession. 2.2
Debates Around an African Set of Ethics
The issue of adopting a code of ethics consistent with local practices has reanimated debate over the last 30 years of the possibility, or even the necessity, of “Africanizing” a journalism code of ethics. Some have criticized the existence of a Western bias in international codes of conduct and the national versions inspired by them. The Zambian professor Francis Kasoma (1996) put forth the notion of “Afriethics,” and a code of conduct that might be adapted to African values. According to him, journalists in Africa are beholden to the community, and the interests of this community are more important than the personal moral considerations of media professionals. He argues that journalism as it is practiced today is overly inspired by Western models at the expense of local ones. Kasoma’s perspective is rooted in a strong current of cultural relativism (Banda 2009) and African cultural exceptionalism that resurfaced in the 1990s. Similarly in South Africa, the concept of Ubuntu (derived from Zulu and Xhosa) reflects the fact that a person is an individual because of the existence of the group: “I am because we are”. This position defines an African vision of the world and flies in the face of the Western individualist perspective (Christians 2010; Blankenberg 1999). It would therefore imply another set of ethics on the part of journalists. 10 This code was updated in 2012, but article 9 remained unchanged. 11 This resolution condemned the violence in Cote d’Ivoire at the time and called
for an arms embargo. Article 6 demanded that “the Ivoirian authorities stop all radio and television broadcasting inciting hatred, intolerance and violence, requests UNOCI to strengthen its monitoring role in this regard, and urges the Government of Côte d’Ivoire and the Forces nouvelles to take all necessary measures to ensure the security and the safety of civilian persons, including foreign nationals and their property…etc.” http:// unscr.com/en/resolutions/1572.
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The debate about the “Africanization” of journalism ethics has not been widespread in Francophone academia, but it has been raised and debated within the profession. In Benin, for example, the director of Capp FM—a radio station that broadcasts a local-language press review with a wide audience (serving mainly as an opinion mouthpiece for its host Dah Houawé), used this argument in a 2004 conference: in defending his star host’s habits of commenting on and “completing” the news, more than summarizing it, he invoked the argument that the imported journalism code of conduct (and the issue of “truthfulness”) was relevant only for French-language media, and irrelevant for news in local African languages, which was different and called for a distinct set of rules. There was wholesale disagreement between those who considered the journalism code of conduct to be universal and those who asserted that it called for nuanced adaptability. In practice, journalists are influenced as much, if not more, by the social spheres to which they belong as by professional codes of conduct. Francis Nyamnjoh (2005) has demonstrated that in Cameroon members of the press adhere to ethnic groups and community and will not call into question a “member of his village” so as not to jeopardize group solidarity. Cultural codes also profoundly affect journalistic practice in Burkina Faso, where newcomers to the field will avoid investigating a “big brother” or an elder. Conversely, there is a tradition called parenté à plaisanterie, “joking kinships” (Hagberg 2006).12 This cultural institution is practiced at times by journalists (mainly in the satirical media) to mock a politician or public figure who belongs to his “joking kinship” community. Linguistic convention also varies between regions, sometimes limiting the terms used by journalists to describe certain people or events. In Rwanda, where vocabulary is highly charged since the genocide, the Media High Council recommends the expression, “jenocide yakowere Abatutsi muri 1994” (“genocide committed against the Tutsis in 1994”) and bans, “intambara yo muri 1994” (“the war of 1994”). It also prohibits the use of the expression, “abwirwa benshi akumva beneyo”
12 “Joking kinships” is a social practice in West Africa that allows family members (respecting a strict pecking order) or ethnic “cousins” to joke at each other’s expense or insult one another, even in public. This cultural institution (which has piqued the interest of anthropologists) is practiced at times by journalists, calling into question the universality of a journalism code of ethics.
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(“those who have ears let them hear!”), which may sound innocent enough, but in fact was used as a rallying cry for the killers by the RTLM radio station (Uwimana et al. 2011). This raises the question of whether the historical and cultural specificities of each country or community warrant a different approach to freedom of speech. This question came to the fore following the attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015 when a host of African journalists decided not to publish the problematic caricatures in the face of violent “anti-Charlie” demonstrations in Niger, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal. In Dakar, President Macky Sall, who, just a few days earlier, had marched with French president François Hollande against terrorism on January 12, 2015, promptly prohibited the follow-up issue of Charlie Hebdo from being distributed in Senegal. This issue is obviously delicate; if one is to recognize social diversity and sensitivities, African cultural relativism and exceptionalism can also, as we saw earlier, lead to intolerance, the legitimization of oppression, or excessive political correctness (Fourie 2007). Have not African tradition and culture been invoked in the past to justify practices of political control and authoritarianism? In a globalized world where media content is disseminated well beyond its original target audience, divergent perspectives, and intercultural misunderstandings are likely inevitable. 2.3
Contextualized Personal Ethics
Journalists’ personal ethics and professional conscience are also contextualized by society and culture. “Truthfulness,” for example, is a fundamental criterion of good journalism in Western countries, suffused by Christian morals where lying is a sin. The necessity to “speak the truth and nothing but the truth” may not be as entrenched in regions where a lie does not necessarily transgress morality, or might take a back seat to another, more important value. As one Burkinabè journalist asked during a training session, “Why not lie, or omit an inconvenient truth if we preserve the peace between two communities by doing so?” Many journalists believe that during a political or security crisis, the professional reflex should be adapted to the possible impact of the news reported. When Innocent Muhozi was criticized for controlling the news too severely as head of the Radio Télévision nationale du Burundi (RTNB) during the war there, he responded by invoking the right of “preventative censorship”. In response to the arrival of some foreign
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trainers in “peace-journalism”, he questioned the appropriateness of journalists from countries at peace giving advice on working in situations of conflict. He concluded by saying, “African journalists, who have to face wartime dilemmas on a daily basis, are in fact better prepared than their Northern colleagues who no longer have the need to question their professional practices because, when they do cover a conflict, it is far from home and the fallout from their reporting does not directly affect their audience or their loved ones” (Institut Panos Paris 2004). In such cases, self-censorship might in fact serve a “social responsibility” in crisis zones—an issue that was suddenly seen from a different perspective by Western journalists when their own countries started to face domestic terrorism. The Congolese researcher Vicky Elongo Lukulunga also argues for the need to nuance the professional code of conduct of reporters in Kinshasa when facing crises. Though Article 7 of the Congolese code of ethics and conduct urges journalists “to refuse any sort of gift from sources… nor any benefits leading to the publication, distortion or suppression of information”, the practice of “coupage” is widespread. According to Elongo Lukulunga (2011), journalism practices in a country in crisis should not be judged through the lens of a morality framed by a professional code of ethics because the context implies that other values are more relevant. These journalistic practices are anything but “amoral,” in fact, the daily practice among journalists in the DRC is founded on an entirely different set of values (unwritten but known to all). Among these values are “solidarity” with their peers (within “plates-bandes ”)13 and the honor of the head of the family (who must be able, at the end of each day, to put food on the table). This is what Elongo Lukulunga calls a “système médiatique finalisé” that is, one that is based on media that have other priorities than offering its audience honest, rigorous, and complete information, but which have goals that are equally coherent and dovetail with social needs. And it is this system that establishes the limits of what can and cannot be reported.
13 Among journalists in Kinshasa, “plates-bandes ” are groups of four or five journalists
who fill in for each other when covering an event that would normally be remunerated. Each member of the group attends a different event, and each produces a report for all of the media outlets their colleagues in the plates-bandes represent, which allows each of them to be paid for the reporting without necessarily having been present. This practice is viewed positively by journalists and is emblematic of professional solidarity.
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And finally, ethics must also be reconsidered, given the African context which is generally characterized by lowered standards and weak institutions. Once again, the media system reflects the political system. Can the values (or morality) of a sector be applied in a context where order is constantly battered and emptied of meaning? If institutions (including those responsible for social order) do not function as they should in a democratic context; if law and justice are manipulated by the state, can an ethics of journalism be anything but a facade? The crisis facing many African states leaves in its wake increasing corruption in education, healthcare and in other sectors that impact fundamental human rights. The journalist cannot hope to be a beacon of integrity in an environment where educators, judges, customs officials and doctors are corrupt. 2.4
The Cost of a Professional Code of Ethics
Much of the disparity between the journalism code of conduct in Francophone Africa and actual professional practice can be explained not by the distinct values of the region or its history, but simply because of journalists’ financial precarity. Though most codes of conduct clearly proscribe journalists from accepting payment from sources, most participate in “coupage,” or take “gombo,” because they need to work, and their publishers do not have the budget to pay their travel costs or sometimes even their salary. To understand these practices, a cultural analysis is less relevant than economic factors. The question arises as to whether professional integrity, which is the keystone of a code of conduct, comes at too high a cost for the media sector of some African countries. Is there a salary minimum below which a journalist cannot resist corruption? These questions have been debated extensively during seminars and training sessions organized by international partners in an attempt to put an end to brown-envelope journalism and its spinoffs. On one side are those who argue that integrity is a fundamental character trait and that salary is not a factor in the choices a journalist should make with respect to corrupt practices; and on the other side are those who link corruption to the poverty that persists in the sector. In reality, there does exist a salary level above which media managers can demand their journalists refuse per diems and other forms of payment. In the DRC, for example, UN-financed Radio Okapi boasts a team of honest and rigorous journalists who earn around 1000 USD/month
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while their colleagues in the private sector earn a maximum of only 50 USD/month.14 If this level of salary is what it takes for impartial journalism that respects an ethical code of conduct, can the Congolese market ever bear this cost to sustain a professional media on its own? Radio Okapi is financed by the international community, and when international support and the UN peacekeeping mission in the country ends, the 10 million USD annual budget will almost certainly not be matched fully by the local private media sector (Frère 2014). Does this mean that the price to pay to assure a professional and socially responsible media in the DRC (and its only public service media) is too high for the Congolese themselves and requires foreign investment? Similarly, in other countries in crisis, such as Burundi and the Central African Republic, media that have managed to make an impact by virtue of their balance and impartiality are those enjoying international support—this support makes decent wages possible.
3
Press Councils: The Challenges of Self-Regulation
To keep pace with other liberalized media landscapes, journalists in French-speaking Africa did not merely adopt codes of conduct, they also established self-regulatory bodies, generally called press councils (“conseils de presse”), to ensure these codes were upheld.15 The first one to be established, OLPED (Observatoire de la liberté de la presse, l’éthique et la déontologie), was created in 1995 in Côte d’Ivoire and played a pioneering role. It was established by the journalists’ union (UNJCI) in response to concerns that “Ivoirian nationalism” (known as “idéologie de l’ivoirité”) could lead the media to disseminate genocidal propaganda much like it did in Rwanda. Ivorian journalists told themselves: “Should this country ever go up in flames, let it not be said that it was the fault of journalists” (Dan Moussa 2004). Composed of six representatives from the journalists’ union, five media directors, and two civilians—all volunteers—OLPED started to identify breaches of codes 14 Figures from 2015. 15 There are other self-regulating mechanisms, both inside and outside the newsroom,
that are very well described in Claude-Jean Bertrand’s work (1997). However, because these instruments are not well developed or are quasi-nonexistent in Francophone Africa, we will limit ourselves to describing only organized self-regulation.
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of conduct by written or broadcast media, whether public or private and to disseminate its rulings via the media. Due to the tense political context, before and during the war, OLPED paid particular attention to slander, incitement to revolt or violence, incitement to xenophobia, incitement to religious fanaticism, unbalanced news writing, and violation of professional confraternity. 3.1
The Expansion of Self-Regulating Bodies
Bodies similar to OLPED have sprung up throughout Francophone Africa.16 They call themselves tribunal des pairs or “peer tribunals” (Aw 2013), and in most cases are comprised of journalists, media industry bosses, and the representatives of the public (by way of consumer or human rights watchdogs, magistrates, etc.). Their penalties are purely advisory (Duplat 1999). They monitor the content of media, receive and address any public complaints, and publicize any violations. Though their penalties are not binding and have no legal weight, they still constitute an alternative to a potentially long and costly judicial process. Some of these bodies also attempt to influence the organization that grants press cards (also known as press passes), where they exist. So they have the power, where necessary, to confiscate a press pass from journalists who repeatedly produce unethical material. Some press councils also publish reports on developments in the media; make journalists and the public aware of their respective rights and obligations; and defend and promote free speech, media quality and the right to be informed. In some rare cases (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire), their reports and press releases have been factored in by the state when deciding which commercial media outlets should receive public funding, to support those that adhere to professional codes of ethics. These self-regulatory councils, then, are independent volunteer entities that rely on the goodwill of their members. Without this consensus and legitimacy in the eyes of their stakeholders, they have no function (Grevisse 1998; Bernier 1998; Charon 2000). Press councils have had staunch support from international partners in French-speaking Africa; indeed, in several cases, these self-regulatory 16 Press councils also exist in Anglophone Africa, often with significantly superior means at their disposal. Once again, South Africa has been the focus of most studies on selfregulatory bodies. See, for example, Duncan (2014) and Berger (2010).
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bodies have been initiated and organized by international donors, particularly in the lead-up to elections. This makes sense given that in countries where tensions tend to ramp up during elections, or where media serve as a mouthpiece for political parties who can all too often exploit regional and ethnic divisions to gain support, the risk of a debacle is high. Such bodies have been seen as helping to mitigate risks during these volatile periods (HAAC 2011) (Table 1). 3.2
The Failure of Self-Regulation
Twenty years after the founding of the first African press councils, the effectiveness of self-regulation leaves much to be desired (Hennecken 2010). There have been few cases where self-regulation has prevented serious media excesses, and overall, press councils are barely able to operate properly. Above all, self-regulating bodies face organizational difficulties. For one, members are volunteers and not always available to participate in long meetings sifting through and analyzing media content. Another concern is the question of legitimacy of council members and who should be the president of such bodies. In Burkina Faso and Burundi, for example, the fact that the presidents of the respective monitoring agencies (ONAP and OPB) had long been media owners was widely criticized by colleagues who maintained that they were playing judge and jury. In Benin, the reputation of ODEM suffered for several years under the leadership of publishers of ill repute; not the most qualified to judge the professionalism of their colleagues. And finally, the competence of members is sometimes lacking. Even though evaluation mechanisms may be rudimentary, it is important for self-regulating bodies to have a solid grasp of the constraints within which the profession is carried out, not to mention its legal and regulatory framework. On top of these difficulties, financial and material impediments also apply. Institutionalized self-regulation has a cost, even when, like in the majority of countries in Francophone Africa, the body has neither headquarters nor personnel, such as for OPB in Burundi and ONAP in Burkina Faso. The media are expected to contribute financially to maintain these bodies, but their own weak finances precludes even the smallest of regular financial contributions. In some instances, Côte d’Ivoire among them, the state has offered financial support to these fledgling bodies, but many journalists are suspicious of accepting money from state coffers for
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Self-regulating bodies in Francophone Africa
Country
Self-regulating body
Acronym
Year founded
Benin
Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias Observatoire national de la presse Observatoire de la presse burundaise Observatoire camerounais de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias Observatoire des médias centrafricains Observatoire congolais des médias Observatoire des médias congolais Observatoire de la liberté de la presse, de l’éthique et de la déontologie Observatoire gabonais des médias Observatoire guinéen de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique de la presse Conseil pour le respect de l’éthique et de la déontologie Observatoire nigérien indépendant des médias Rwanda Media Ethics Commission Rwanda Media Commission Conseil pour le respect de l’éthique et de la déontologie
ODEM
1998
ONAP
2000
OPB
2004
OCADEM
2011
OMCA
2005
OCM
2002
OMEC
2004
OLPED
1995
OGAM
2007
OGUIDEM
2001
ODEP
2000
CRED
2001
ONIMED
2010
RMEC
2008
RMC CRED
2013 1999
Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon
Central African Republic Congo Congo (DRC) Côte d’Ivoire
Gabon Guinea
Mali
Mauritania
Niger Rwanda
Senegal
(continued)
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Table 1 Country
Chad
Togo
(continued) Self-regulating body
Acronym
Year founded
Comité pour l’observation des règles d’éthique et de déontologie Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias du Tchad Observatoire Togolais des Médias
CORED
2009
ODEMET
2004
OTM
1999
the support of a self-regulatory body whose stated goal is to maintain a separation between media and state. As is often the case, the financial slack is taken up by foreign aid agencies, who have, in fact, often facilitated the creation of these self-regulatory bodies and guaranteed their viability. This aid has the shortcoming of often being a one-time grant and being directed towards the core interests of the funders themselves: money may be allocated for the duration of one election cycle or to hold a seminar on a theme of their choice, but rarely for long-term core costs. In light of unending financial shortfalls, some monitoring bodies have generated revenue by selling publications, organizing workshops, and leasing their office space, but an obsession with financial returns distracts from their primary goal. A third problem lies in the uneasy place these self-regulating bodies occupy in the media landscape: most councils are either not well known or seen in a bad light by the media, the public and government regulators. In countries where the profession is polarized along political or communal lines, it can be difficult to establish consensus within press councils. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, the presence of publishers with antagonistic viewpoints in the OLPED stymied its capacity to act during the political crisis of 2010–2011. As far as the public is concerned (whose interests self-regulatory bodies are meant to defend), the vast majority have no idea such agencies exist, how they function or why. In many countries, public complaints are few and the agency must act of its own volition. A further factor is the uneasy relationship between press councils and official regulatory agencies. In Benin and Côte d’Ivoire there have been instances where the monitoring body and the public regulatory agency
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have ruled differently on cases submitted to both organizations. The question arises: Who is best positioned to call journalists to order, journalists themselves or individuals outside the profession? In a context where regulatory bodies are viewed as control mechanisms for the powers-thatbe, attempts at sharing regulatory duties are rare—exceptions like the 2006 and 2011 elections in the DRC notwithstanding (Frère 2009). A fourth factor impeding the consolidation of self-regulation in Africa relates to a trend for such support among international donors. Many such projects have been conceived in the Global North by specialized NGOs but have often met with failure in the South. Despite the availability of funding, self-regulating bodies have often failed to materialize because the initiatives did not take into consideration the need for shared objectives, mutually agreed principles and relevance to local needs and constraints. And finally, there remains the issue of the weak impact of press council decisions. Because penalties are purely advisory and not legally binding, there are no guarantees that the journalists found guilty of flagrant abuses will not reoffend. The history of OLPED in Côte d’Ivoire (though initially a pioneer in the field) sadly reflects this reality, as it was not able to stop hate speech and xenophobia spread by the media, especially after the start of the war in 2002. If journalists as a whole are well known not to handle criticism well, in Africa this tendency is exacerbated by cultural factors that make selfregulating bodies less likely to succeed. During a debate in Mauritania, for example, journalists emphasized that being accused publicly of having erred constituted an affront to personal honor with consequences far worse than for lying or hiding the truth. A public admission of guilt does not necessarily reestablish harmony; quite the contrary, it may serve to further destabilize social cohesion. Western culture fails to recognize that open debate and public discussion are not always the best way to handle disagreement in other cultures where discrete negotiation may be better than having someone lose face. But, without a doubt, the main challenge facing African self-regulating bodies is the practice of “brown-envelope journalism”. All journalism codes prohibit receiving payment for covering events, interviewing political figures or for publishing news. But press councils do not know how to handle these customary practices except through seminars and conferences. Self-regulation only makes sense where the fundamental values that frame journalistic practice remain integrity, impartiality, the search
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for truth, and serving the public interest: but in an “adapted” system where the act of informing serves other goals and rests on another implicit reference framework, it has no chance to take root.
4 The Flourishing of Professional Organizations In addition to the adoption of codes of conduct and the establishment of self-regulating agencies, journalistic identity has also been constructed through the creation of corporate groups and associations. Before 1990 journalists’ professional groupings were generally limited to only one association of civil servants organized, like all other collective bodies, around the single ruling party. Over the last 20 years, new associations have emerged in the wake of liberalization: journalist unions of the commercial press (like the UJPB in Benin), editor organizations of the private press (like the SEP in Burkina Faso), organizations to defend press freedom (like Journalist en Danger in the DRC), and industry associations (sports journalists, women communicators, environmental journalists, etc.). Established professional associations opened their doors to journalists from commercial media, but also came into conflict with the new organizations at times (Linard 1998). In West Africa, a regional association, the Union des journalistes d’Afrique de l’Ouest (UJAO-WAJA), was launched in 1986 and was subsidized for years by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). No similar institution exists in Central Africa although Organisation des médias d’Afrique centrale (OMAC) was created in 2002 but did not last. Likewise an association of commercial newspaper editors (UEPAC) from mostly Cameroon and Chad existed for a short time, then folded. Journalists’ groups have grown in parallel with many other civil society organizations across Francophone Africa over the last 25 years—be they women’s groups, farmers’ associations, human rights groups, and so on. For journalists, such groups and unions have helped them develop and create solidarity and driven collective demands aimed at improving their status, protecting their rights, and defending their interests. In Burundi, for example, the Union burundaise des journalistes (UBJ) (which replaced the Association burundaise des journalistes—ABJ—in 1990) staged regular protests calling not only for changes to the overly constraining press laws adopted, but also for the release of jailed journalists, such as Hassan Ruvakuki in 2012 and Bob Rugurika in 2015.
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Professional solidarity is essential wherever journalists are harassed or threatened. A connection to international networks, which has been facilitated by the Internet and mobile phones, is equally important in the effort to extend the reach of local initiatives. Some of these associations have evolved into labor unions (see Chapter 6 in Sect. 2) able to negotiate agreements that protect the status of media workers. Others are responsible for the allocation of press passes, like the Union nationale de la presse congolaise (UNPC), an umbrella organization comprising several dozen professional associations in the DRC. Media managers and editors have also formed their own associations and have been able to add their weight to counter the state’s attempts to control independent media. These groups have been particularly favored by foreign donors wishing to support the independent commercial sector, as a whole, without favoring one or other media outlet. 4.1
A Unique Type of Organization: “Maisons de la Presse” or Press Centers
Professional groups have given rise to a structure that has become widespread in Francophone Africa: “maisons de la presse” (or press centers). Whereas some already existed in some countries during the single-party era, they consisted of government institutions with no independence (Perrin 2001). Modern “maisons de la presse” are places to meet, stay informed, and get training for journalists from both written and broadcast media; public and commercial. Some were launched with the help of journalism associations (Togo, Burkina Faso), while others were established with the support of foreign partners like Unesco, which was the driving force behind “maisons de la presse” in Rwanda and Burundi in 1997 to promote media for peace-building in the Great Lakes region. Press centers play an important role in continuing education, especially in helping print journalists keep abreast of digital technology, while also providing small publications with office space and equipment. Most got off the ground with the help of international donor funding,17 with the 17 The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) helped establish the first maison de la presse in West Africa (in Accra), followed by the Centre national de Presse in Burkina Faso. The Institut Panos Paris financed the start of the Maison de la Presse in Mali. The project in Lomé was supported by the French mission.
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goal of becoming self-supporting by offering income-generating activities like space rental, organization of press conferences, training, secretarial services, internet cafés, and even a snack bar. In Congo-Brazzaville, the Centre de ressources pour la presse (CRP) makes computer equipment and a databank of articles and photos available to journalists, from both African and European publications. Despite their efforts, most press centers remain dependent on foreign aid. The press center in Mali, which receives an annual subsidy of 30 million F.CFA (45,700 e) deducted from state assistance to commercial media, created a website to serve as a meeting place for local media, as well as a decentralized network of information with five collection and dissemination centers in the provinces. In Burkina Faso, the Centre national de Presse stood out with its information campaign in the wake of the assassination of one of its founding members, the journalist Norbert Zongo. As for Burundi’s maison de la presse, it serves as a meeting place for journalists and draws a variety of professional associations by offering classrooms and an Internet café, and houses a number of group projects like OMAC’s Centre de monitoring des médias (MOMO), the Centre de formation des professionnels des médias (CFM) and the Centre de ressources audiovisuelles (CERA). 4.2
Obstacles Facing Professional Associations
Many journalists’ professional associations face numerous obstacles that hamper their effectiveness and sustainability, as well as their possible contribution to the consolidation and professionalization of the media sector. These difficulties mirror those facing all “civil society” associations, as a rule.18 18 The notion of “civil society” is fiercely debated in African studies. While they are considered a great success by funding agencies, international development partners, and local actors, political scientists judge the concept to be vague, ambiguous and a “catch-all” phrase. The emergence and consolidation of “civil society” is particularly difficult in Africa because of the long-standing interweaving of the state and society (the result of the many decades of authoritarianism) that leaves little room for the deployment of intermediate independent representative structures. And yet, they do indeed exist, though at times only in the form of a project or an ideal (Pirotte and Poncelet 2003). African “civil society” includes all manner of structural types and statuses (associations, NGOs, mutual societies etc.), and few countries offer legislation specific to each type of group. More recently, some countries have tried to clarify the procedures for creating and registering these different groups; an effort often met with hostility in the sector.
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The first obstacle lies in the financial precarity of journalists, which makes it difficult if not impossible to count on the voluntary participation of members. When journalists struggle on a daily basis to make ends meet, professional associations only work when workers can be paid. This is only possible by and large with the help of foreign funding because membership dues, which are rarely paid, are insufficient to cover costs. Another concern is the link these associations often have with a particular media celebrity. As can be expected, these figureheads are often very busy fulfilling their other media obligations and have little time to devote to a professional association. Furthermore, if the star member decides to leave the association, it may die because it’s very raison d’être is inextricably entwined with one person. A third problem relates to the difficulty in obtaining a consensus (as with the press councils) because of the partisan nature of media. “Belonging” to a community is very difficult in a context where members are constantly torn between their professional identity and their political affiliation. Many African journalists suffer from what Marie Fierens (2017) describes as a “dual identity”: journalist and political citizen. This situation casts a long shadow on both media business associations as well as organizations of journalists in the private and public sectors who do not share the same concerns. Internal democracy is difficult to establish in associations that are new, frail, and precarious. Most associations do not uphold their own statutes, fail to hold AGMs, and do not meet registration renewal deadlines. Association presidents stay in post seemingly forever, yet their members are the first to criticize heads of state who try to engineer a third mandate or lifetime status for themselves. In Burkina Faso in 2014, for example, the two main professional associations, the SYNATIC and the AJB, were on the front lines battling Blaise Compaoré’s efforts to extend his presidency after 27 years in power, while their own presidents had been in power 27 and 24 years, respectively. Finally, the fragmentation of journalists’ organizations is another factor contributing to their fragility. The many instances and varieties of development funding (from ad hoc aid to long-term structural aid) are also partly to blame for the exponential growth in the number of associations. In 2013, the city of Kinshasa was home to more than 20 journalists’ groups organized around different themes such as HIV/AIDS, economics, human rights and various other newsworthy causes. Many of them had received or were set up to attract, funding from international
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agencies such as WHO, FAO, Red Cross, etc. Whether or not such international funders help or hinder the media remains unexamined in such circumstances, since journalists are loath to bite the hand that feeds them.
5
Journalist Training in French-Speaking Africa
Training is a fundamental element in the construction of professional identities. Historically, Francophone African journalists were largely trained in France and Belgium until the creation of a few schools on the continent in the 1970s. Since the mid-1990s, the number of journalism training schools has exploded with the scramble to fill new employment opportunities created in the media sector. Continuing education in the form of thematic workshops has also blossomed. And yet, the quality of training of African journalists has often been criticized and the many instances of professional misconduct have, for some, been an indication of inadequate training. The training of journalists in fact faces a number of challenges. 5.1
A Growing Number of Training Possibilities
Before liberalization, two types of training were available to journalists in Francophone Africa. The first were regional advanced vocational training schools that served to train several generations of African journalists since the 1970s and included the Centre d’études des sciences et techniques de l’information-CESTI in Dakar, ESIJY (now the Ecole supérieure des sciences et techniques de l’information, ESSTIC) in Yaoundé, and ISTI (now IFASIC, Institut facultaire des Sciences de l’information et de la communication) in Kinshasa. They were largely funded by international agencies (France, Canada, Switzerland, Unesco, etc.) and saw a decline as structural aid dried up in the early 1990s. The second type were national professional schools that were directly tied to ministries of information or communication and were responsible for the professional development of state media journalists, their main role being to give them the necessary diplomas for promotion within the civil service. These included the Institut de formation aux techniques de l’information et de la communication (IFTIC) in Niamey, the Centre de formation professionnelle de l’information (CFPI) in Ouagadougou, the Centre de formation professionnelle of CRTV in Cameroon, and the ICA (formerly the SEVOZA) in the DRC. The goal of these institutions was to provide personnel for
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state media, more “soldiers of development” or propaganda agents than journalists. The political, economic, and media liberalization of the early 1990s led to the transformation of higher education. Established journalism schools were compelled to adapt to the changing context that included competition from public universities, many of which began offering journalism training within their communication faculties. While some universities had been offering degrees in communications for some time (Abidjan and Brazzaville), a journalism specialty is relatively recent: 1992 at the University of Ouagadougou, 1998 at the University of Kinshasa, 2002 at the University of N’Djamena, 2008 at the National University of Burundi. Highly prized by young high school graduates (often fascinated by the promise of communications and public relations), these programs found themselves criticized for being too theoretical and not training graduates adapted to the job market. But the increased competition was largely due to the liberalization of higher education that saw the end of the monopolies of the grandes écoles and public universities. Many private institutions now offer training in communications and journalism. While some can claim to be serious and specialists in the field of communications (for example, the ISSIC, which is tied to the Sud-Communication group in Dakar), most are improvised and offer journalism education alongside “similar” disciplines: computer sciences, marketing, management, public relations, etc.. Tuition fees (most of which are quite high) in the private education sector have not necessarily lead to better results than in public institutions, in terms of preparing young people for a career in journalism. This is mainly because of a lack of teaching materials and competent instructors. Overseas training continues to appeal to journalists, but far fewer opportunities exist now in European universities at the undergraduate and graduate levels: bilateral aid now tends to cover advanced study bursaries only for “useful” subjects like medicine and agronomy. Furthermore, restrictive visa policies in Europe have made it increasingly difficult for African students of journalism to enroll there, even if they can pay their way. Some carefully selected students are allowed to intern on a shortterm basis at the RFI (by way of the Académie France Médias Monde) or at the DW-Akademie. Denominational radio broadcasting is a sector unto itself with specific opportunities. The American Protestant organization, Transworld Radio, created training centers in Abidjan and Nairobi where radio hosts can
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take part in specialized training sessions. Catholic radio stations, especially those affiliated with the Radio Maria network, can send their personnel to Lyon in France for training at the CREC (Centre de recherche et d’éducation en communication). However, the majority of those employed today in the commercial media sector in Africa have followed none of these paths. At best, they may have attended one of several internships or seminars organized by international aid agencies over the last 25 years. A large number of ad hoc, often redundant, short-term educational initiatives have been created to introduce journalists to codes of conduct, information and communication technology (ICTs), and investigative journalism, or to train editors to become business managers. One subject du jour has followed another on the continent: from “election journalism” “post-conflict journalism”, “environmental journalism” to “cultural journalism”, with mixed results (Frère 2011). 5.2
A Training Sector in Crisis
Most African journalists who have followed a specialized curriculum have done so mainly at universities or in public or private colleges. Like the rest of the advanced studies sector, these courses have major shortcomings (Berger and Matras 2008): insufficient teaching resources in the face of the sharp increase in numbers of students; underpaid and unmotivated instructors; a dearth of qualified teaching personnel; and a gap between theory and practice. The lack of equipment makes practical learning impossible. At the IFASIC in Kinshasa, for example, copy and video editing and have been taught in theoretical classes because of the lack of computers. At the ISTC in Abidjan, Internet courses have been given without online access. And instructors are hamstrung by precarity: in many countries (DRC, Burkina Faso, Niger, etc.), instructors give courses in several institutions concurrently, to make ends meet, or have other jobs, ranging from consulting to real estate and even car rental. Because media is one of those areas which is changing rapidly, due to digitization, educational institutions simply lack skilled personnel. By way of illustration, the Journalism Masters offered at the University of Burundi, even after five years of existence, still relies heavily on short-term foreign teachers backed by Belgian funding (until the years 2016–2017).
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In a context where local teachers have trouble finding the time and means to stay up to date on their own or participate in conferences or workshops where researchers share knowledge, their teaching often remains theoretical and even outdated. Scholarly work, which normally enriches classroom learning, is lacking because of inadequate public funding (Skjerdal and Ngugi 2007): most field research is made possible through “consulting work” funded by international or local organizations, which means most research is limited to consensual and superficial studies that address issues of concern to the funders, who are generally from outside the media sector. Training seminars are also problematic. Firstly, the choice of participants is often poor. For example, in the mid-1990s a “jet set” from the African press emerged: the same journalists were seen attending one conference after another on the continent or in Europe, leaving them with little free time to attend to their journalism duties back home. Trainers often complain that trainees are selected by their boss, not in function of their abilities, but because it is simply their turn to go for training. Secondly, attending these workshops more often has to do with financial gain than acquiring knowledge: most attendees receive a per diem while attending a workshop that is meant to cover their travel expenses, food and even in lieu of the “gombo” they would otherwise have earned that day. Also, what is learned in these seminars is often at odds with the realities of professional practice. A good number of training sessions make use of equipment that does not exist in journalists’ own media outlets, nor do they take into consideration the real working conditions in participants’ local newsrooms (Paquot et al. 2004). Understandably, many media directors and press entrepreneurs have begun shying away from the widespread offers of training. Some are no longer willing to invest in training their employees nor even give them the time off they needed to do so, for two reasons: first, they cannot afford to do without their services, and second, they are worried that better trained journalists and technicians will lead them to ask for raises or seek better paid employment elsewhere. Many have condemned the lack of relevance of these workshops, which are sometimes run by foreign teachers with no knowledge of local contexts, but simply a desire to travel and to “do good”—a common flaw of the international development sector.
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5.3
The Challenge of “Africanizing” Journalism Training
In the same way the creation of codes of conduct elicited a debate on the Africanization of professional ethics, the emergence of journalism training raised questions about how well training was adapted to specific regional contexts. Beginning in the 1970s with the unmasking of cultural imperialism, the inappropriateness of Western educational models was uncovered and discussions in support of “third-world journalism” began in earnest (Murphy and Scotton 1987). In 1975, the African Council on Communication Education (ACCE) was established by a group of teachers of African journalism to put in place tools and educational content that better answered the needs of the continent. These unique needs, based on development, were applied in 1978 in the creation in Ouagadougou of an intra-African center of studies in rural radio (CIERRO), to train rural journalists.19 As of 1987, however, the entire curriculum and instruction material used, throughout Africa, were still sourced from the United States or former colonizers, with the exception of two textbooks published in Nigeria and Zimbabwe (Murphy and Scotton 1987, 22–24). The liberalization of the media sector could have put this debate to rest by doing away with contextual specificity and referencing solely the Western liberal model: by basing professional training on principles of press freedom and the necessity of an independent media within a democratic system, African journalist education would no longer have to claim any specificity. And yet, the question of the Africanization of the curriculum remains relevant for three reasons. First, instructional material is still predominantly European (French and Belgian in the case of Francophone Africa) and draws from examples from the media in those countries, despite efforts by the Institut Panos and GRET who have produced training material for Francophone African journalists on topics such as ethics, regulation, ICT use, media business, and community radio management.
19 The CIERRO was created by URTNA (Union des radiodiffusions et télévisions nationales d’Afrique) with the backing of the GTZ (bilateral German development initiative) and trained several generations of journalists in West Africa. It failed to reposition itself in the new liberalized radio landscape and closed in 2006.
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Second, African media systems, despite a convergence towards the liberal model, have maintained their uniqueness and face specific challenges. Community media are a case in point. They are the main news source for millions and their uniqueness calls for specific training to answer the needs of media professionals in this oft-neglected sector (Banda et al. 2007). John Hochheimer (2001, 102) proposed a training curriculum based on a “journalism of meaning,” that is to say, a journalism grounded in the community and environment to which the journalist belongs and that “reflects the challenges and battles of those who work and live in its midst, through their eyes, their ears, and their experiences”. Herman Wasserman (2005, 163), a professor at the University of Cape Town, agrees and invokes his country’s need for “journalism for transformation”, which he defines as “a journalism that has the continued development of a democratic society, in the fullest sense of the idea, as its goal”. The third reason behind the liveliness of this debate is that it often has as a subtext the out-and-out denunciation of Western journalism practices. For Gilbert Motsaathebe (2011), the Africanization of journalism training should not be considered synonymous with the erosion of journalism ethics, but rather a way to reintroduce fundamental values into the practice. By basing himself on the concept of Ubuntu, he calls for training that would emphasize humility, compassion, and empathy; qualities that would lead to more thorough and nuanced investigative work and a more fitting contextualization of news. This “African” approach would offer an alternative to professional practices that are modeled on elitist and arrogant Western ones that enable sensationalism, exaggeration, and the concoction of fake news.
6
The Search for a Status for Journalists
In addition to the transformations brought about by the collective structuring of the profession, its code of ethics and training curricula, journalists as a new professional group are noteworthy for their sheer number, particularly in large cities and among young graduates. Journalistic activity is not defined solely by its final product (cross-referenced, fact-checked, socially pertinent, and rigorous news); journalists are also workers who evolve continuously within contractual relationships defined by law.
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Apart from South Africa, which is an exception unto itself, Nigeria is certainly the country with the most impressive numbers: according to the Nigeria Union of Journalists, in 2019 its members numbered 38,000. Next in line is the DRC (4000 strong in the media), followed by the Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Benin, and Mali. As a rule, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists at work in every African country. The growth of commercial media necessitated a legal definition of the profession so as to confer status to private media employees parallel with that of state journalists working in government media. Defining the occupation is difficult, however, as journalism is an open vocation without formal training requirements. Different countries have different legal definitions of what a journalist is, but most Francophone African states drew from French or Belgian law, and three common elements emerge from the various texts: the nature of the activity (the collection and processing of information), the constraint that journalism must be the person’s main and remunerated occupation, and that it must be exercised within a media business. In a number of cases, however, these three criteria are not easily verifiable in Francophone Africa. 6.1
Three Problematic Elements: The Contract, the Salary, and the Business
The character of the profession is difficult to make out clearly in a context where most journalists working in commercial media have no signed contracts. Even in state media, the number of temporary and precarious positions has increased and these are often filled by trainees and freelancers. A 2008 report confirmed that television in Chad depended on a large number of young, contractless employees, paid under the table, earning no more than 25,000 F.CFA (30 e) a month. During the 2011 post-election crisis in Côte d’Ivoire, the many lapses by the RTI were attributed to the inexperience of young, financially precarious recruits who monopolized the airwaves because most regular journalists had absconded elsewhere to more lucrative communications management positions. The consequences of this situation are twofold. First, contractless employees have no legal status: when conflicts with ownership arise, they have no legal protection because, in principle, they are not even allowed to join a trade union. Second, without contracts, employees have little
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access to support groups or structures. Even if they become members of an association, they fear the retaliatory measures of their employer if they take part in groups that defend the collective interests of the profession. Among journalists with contracts, very few have access to social security, and employers do not contribute to retirement pension funds and do not offer insurance benefits (Baglo 2008). In 1999 in Burkina Faso, the staff of a popular private daily united to demand to be registered for social security. The owner of the media outlet accepted the idea in principle and proceeded to deduct the cost of his share of the dues from the journalists’ salary, reducing their pay from 70,000 F.CFA to 54,000 F.CFA (from 107 to 82 e) per month. They backed down and abandoned their demands. In addition to a contract, the second element is remuneration. With or without contracts, in the vast majority of cases, African press employees must make do with low, intermittent, or non-existent pay, which obliges them to take on other income-earning activities at the fringes of, or by way of, their journalism practice. According to a 2001 study by GRET on the finances of African publications, the average monthly salary in the private press was 413.18 e in Côte d’Ivoire, 97.55 e in Ghana, 92.24 e in Niger, and 284.68 e in Senegal (Perrin 2002). In a private sector without collective labor agreements, salaries are often set at the whim of managers, with no reference to benchmarks or standards. In the DRC, salaries of private sector journalists (with the notable exception of Radio Okapi) vary between 300 USD per month and… nothing at all. State media salaries are rarely more attractive. In Benin, ORTB journalists have the same sliding pay scale as other civil servants but benefit from certain advantages thanks to legislation recognizing their unique status, adopted in 1995. On the other hand, “contract workers”, a euphemism used to describe non-contractual permanent freelancers, are paid a fixed salary (from 45,000 F.CFA (70 e)—80,000 F.CFA (120 e), for an employee with a university degree), while “trainees” work pro bono. And the third problem in defining a journalist lies in the fact that the principal paid activity of the journalist should take place in a media business, that is, an entity that itself should benefit from legal recognition. In truth, most African media enterprises have a tenuous legal existence bordering on the informal (we will deal with this problem in depth in Chapter 6 on the economics of the sector).
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In such a context, it is difficult to determine who is and who is not a journalist. Of no help is the haphazard way journalists are registered and identified by their own unions. 6.2
The (Re)Birth of Unions
Many labor unions have been created since the early 1990s to defend the rights of journalists and improve their work conditions, and in large part, the thorny issues of contracts and pay have been their focus. Unions differ from other professional associations in that they are alone in being able to enter into collective negotiations with management. Some countries have one union representing both public and private sector journalists, including SYNPICS in Senegal,20 Syndicat autonome des travailleurs de l’information et de la culture (SYNATIC) in Burkina Faso, Fédératio syndicale des travailleurs de la communication (FESYTRAC) in CongoBrazzaville, Syndicat national des professionnels de la presse (SNPP) in the DRC, and Union burundaise des journalistes (UBJ) in Burundi. In other countries, separate unions represent the distinct sectors of the profession. In Togo, the Syndicat libre de la communication (SYNLICO), Syndicat des agents de l’information, techniciens et journalistes de presse publique (SAINTJOP), and Union des journalistes indépendants du Togo (UJT) share union duties. In Benin, the Union des journalistes indépendants du Togo (UJPB) and the Association des journalistes du Bénin (AJB) coexist. Some of these unions are successors to old state unions active during the time of state monopoly. They are comprised largely of state media journalists and their main goal is to improve the status of their members within the public sector (like the SPC in Chad). These unions do little to empower their membership or bring them in line with the commercial media sector, which has little to offer in terms of improved conditions. In Guinea and Togo, public media journalists have fought for a special status
20 Journalist associations do not always have the power that unions have to organize collective negotiations with the state or private management. This depends on the laws of each country. In Senegal, for example, the Association nationale des journalistes sénégalais (ANJS) had to change from an association to a labour union (i.e. SYNPICS—the Syndicat Professionnels Information Communication Sénégal) to be able to negotiate a collective agreement in 1991. In the Anglo-Saxon world, “unions” serve both as labor unions and defenders of press freedom.
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for public sector press workers in order to circumvent general administrative requirements and to guarantee their editorial independence. These efforts have been ineffective, however; the governments unwilling to concede such freedom to media workers in the public sector. Where journalists have not felt well represented by existing unions, commercial media journalists have created new professional associations, some of whom represent private sector workers exclusively, while others have remained open to public sector membership. Leadership quarrels have sometimes led to fragmented structures, due in no small part to the efforts of the state seeking to weaken private sector collectives. In 2005 in Cameroon, two distinct labor unions (the Syndicat national des professionnels des médias and the Syndicat des journalistes employés du Cameroun) negotiated parallel agendas and collective agreements, which led to a weakening of their bargaining position. 6.3
Two Important Issues: Press Cards (Known as Press Passes) and Collective Agreements
Despite their weaknesses and failure to gain legitimacy, African trade unions have focused on two important mechanisms in the struggle for a legal consolidation of the journalism profession: the granting of press cards and negotiated collective agreements for media professionals. Press cards are critical because they single out those who will benefit from advantages granted to the recognized professionals. Above all, press cards are seen as a means to exclude the “black sheep” from the profession because in most instances the card confers few advantages except priority access to certain information and locations. In the DRC, for example, for years the press card granted free access to public transport, though that advantage is almost nonexistent in Kinshasa today. Where they do exist, press passes are granted by journalist associations, regulatory bodies, or joint committees comprised of representatives from government ministries and media bosses (Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon). In Chad, a joint committee including the regulatory body and media heads was created to grant press passes, but demand is low, as they grant few negotiated advantages, and only a handful of journalists bother to renew them (at a cost of 3000 F.CFA/year or 4.5 e). And how the passes are granted has caused conflicts within the profession in several countries (in light of the difficulty in establishing agreed and verifiable criteria), such that many journalists do without and use a company ID instead.
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Collective labor agreements have had a more profound impact than press passes because they carry legal weight and can help when legal issues arise, even where no written contract exists. They are negotiated under the aegis of a union between labor and management representatives, labor law experts, and government authorities. Collective agreements clearly lay out the terms governing minimum wages, work schedules (overtime etc.), time off, sick leave, and other leaves (maternity, study etc.). They also define the modalities of dismissal, social benefits (e.g., retirement pensions and health insurance), the length of contracts, benefits, and the number of trainees allowed. Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire have played pioneering roles in the area of collective agreements in Francophone Africa. In Senegal, ANJS (Association nationale des journalistes du Sénégal), which became SYNPICS (Syndicat des professionnels de l’information et de la communication du Sénégal), negotiated a collective agreement in 1973 (renegotiated in 1991). Though it has faced applicability issues within the commercial media sector, it does confer numerous legal advantages on all Senegalese journalists and media technicians. In Côte d’Ivoire, a collective agreement was first negotiated for the employees of the state newspaper Fraternité Matin, followed by other public service media professionals, notably the RTI and the AIP. This convention became a blueprint for agreements in the private sector, and in 2008 it was renegotiated between Côte d’Ivoire’s media bosses (GEPCI) and the journalist union (SYNAPP-CI). It has met with its share of difficulties, however, with media owners claiming they do not have the means to honor the agreement. In Chad, a collective agreement was signed by heads of the private press in 2007, but commercial broadcast media bosses refused to endorse it, claiming that the pay scales established were unrealistic. Collective agreements were also adopted in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Benin, but few media concerns respect them. As has been pointed out before, the fragile legal status and precarity of journalists prevent them from undertaking court battles to defend their rights. In 2004, the Africa office of the IFJ negotiated with the principal professional unions and media managers in West and Central Africa to adopt framework agreements that were meant to serve as a foundation for negotiations in each country with the goal of adopting collective agreements for journalists. These agreements attempted to define (inter alia) who constituted a professional journalist, what employers’ obligations
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towards employees and unions should be, and how pay scales should be determined. However, for countries that have adopted such agreements, the experience has been mixed. The pay scales demanded by collective agreements are rarely applied and journalists’ precarity has even increased in some countries that availed themselves of such contracts. To escape contractual constraints, employers avoid full-time contracts and turn to non-salaried, unregulated freelancers. The “vagueness” of the journalism profession (Ruellan 2007), is not the sole domain of Francophone Africa. The legal and economic instability within which media professionals ply their trade here, however, is such that they find it difficult to find common ground upon which to base a shared identity. In addition, consolidating a professional identity that can serve as a reference point for the occupation of a journalist is an even bigger challenge today in Francophone Africa at a time when the journalistic models that inspired it (European and North American) are themselves going through a critical period, shaken up by the appearance of new practices related to the growth in technology (citizen journalism, blogging etc.), that are bringing into question the fundamentals of the profession. Journalists cannot, as Thierry Perret put it, be separated from their “milieu”. Even with a certain autonomy, they are not isolated actors with absolute control over their actions: they are an integral part of a system, and it is that system and its characteristic modes of interaction that confer meaning to their activity. Within such a system, African journalists appear to be characters with an ambiguous identity (Perret 2001, 169).
7
Conclusion
With the emergence and growth of commercial media, the identity of journalists, how they see and organize themselves, the values they base themselves on, and their role in society have been transformed. These new core identities have become apparent through new codes of conduct and collective action necessitating a new approach to training. In a wideopen sector, a profession like journalism will attempt to differentiate itself from others by creating boundaries; that is, put in place mechanisms that allow a distinction between those “inside” from those “outside,” or call to order colleagues who deviate from collectively created norms.
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The process of organizing media professionals (through associations, self-regulating bodies, labor unions, etc.) has encountered many challenges: the absence of a functioning and viable democracy attempts to render journalism a political tool, and internal divisions in a context of precarity and extreme militancy by some members. Finding and maintaining a professional consensus between politically invested and financially competing media is no simple task. It is also a delicate matter to adopt codes of conduct and training to local economic, political, and cultural realities without distorting the essence of journalism.
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CHAPTER 7
The Media Economy in Francophone Africa
Newspapers, radio, television stations, and online news sites do not convey political debate and incarnate freedom of expression in a vacuum; they are hinged to production mechanisms that must position their product in a competitive market that threatens their daily survival. In other words, theoretically, it is not only socio-political imperatives that drive the media machine, “the capacity of media to uphold their obligations to democracy is just as beholden to their commercial viability” (Chupin et al. 2009, 113). This chapter will address the economic dimension of Francophone African media, taking the media as actors who are structured and organized (to varying degrees), and who employ human and financial resources to produce and disseminate news. Economics is surely the least studied aspect not only of Sub-Saharan African media, but also of European media, where the primary analyses address the discourses and political role of media. Michel Mathien (2006) suggests that this gap is tied to the minor role the media sector plays in national economies, the lack of statistics available, and the small number of institutions (public or private) in a position to collect this kind of data. It is certainly true for French-speaking Africa where research about the economy of media systems is almost nonexistent (Cagé 2015). And yet, as businesses, media are integral to the market: with no finance injected in or produced by media outlets, they would simply die.
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This chapter will not focus on the media market just as a place in which supply and demand meet, nor as simply a matter of newspaper circulation or broadcast audience numbers or advertising being indicators of economic success.1 It will attempt to address the media (newspapers, radio, television, and websites) as industrial entities in need of raw material, human and financial resources, and production infrastructures. But, at the same time, it will outline all the survival strategies that journalists and media outlets develop in an economy that is, we suggest, mostly “informal” (this notion will be developed below), and it will show how these financial interactions with other stakeholders impact on journalists’ daily routines and news content. We will analyze five parameters that are key for the economic existence of any media outlet: the legal status of the business; the material and human means of production; the dissemination capacity (that is to say, its audience reach); financing modalities; and, foreign aid offered by NGOs or bilateral agencies—a vital element of the economic sectors of many countries we are analyzing. And, for each of these parameters, we will show how, practically speaking, they generate constant negotiations inside of the newsrooms and with actors from the political, economic, and NGO fields. At first glance, the markets could be said to vary greatly between richer, more stable countries (Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal for instance), and conflict-ridden countries (such as the Central African Republic, Mali or Burundi). But, in fact, it appears that the GDP has little impact on most media systems, and that some common traits can be identified in all these countries, be they resource-rich (Cameroon or Congo Brazzaville for instance) or poor (Burkina Faso or Niger). Katrin Voltmer (2013, 163) points out that, in countries that are transitioning politically, the economy, including that of the media, is also transforming. Nevertheless, after 30 years of political and economic “transition”, it is also important to note that, in semi-authoritarian states, their liberal pluralist authoritarian media systems have developed their own economies that do not appear to have changed much for the last decade. A socio-economic approach is valuable to better capture the challenges facing news production and the newsmaking cultures of French-speaking Africa, in an era where social media are gaining an ever increasing share of the news market. 1 It should be noted that there are no audience surveys in French-speaking Africa (as we will expand on later). Therefore, advertisers do not have figures on which to base their choices and advertising strategies.
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Media Businesses in a State of Flux
To better understand the news market, we should recall that, after liberalization, the first outlets that appeared were privately owned newspapers that blossomed freely, with few administrative constraints, and that many then disappeared for economic reasons. In their manual on media management, Daniel Fra and Eyoum Ngangué (1998, 87) recommended that “… newspapers, like all commercial entities, should enroll with the business registry and the office of the court clerk.” However, in numerous countries, the press still functions in an informal way: in Togo few companies have registered themselves properly; in the CAR, in 2010, two of the main dailies (Le Démocrate and L’Hirondelle) had no headquarters to speak of, and were run out of the publication manager’s briefcase. Subsequently commercial and privately owned broadcasters appeared, often operating in a similar vacuum. In Congo-Brazzaville, private-owned radio stations have no legal status; and in the DRC, only a handful of broadcasters are registered with the business registry. Even among those media outlets that have legal status and formal management, many still fail to meet a minimum level of transparency: the names of shareholders (or owners) or the board of directors are unknown; the sources of financing are secret; and annual financial reports do not exist, despite being required by law.2 As far as the online press is concerned, as well as for the written press in general, there are no requirements other than a simple declaration to the public prosecutor and to the national regulatory body, with no other constraints regarding financing or advertising.3 Most privately owned media in Africa are either owned by one individual (who is usually the founder); a limited liability company; or a not-for-profit association—community or denominational (Adjovi 2012). 2 In Chapter 1, we outlined how the media business evolved differently in different colonial contexts. The differences between Anglophone and Francophone regions persist into the twenty-first century. In Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, for example, powerful multimedia conglomerates have diversified their media and some have crossed national borders, giving rise to veritable media empires (like the Nation Media Group in East Africa, listed on the Nairobi stock exchange, with a profit of 11.8 million USD in 2020). Nothing similar exists in French-speaking Africa. 3 In some countries that have adopted specific laws for online media, there are some requirements of shareholders, for instance, in Burkina Faso, a foreigner is not allowed to own more than 49% of shares, and political parties cannot have majority (51%) shares in more than two online media outlets.
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The UN radio stations established by the international community in conflict-affected countries enjoy a special status defined by specific accords signed by the UN and the host country (e.g., Radio Okapi in the DRC, the former ONUCI FM in Côte d’Ivoire, and Radio Ndeke Luka in the CAR). International stations that broadcast in FM in African cities (RFI, BBC, VOA, etc.) operate under a special license which can be taken away anytime, as happened in 2019 in Burundi, when the Conseil national de la communication (CNC) withdrew the BBC’s operating license. The BBC’s broadcasts in the national language, Kirundi, were very popular but did not chime with the government’s narrative of events. The law usually defines the rules on funding and content for each type of broadcaster, depending on the legal status, for instance, in Burkina Faso: ● Commercial broadcasters have to be registered in the same way as all other commercial entities, they are subject to the same legal tax requirements, plus license and copyright fees, and can broadcast no more than 12 minutes of commercial advertisements every hour. ● Community or associative radio stations must be created by nonprofit organizations, and must carry out non-profit activities, but given their precarious financial situation, and because they play a “public service” role, they are allowed to broadcast 6 minutes of advertisements every hour. ● Denominational radio stations operate under the tutelage of a denominational community to deliver sermons or proselytize. A denominational radio station can only be certified if “at least 30% of its programming is non-religious”. It cannot broadcast any commercial advertisements. In theory, the choice of legal status is important, especially for broadcasters who have to apply for a license. For instance, in the DRC, since 2019, the cost of a license for a community radio station has been 7500 USD and 15,000 USD for a commercial station, which has to be renewed every five years.4 Legal status has consequences with regards to income tax (associations that are “not-for-profit” pay lower 4 The Congolese franc (local currency) is so unstable that the government’s decree has fixed the amounts in USD, adding that licenses can be paid in Congolese francs according to the exchange rate of the day.
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taxes), registration fees (community radios often pay lower licensing fees), production restrictions (the different categories imply different obligations), funding sources (community, associative, and denominational media have little or no access to advertising revenue). United Nations radio stations, for example, can broadcast bulletins and announcements from non-governmental and charitable institutions but not commercial advertising. In practice, no matter how clearly laid out laws may be, they are still only applied in a very haphazard manner, and media regulators have difficulties with the oversight of all media outlets, especially provincial media. As a result, in the DRC there exist a host of “fake” community radio and television stations that claim community status when in fact they belong to one person. Also, many community radio stations generate much more income through paid advertising than is officially allowed (Boulc’h 2003). The vast majority of media businesses in Francophone Africa are not capable of settling all their tax bills, employer costs, and the multitude of other business-related fees. If media enterprises were to respect all the financial demands imposed on them, they all claim that they would be in severe debt. According to one study undertaken for the Ivorian FSDP (Fonds de soutien et de développement de la presse), 50% of the country’s newspapers are in a state of “virtual” bankruptcy. Likewise, in 2013, in a field study of 69 newspapers, the regulator (the CNP now ANP— Conseil/Autorité nationale de la presse) in Côte d’Ivoire was found to have ordered the immediate closure of 34 outlets and had given formal notice to 20 others for operating without regard for the law (Karimu 2018).5 By and large, international copyright laws are also circumvented: it is rare to find copyright monitoring agencies that operate properly. In Burkina Faso, the BBDA (Bureau burkinabè des droits d’auteurs) charges commercial radio stations 600,000 FCFA (915 e) and community/associative radio stations 400,000 FCFA (610 e) annually (Balima and Frère 2003). In the DRC, where musicians are hugely popular, the absence of a copyright monitoring agency has pushed artists into the arms of advertisers, particularly beer brands, whose advertising is normally 5 The criteria used by the CNP were mostly economic: compliance with salary levels set by collective agreement (and submission of annual payrolls), submission of annual statements of account to the tax office, compliance with labor laws, and registration of outlets and all staff with the national social security office.
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prohibited during time slots popular with children. Western Union and Primus beer ads afford musicians a sizable revenue, so they include their brand in their songs and music videos, and broadcasters circumvent the law by having the broadcast material considered music rather than advertising (Frère 2009b, 117). While many media enterprises are often at odds with legislation, publishing, and broadcasting business groups clamor for the adoption of taxation policies that are adapted to the distinctiveness of their business. Among other things, they want for their respective governments to respect the Florence Agreement, which was adopted in 1950 by Unesco, ratified by most African countries, and calls for lower duties and import tariffs on material considered educational, scientific, or cultural. Several heads of state (Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Burundi) have promised to “detax” news media inputs, but measures have not been applied in practice. In effect, how African media businesses function reflects the economic context in which they operate, which is 80% informal.6 The “informal economy” takes place outside the control of the state and is therefore not taken into account in official domestic economic statistics. It has also been called the secondary, underground, parallel, popular, or non-official economy; a vaguely defined notion that covers a wide range of activities and that is integral to the everyday life of the vast majority of the African population. Economists7 who study the informal economy insist that not complying with economic statutes offers entrepreneurs a clear advantage when compared to what it would cost to operate entirely legally (Hernandez 1997). Not respecting fiscal and social obligations is advantageous in that it allows media enterprises to reduce their expenses and
6 The concept of the “informal economy” was first defined by the International Labor Organization at the beginning of the 1970s. Data about the informal economy are difficult to collect and compare, from state to state, as most African countries do not include the informal part of their economy in their GDP. Nevertheless, according to recent research in Francophone Africa (Mbaye et al. 2020), formal wage employment is responsible for only 5% of the total labor force (in urban as well as rural areas), while small informal businesses make up more than 97% of all private businesses in some countries like Benin. Informality is linked to low productivity, low wages, and job insecurity. 7 It is not only economists studying these phenomena; sociologists and anthropologists have also paid a lot of attention to “informal economy” dynamics over the past forty years.
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put their product on the market at a lower price. Many private media enterprises could not survive if they operated in absolute accordance with the law. While an “informal” approach to business has its advantages, it also has its drawbacks. For example, media companies who do comply with a minimum of legal standards may have difficulty accessing bank loans, international advertising contracts with multinationals, or funding from foreign donors. Also, not respecting rules and regulations makes companies vulnerable to the vagaries of the government. For example, radio stations in Eastern DRC are subject to numerous taxes by various administrative entities, each after its share of the pie.8 Informality opens the floodgates of corruption and the two are intimately linked according to numerous anthropological studies (Olivier de Sardan 1996). Informality, like legality, has a cost: for the personnel without a social safety net; for the state with less tax revenue; and for the entrepreneur who becomes the victim of ad hoc taxes and is unable to access certain types of funding. Thus most media companies exist between these two poles: in a “grey”, “hybrid” or “blended” economic space that complies with some legal constraints, while ignoring other ones. The state has remained tolerant vis-à-vis the informal approach to business because it generates the vast majority of available jobs, without which the state would not have the means to provide the necessary opportunities to urban and rural populations. Some researchers have underlined that formal and informal economies are always linked,9 the majority of the informal activities entailing, in reality, an “active collaboration with agents of the state” (Rubbers 2007, 327). Most African media managers spend much time negotiating with their ministries of communication, the customs services, the tax departments, and the social security agents on a daily basis, and most of this bargaining is hidden. Vague laws, fiscal and social irregularities, “arrangements” with officials, informal agreements with advertisers: a sizeable percentage of the economic activity of African media businesses can be considered informal, and therefore subject to 8 Broadcasters are asked to pay extra taxes by the national intelligence agency (ANR), the tax department of the Ministry of Finance, the customs office, the local branch of the Congolese copyrights company, the state cultural fund (Fonds de promotion culturelle), the local authorities, and many other public entities. 9 For an overview of the blurred distinction between formal and informal economies, see the special issue of Politique africaine, “Governing through taxation” (n°151, 2018).
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state intervention at any moment, on the basis that these businesses are not in compliance with the law, as explained in Chapter 4. According to Thomas Atenga, “the informality of the economy of the private press especially benefits the ruling class who, after reducing the opposition to shreds, can attack a press that has become, in this semi-authoritarian context, the only true opposition” (2012, 17). But operating in an informal economy is not only a threat for media outlets but an opportunity. Besides the “top-down” relations with state institutions, the informal economy also encompasses and allows many “horizontal” interactions based on reciprocity: each actor involved (media owner, director, journalist, technician) will be building his/her network through relations that will benefit both participants. They are ready to invest their time and resources to increase and multiply their networks in order to maximize opportunities to get not only more financial benefits, but also more symbolic and social capital. This leads to a complex “blended” (“métissée”) media economy where several economic logics are intertwined.
2
Lower Production Costs That Come at a Price
Even if operating in this gray zone of the informal economy, media outlets, like all enterprises, implement a production process that requires human resources and inputs (tangible and intangible) to bring a product to market. Here again, most media outlets and owners have developed strategies to produce content at low cost, albeit at the expense of news producers. 2.1
An Interchangeable and Adaptable Workforce
Regarding human resources, generally speaking, media businesses in Francophone Africa have inadequate medium- and long-term human resource management policies. Their priorities are mainly short-term: ensuring regular publication, broadcasting, or daily updates of the website at minimal cost with the smallest and/or cheapest possible workforce.10 As
10 For instance, in Cameroon, a 2006 study found that the average monthly salary for
journalists in the commercial media sector was 50,000 FCFA (approx. $90 USD) while the basic salary of a junior reporter (at the state television, CRTV) was between 160,000 FCFA (approx. $290 USD) and 175,000 FCFA (approx. $317 USD). Senior journalists with postgraduate qualifications earn up to 400,000 FCFA (approx. $724 USD per month (Ndangam 2006, 186).
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a result, staff is often deficient, overworked and the turnover is high. It is difficult to understand how effective television news programming can be produced by a newsroom comprising just six journalists, as is the case with Channel 3 in Ouagadougou. Or how Le Pays in Burkina Faso ensures the regular publication of a daily which is more than 24 pages long, with only 15 full-time journalists.11 Journalists find themselves wearing many hats and signing off on rushed and unpolished work. Given the lack of human resources, journalists are often required to exercise several functions at once. In some newsrooms, they may be responsible for the layout, while in radio and television, a journalist may also double as a studio technician. They may also find themselves negotiating advertising contracts on commission. An assessment report of the national language newspaper Sooré in Burkina Faso, revealed that the managing editor was also expected to serve as editor-in-chief, proofreader, administrator, editorial secretary, reference librarian, external service manager, and even cashier (Balima and Frère 2003, 30). In this context of short-staffing, journalists are expected to handle any subject: on any one given day, they may be asked to cover a sporting event, a cultural performance, and a political rally, which prevents them from specializing in any particular subject. The lack of specialization is not only a matter of shortage of journalists. As Lassané Yameogo (2020) has shown, even in newsrooms with sufficient staff, journalists are reluctant to be attached to any specific beat, because they want to be able to cover any subject that can provide them with some gombo or other advantage. Yameogo calls this practice “lined up journalism” (journalisme de rang ), as journalists can be found queueing every morning to see who will be assigned to cover the juicy events of the day, or “versatile journalism” (journalisme touche-à-tout ), as each journalist may be asked to cover any political, economic, cultural or social event, depending on the profit he/she or the media outlet will make from it. 11 These numbers are striking when compared with staff numbers in the state media in Burkina Faso: in 2020, the national TV station employed 61 journalists (in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso), national radio 20, and the national daily Sidwaya 64 (plus four working on the online edition). By comparison, the top commercial daily newspaper, L’Observateur Paalga, operated with only 20 journalists, commercial TV BFI and Burkina Info with 12 and 21 journalists respectively, and online news outlets such as Lefaso.net and Burkina24 have 15 and 10 journalists respectively. Weeklies and bimonthlies manage to function with around four journalists each.
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The lack of specialization also handicaps professional management and marketing. Most privately owned media do not have a designated marketing office, only an accounting officer whose duties include neither advertising sales nor contacts with communication agencies (Perrin 2002). As a result, few businesses develop concrete strategies related to subscriptions, or audience research to present to potential advertisers. In the very few countries where there are polling companies that rank and measure media audience numbers, there are no media business willing to pay to access this data, and most of these companies are viewed as unreliable. Technical proficiency is also substandard. Few private radio and television stations have their own technicians to maintain studio and broadcasting equipment, relying on outside help when technical issues arise. Public and state media, on the other hand, often have in-house technicians to resolve technical issues, while for private broadcasters located far from the capital, help may be weeks away. As for the written press, few newspapers (with the exception of public or state press) have inhouse computer technicians, relying instead on private outside (and often prohibitively expensive) expertise. Lengthy broadcast or publication disruptions for technical reasons are common. Another common feature in Francophone Africa is the prominence afforded to the media boss, the only member of personnel who is not interchangeable. The owner can usually be qualified as a “Big Man”: he (or, rarely, she) is often the founder/director and manages not only the newsroom, but also the administrative, technical, and management services, and, outside of the media, he/she will manage interactions with other Big Men from politics and business.12 In the broadcasting sector, the owner sometimes remains discreet, appointing managers who are responsible for day-to-day operations. For example, in Togo in 2018 a conflict arose between the managing director of Focus Infos, who had been officially presented as the owner, and the actual owner who lived abroad: the case went to court and was settled in favor of the managing
12 The “Big Men” (Médard 1992) are members of political and economic elites. The
boundary separating politics and media is so porous that many media founders have entered politics, and conversely, political figures have created media enterprises. When businessmen invest in the media sector, they usually do not envisage financial profit, but want to secure political ties, often with the ultimate aim of protecting their interests in other sectors.
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director. Personality-heavy media often rely so much on the presence of one man that his death will often lead to the collapse of the business, as there is no board to ensure more collective management. The influence of the Big Man has two further implications: firstly, his/her media outlet will remain, above all, a strategic asset (aimed at retaining the Big Man’s political and economic position), and not an economic asset in which the owner invests for the sake of a better final product (Atenga 2014).13 Secondly, it rules out the possibility, proposed by some observers, that concentration of ownership might help media sustainability in Africa (Cagé 2015), as a Big Man will always have good reason to preserve his/her strategic asset to serve his/her own aims. How staff is recruited reflects the various statuses and vocations of the different types of media. In state media, for example, management positions are generally filled with political appointees, and promotions are granted on the basis of clientelist co-optation. Commercial private media, on the other hand, if they belong to Big Men with business interests in other sectors, will often recruit staff for their shared convictions, but also for leadership qualities and ability to attract a loyal audience; vital for increasing market share and promoting their interests. As for community media, the personnel is often comprised of members of the founding association wanting to serve the community. Some community radio stations, like Radio Maendeleo in Bukavu (DRC) or Radio Izuba (Rwanda), are authentic news media and employ professionals in consequence; the same for Burundi’s independent radio stations (before 2015). As for denominational media, their staff is drawn from members of the founding faith group or converts, but some of these stations, like Radio Elikya in Kinshasa, also offer general news programming (Damome 2014). The workforce profiles of media have an impact on programming. For example, many small provincial commercial stations with only two or three full-time employees will broadcast mainly music, with a few newscasts per day, built on material drawn from websites or social media. Their goal is to fill the airwaves, and generate advertising and revenue from
13 Atenga writes: “The printed press is no longer simply an information vehicle, but a strategic transactional and positional instrument, not only with respect to the public, but especially vis-à-vis the powers-that-be. It implies a quid pro quo: favors from the powerful in exchange for appearing like a ‘responsible’ publication that supports the country’s development efforts” (Atenga 2012, 24).
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official communiqués, with little regard to quality. To fill airtime, many radio stations draw on programming provided by foreign partners (RFI, Radio Nederland, Deutsche Welle), or will link live to news on other channels (for example, several radio stations in Chad transmit Al Jazeera programming). Content is also provided by development NGOs (e.g., Search for Common Ground, La Benevolencija, the production houses such as Studio Tamani in Mali, established by Fondation Hirondelle etc.), or other international organizations (World Bank, WHO, UNDP, Unicef, Unesco, etc.) who buy time slots to broadcast programming promoting their topics of concern. Several exchange programs of African radio broadcasts have taken place regionally (the program libraries of Institut Panos or Syfia, for example), but the broadcasting of standardized programming in French has had limited success because community radio stations broadcast mainly in their local vernaculars. Human resource and financial shortfalls mean that radio and television programming is often short on meaningful local content and high on “armchair journalism” (reporters do not even leave the newsroom but collect data from digital media) or reporting that is limited to the capital city. As a result, it is not radio that reaches out to listeners, but listeners who must inform the radio of upcoming events. Numerous radio stations like FM Liberté in Chad or Radio Ndeke Luka in the CAR receive daily visits from listeners to update journalists on incidents they witnessed or experienced. In Burundi, SOS Médias Burundi, which disseminates short news bulletins and alerts via social media relies on a small number of unidentified journalists (in hiding for security reasons), and a wide network of informants spread around the country. Finally, media’s dependency on freelancers and volunteers (most of whom live in precarious conditions, are poorly paid, and who are often temporary) leads to instability throughout a media business, unstable programming, and lack of long-term planning. 2.2
Rudimentary Production Infrastructure
Aside from personnel, the main technical resources required to run a media business are the workspace, computer equipment, communication tools, and logistical capacity. Even if a media outlet is just a strategic asset, it requires a minimum of equipment. Journalism, in any media system, does not only rely on interactions with people, but also on interactions with tools. The materiality of journalistic activity incurs costs, and African
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journalists will often refer to the lack of proper equipment to excuse the debatable quality of their final product.14 In so far as workspace is concerned, because they do not have the financial resources or borrowing capacity to buy or build their own headquarters, most outlets in French-speaking Africa rent buildings. On the extreme end of the spectrum, the team works out of the director’s living room, like the Défi africain of Congo-Brazzaville (in 2010), or Kinshasa’s Les Échos du Congo. In countries where there are cooperative structures like the “Maisons de la presse” (press centers), newspaper journalists are able to use them for most production purposes, printing excluded. The creation of the “Maison des médias” in Chad in 2010 led to a sharp increase in the number of newspapers appearing, because editors now had at their disposal a computer room that allowed them to prepare their mockups. Radio and television normally need their own (or rented) premises, even though YouTube channels and online radio stations now permit broadcasting from the boss’s living room. The location of a media outlet has an impact on its content. In CAR, for instance, local community radio stations are often housed in public buildings provided by the local préfet or mayor and therefore depend on their goodwill. As for equipment, not all media enterprises have up-to-date material, even though computing hardware and software have become relatively affordable. Maintenance is a serious issue because of a lack of resources and short-term planning. Numerous private radio stations and newspapers have become computer graveyards of equipment rendered inoperable from the heat, humidity, and dust. Recording or photographic equipment suffers a similar fate, so journalists now use their own smartphones in the field to gather sound, pictures, and footage (Ouendji 2010a, b). Many of them insist on the fact that they use their own device and that financial support for their phone calls often falls short. Mobile phones have revolutionized journalists’ work, as, up until the early 2000s, many newsrooms were served by only one landline, for which journalists stood in line to make the necessary calls. This new tool has made it much easier to gather information, to reach witnesses, sources, and government officials, as well as to report from the field. It has freed journalists from many constraints and made it easier for them to build their own networks. Nevertheless, there seems to be an “age” barrier: 14 On the materiality of journalism, as discussed in the Francophone scientific environment, see Lévrier and Wrona (2013), and Colson et al. (2013).
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older journalists (often working in the written press) feel less at ease with a smartphone, which can mean firstly that interactions in the newsroom change, as the older generation often needs help from younger colleagues; and secondly, with online media, it is often the younger journalists who are quicker to cover urgent issues. The arrival of the Internet had less of an impact and remained under used for a long time by newsrooms, until smartphones became affordable. Where the Internet is available in the newsroom, journalists tend to use it not to do research or fact-check, but to access content and to copy-paste content into articles or news bulletins, without paying heed to copyright. At the beginning of the 2000s, it was common for the only Internet-connected computer to be kept under lock and key in the editor-in-chief’s office, while journalists were forced to use Internet cafes to check their email. Smartphones have given journalists greater agency as individuals, and social media—Facebook in particular—has become a primary source of news and contacts. A study in Guinea in 2014 showed that 95% of journalists used a mobile phone and that online sources— Guinean or foreign websites—and social networks represented as much as 51% of their sources of information (Matras et al. 2015, 53). With the written press, printing equipment is a major burden. Only a handful of dailies own their own printing press given the prohibitive cost of such equipment. In fact, African newspapers face a double bind: if they arrive at the enviable position of being ready to scale up to more sophisticated equipment, they will likely never be able to make the large investment profitable (even if they subcontract printing services to other publications) because the market is simply too small. However, some initiatives have been successful, like the weekly Le Républicain whose owner, Maman Abou, also owned the NIN (Nouvelle Imprimerie du Niger) which benefited from printing the betting bulletins of the PMU (Pari mutuel urbain—a French horse-racing promoter) and could use this to help finance his newspaper. All equipment and consumables are imported from outside Africa, which means high costs and requires solid relationships with local and international suppliers, as well as with customs. Creating a central procurement agency (for paper, computer equipment, spare parts for radio, etc.) has been attempted in a number of countries, under the guidance and with the backing of foreign donors. In Burundi, the CERA (Centre des ressources audiovisuelles) and the ABR (Association burundaise des radiodiffuseurs) organized such an agency for its
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members. However, media outlets often lack solidarity, especially when it comes to financial issues, despite what foreign donors may dream of in terms of media-for-democracy and peacebuilding. So such ventures have been hindered elsewhere by competing media bosses, the holding back of relevant financial information, and the makeshift operations of most media businesses. Also an issue is the de facto monopolies that control certain segments of the import trade in various countries. In the DRC, for example, one enterprise, Téléconsult (very close to former President Joseph Kabila), has a monopoly on radio transmitters, while in Burkina Faso, Lebanese businessmen have historically controlled the paper trade. Electricity is also a problem outside main urban centers where the power grid is unstable or nonexistent. Even in some capital cities (N’Djamena, Brazzaville, Ouagadougou, Kinshasa, Bangui, etc.) power cuts occur frequently and media houses have no other choice than to purchase a generator. As for mobility, only well-established newsrooms offer their staff transportation. Even these businesses have too few vehicles to go around: journalists often waste hours waiting for a driver who has driven a colleague to another location. The vast majority of African journalists rely on their own means of transportation or are dependent on taxis and “zémidjans ” (motorcycle taxis of Cotonou). This substandard transport can explain journalists’ eagerness to accept lifts from event organizers or potential news sources. It also explains why media content is often limited to the city in which the media headquarters are located, giving the audience a very limited window on their world. 2.3
News as a Commodity in Failing Economies
The constraints we have just enumerated demonstrate how media production in Francophone Africa typifies the difficulties in producing any manufactured commodity in African economies (Hugon 1999) which are beset by low levels of investment (including in public infrastructure), absence of planning, and substandard day-to-day management, paucity of specialized human resources (exacerbated by “brain drain”), absence of local manufacturing capacities and therefore dependence on imported goods. In Gabon, for example, although the country is a big exporter of wood, paper is more expensive than anywhere else. In Congo-Brazzaville, though a big producer of crude oil, gasoline is unaffordable. Not to mention the DRC, which produces 80% of the planet’s coltan, but where
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cell phones are still luxury items. Without a manufacturing industry, African countries continue exporting their resources at rock-bottom prices to countries where they are transformed into manufactured goods and imported back into the continent at considerable profit margins. In such a context, with secrecy surrounding investments made by the Big Men involved, it is a challenge to try to assess the size of the budget required for a properly functioning media outlet. However, two studies conducted in Central Africa (Nindorera et al. 2013; Frère et al. 2014) show that budgets fall into three categories. At the top, media with annual budgets over 1 million USD are mostly state-funded or foreign donor-backed outlets. For example, the budget of the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (formerly ORINFOR) is 7.5 billion FRw (more than 10 million USD), which is roughly similar to the budget of Radio Okapi (which belongs to the UN mission, MONUSCO) in the DRC. Second, media outlets with annual budgets between 200,000 and 1 million USD are most privately owned broadcasters combining radio and television, with salaried newsroom personnel, and a minimum of equipment and work premises. For example, Digital Congo or Top Congo in Kinshasa, and also media with foreign support such as the community station Radio Maendeleo in Bukavu (DRC), Radio Isanganiro, Radio publique africaine or the Iwacu Press Group in Burundi, as well as Radio Isango Star in Rwanda. The third category encompasses media houses with annual budgets inferior to 200,000 USD such as most small community radio stations and newspapers with intermittent circulations. These media outlets operate with a skeleton crew, often without pay, and with rudimentary equipment. Examples include the Net Press agency of Burundi, most of the community radio stations in the DRC (whose annual budgets often lie between 10,000 and 50,000 USD), and the commercial written press in Rwanda. According to Thomas Atenga (2012, 21), the largest dailies in Cameroon may also have annual budgets of around 1 million USD, but the small amount of revenue gained from advertising raises questions about the origins of their money. Gaining access to the real budgets of privately owned media remains impossible. Revenue of uncertain origin (often intermittent and dependent on “behind-the-scenes transactions”) often underpins opaque and centralized management. Difficult to pinpoint and still taboo, subsidies from political actors and businessmen (the two being intimately intertwined) are relatively common, in a context of cronyism and bribery. Having a “strategic asset” disseminating news in the public arena can be
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attractive for the politically and economically powerful who have things to say or to hide. For media owners who have invested in other economic sectors, maintaining good relations with the government can be good business. Mor Faye (2008) describes how, for instance, in Benin, the businessman Fagbohoun (who also heads up a political party) has spent tens of millions of FCFA to ensure the press (including the newspaper he has financed called Les Échos du Jour and other newspapers) is silent about his deals to buy former state companies for absurdly low prices. Fagbohoun even succeeded in recruiting journalists famous for having previously denounced and investigated opaque deals in the banking sector and who were formerly considered standard-bearers of “independent” and “watchdog” journalism. But many media outlets in French-speaking Africa cannot rely on the beneficence of a Big Man, and even if they do, their daily needs will not generally be the priority of the boss. Therefore, the vast majority of media houses in Francophone Africa can only survive by making cost-cutting the norm, starting with salaries and employees’ work environments. As Thierry Perret writes, “To shine a spotlight on the deficiencies of the African media is often counterproductive without a clear appreciation of the limitations, sometimes extraordinary, that circumscribe their activities, and of the strategies they deploy to fulfill their social function, in spite of everything”. (Perret 2001, 167). What makes these media businesses so remarkable is that they exist at all, and the informal way they function has not prevented them from transforming themselves to the core, to adapt to the pluralism that has become the norm.
3 The Dissemination of Media: What Audience? Which Consumers? For bringing a product to market, the producer-client relationship is crucial: it is the raison d’être of the production process. But in the media economy, things work differently. Apart from the written press that can gain some benefit from sales, advertising is the main source of revenue for radio television, and online media. Media are therefore selling the attention of their consumers to companies that wish to advertise goods or to institutions making public announcements. In Francophone Africa, media consumption reflects the realities of a segmented market with vast local
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disparities between the haves and the have-nots,15 and, in most countries, a population dominated by a low standard of living. Most live under the poverty line of less than $1.90 USD per day (according to World Bank figures),16 which both prevents them from buying newspapers and makes them very unappealing to the commercial sector which knows that very few are able to buy their products. These macroeconomic statistics do not display the extreme disparities in revenue that exist in all of these countries, including impoverished segments of the population living in so-called medium income countries. Most citizens having low purchasing power is of consequence to the media sector. 3.1
The Press: An Expensive Commodity with Very Low Circulation
The cost of a newspaper ranges from 250 to 500 FCFA ($0.45–90 USD) or can reach two dollars USD in Kinshasa, which is high, given that a meal of rice or manioc can be purchased at the road side for $0.35 USD in a city like Kinshasa. Print runs are low: in Guinea, the DRC, and Togo the largest newspapers only print between 300 and 1500 copies per day. In Burundi, the only stable privately owned newspaper, Iwacu (“Our homeland”), prints just 2000 copies. In Cameroon (28 million inhabitants) or in Côte d’Ivoire (27 million), no daily sells over 3000 copies. The failure of print media to make inroads in Francophone Africa can be attributed to two main causes: the high illiteracy rate and low standards of living. Others have cited a lack of a “reading culture” (Adjovi 2012, 33) in Francophone Africa in contrast to the Anglophone countries where
15 For example, Philippe Hugon (1999, 110) has shown that the combined salaries of
700 expatriates in Madagascar equaled the salaries of 100,000 local public servants. 16 Most of our sample of 17 Francophone countries are among the lowest income countries in Africa and the world. Ten (59%) of our countries are classed by the World Bank as “Low Income” countries, with large numbers below the poverty line – for example Togo has 51% (2015 latest available figure) of its population living on less than $1.90 USD per day (at 2011 international prices) and a per capita Gross National Income (GNI) of $690 USD (2019) and Rwanda has 56.5% (2016 latest available figure) of its population living on less than $1.90 USD per day and a per capita GNI of $830 USD (2019). Only 7 out of our 17 countries (41%) (Benin, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mauritania and Senegal) are classed as “Lower Middle Income” (see https://data.worldbank.org/country).
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more newspapers are read, for the historical reasons described in our first chapter. Given the unreliability of communication channels and transportation services, most newspapers face significant distribution challenges outside and even in the urban centers where they are produced. Because most of these countries do not have any press distribution companies or cooperatives, press companies must create their own distribution networks. Street hawking is still the most popular sales method. Each business supplies its sales staff (usually children or youths) with a pile of papers they are responsible for selling at busy road intersections. Later that day or the next morning they turn over their earnings minus a percentage (between 10 and 20%) and are given a fresh batch of papers to hawk. Sellers are sometimes organized in a network under one boss’s authority. The inconveniences of street hawking are numerous: the sellers can abscond with the day’s revenue or create a niche of regular customers they supply each morning (depriving the newspaper of formal subscriptions that can provide vital regular revenue). In Burkina Faso, hawkers have sometimes colluded with “folders” who manually assemble the pages of the newspaper, allowing them to steal copies that are then sold on the black market. In Cameroon, street-sellers have organized newspaper “rentals”, which involves leaving copies with “renters” who read the sections that interest them for a small fee. In addition to hawking, newspapers are sold on consignment in grocery stores and newsstands, who keep between 15 and 20% of the revenue. In some cities in the DRC, copies of newspapers are displayed on sidewalks, where passers-by can be seen debating their contents in gatherings nicknamed “standing parliaments” (“parlement debout ”). Subscriptions are rare except for state publications, which all public services automatically receive. Many international organizations and diplomatic missions have subscriptions, but regular access to newspapers is still problematic for most citizens because of substandard postal services. As a rule, if a subscriber’s copy is not delivered to their place of work, they must go to the newspaper headquarters for their copy. Revenue from paid circulation is further weakened by multiple readership: a single copy of a newspaper may be read by a dozen people, the most interesting articles are photocopied and also circulated on social networks. Sending copies from the capital to provincial towns used to be done through personal contacts in freight and haulage companies (air and overland) in exchange for a few copies of the newspaper or a few column
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inches of advertising for the freight company. These informal distribution arrangements lead to significant delays in reaching the provinces. Furthermore the rural readership is small, given language considerations (all the press in Francophone Africa is in French—though partially in English in Cameroon and in Arabic in Mauritania) and high levels of poverty. This leaves civil servants as almost the sole audience in rural areas and so, given that they can now access newspapers online, the vast majority of publishers in the DRC, Cameroon, Chad, and Mali have stopped sending copies of their newspaper outside the capital. Alternatively, the press being written in French, the only other way that newspapers can be accessed by the wider population—particularly in the provinces—is via press reviews broadcast in local languages on local radio stations (Wittmann 2008). Most of these press reviews do not attract financial sponsors, but if they do, the money will go to the broadcaster, not to the newspaper publishers. A centralized press delivery system still survives in only very few countries (i.e. Édipresse in Côte d’Ivoire, Messapresse in Cameroon, Sogapresse in Gabon, and ADP in Senegal). Their lifeline in Africa has been the many French expatriates who want access to their national press. However, these services are too expensive for most local African newspaper publishers (consuming 40% of revenue); who also tend to be unhappy with how the services are monopolized and who often attempt to circumvent them (Wittman 2006). A distribution service can only survive with a certain guaranteed minimum traffic. The French NGO, Gret, tried establishing a joint distribution project for three newspapers in Kinshasa: for 200 USD a month, deliveries by motorcycle were made to several depots around town daily, but even this nominal fee seemed too high for the other dozen or so city papers. The economic model of the written press begs the question why weak circulation has not killed it, and it thus raises questions about the primary goal of most newspapers which may not be a relationship with their readership at all.17 Most newspapers exist first and foremost because they belong to someone who wishes to further his/her own political and social goals. That is why so many newspapers survive even though
17 In Togo and Cameroon, some newspapers have developed a very special marketing ploy. For high fees, they publish issues portraying young political opponents, detailing the dangers they face in their country vis a vis the local authoritarian regime: these papers are then used by these individuals to try to obtain political asylum in European or North American countries (Faye 2008).
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they are expensive and print only a few hundred copies, and despite the audience losing interest because newspapers do not provide them with the news they are expecting, but just politically biased content, and bland news of workshops organized by ministries or NGOs—almost all paid-for by sources. Of course, there are some investigative newspapers (such as Courrier Confidentiel , Mutations and Le Reporter in Burkina Faso), which truly aim at informing the audience about important issues, but their battle for economic survival is as hard as their determination not to compromise on their coverage of the government. Advertisers are not keen on investing in the newspaper sector, because of minimal readerships, but also because of its polarized nature, as we shall see below. 3.2
Online Press and News Websites
The African press faces the same competition from the Internet as its counterparts in the West. As mentioned above, French-speaking African newspapers initially saw the establishment of web portals (Abidjan.net, Lefaso.net, Malinet, Seneweb) that began by uploading their contents online without any reward and then realized that they had to develop their own web presence. One of the pioneers was the public daily Le Soleil in Dakar (Lenoble-Bart 2004). And yet, the content posted was (and still is) often no more than a copy of the print version. Most dailies do not have a newsroom dedicated to online content, or a full-time webmaster responsible for site maintenance (Sissouma 2001; Paré 2010). In Burkina Faso, the CSC (Conseil supérieur de la communication) mandated that all news sites with comment forums also have a moderator responsible for validating contributors’ content before uploading it, but most newspapers claim not to have the personnel to perform this function (Frère 2015a). The reason online news production differs so little from the paper version is partly financial—indeed, the profitability of an online presence is problematic across the globe—and partly because of an absence of a specific strategy. Most newsrooms do not have the technical expertise to develop original online content or the financial resources to pay for site hosting. Many initiatives to place content online and keep it updated have been more dependent on the personal motivation of individual journalists than on a genuine commitment by management (Sissouma 2001). The primary incentive of newspaper publishers to create a website has been to offer remote readers (in the diaspora or provinces) quick
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and easy access to their content, and secondly to attract a new readership in the global North who may want access to local news without the selection and interpretation filters of Western news agencies.18 As mentioned in Chapter 3, the online African press has allowed the diaspora to reconnect with local debates. However, the geographic distance and dispersed nature of this readership has for a long time made it difficult to deploy effective advertising strategies, given the lack of interest by potential advertisers in such a scattered and difficult to target audience. Over the last decade, however, domestic populations have become to a large extent the biggest online news consumers, thanks to improved mobile phone connectivity. The Internet may, after all, become a new economically promising niche, bringing new audiences and new advertisers. Consuming news on the Internet is no longer restricted to the elite but now extends to the emerging middle-class who, though still limited in number, can afford the necessary technology, and is therefore of potential interest to advertisers. Nevertheless, as we will see in the next chapter, there are huge unbalances in access, related to gender, age, and geographical location. Therefore, it remains tough for online media to develop sustainable economic models. Up to 2020, no newspapers in French-speaking Africa had set up paid-for access to their websites (although a very small number allow the full pdf version of the paper to be bought online). Publishers argue that, besides technical issues related to remote payments, they have no means to prevent this paid-for content from circulating widely through social networks, making them lose custom for the paper edition. This lack of strategic planning is striking, considering that traditional newspapers are faced with growing competition from digital-only news providers… unless, of course, selling and reaching a wide audience is not their priority…
18 It should be noted that some newspapers also target Northern media which aggregate and publish roundups of the African press. The French weekly Courrier international , that translates and publishes articles from media located all over the world (in order to give a local view on local events) systematically use the same African newspapers. Some of these African newspapers like Le Pays in Burkina Faso, have understood that being republished by Courrier international can be financially rewarding, and therefore have a tendency to publish articles that might attract the attention of a foreign audience. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that most stories related to French-speaking African countries are taken from international media such as Foreign Affairs or the New York Times rather than from the local African press, which is viewed as having a too “local” perspective.
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Among the news producers that exist only online, a few success stories deserve mention. In Rwanda (Frère et al. 2014, 68), the trilingual online news site (Kinyarwanda, French and English) Igihe.com, initially founded by students from the School of Journalism and Communication at the National University of Rwanda, was economically viable at the outset, with 60,000 hits a day. In Burkina Faso, Lefaso.net and Burkina24 have developed an online news service that is financially viable thanks to advertising, though profits remain low, making investment in more personnel or equipment impossible, and thus making diversification of content difficult. In the DRC, Actualités.cd is one of the most popular platforms and in Burundi, the online news site, Iwacu, has 90,000 hits a day, but has barely been able to convert its critical success into profitability and still relies mainly on international donors support. 3.3
Radio: Africa’s Premier Medium with a Scattered and Undefined Audience
Despite the progress of connectivity, radio remains the first medium in many French-speaking African countries, though huge disparities related to access do exist. For example, capital cities are home to numerous FM stations, while provincial towns have only local FM stations with comparatively narrow reach. National radio is available on medium- or short-wave bands or on FM via provincial relays. Pluralistic programming does exist, but it does not reach all listeners outside large metropolitan areas, who often have little in the way of choice. In 2010 in Cameroon, for example, citizens of Meiganga or Garoua were only served by their one local community FM station while Yaoundé and Douala offered dozens. If radio remains Africa’s most accessible medium and the one through which most citizens stay up to date (Lenoble-Bart and Tudesq 2008), this is not to say that it is their favorite medium. A 2012 study of radio audiences in the DRC, Burundi, and Rwanda uncovered the reasons behind radio’s popularity (Frère 2016): its lower cost, wider availability, and the fact that it still functions independently of the power grid. Cell phones also allow for a more intimate relationship with radio, as family or friends nearby cannot overhear. But many respondents also underlined that they would prefer television, if they could afford one, and had a steady power supply. Up to now, the biggest obstacle to improving the profitability of radio rests in the weak number of regular consumer studies carried out because
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of the lack of companies implementing reliable and affordable audience surveys. The data from the few adequate consumer studies that are done are not in the public domain (Lenoble-Bart and Tudesq 2008, 94–103). Up until the mid-2000s, the only regular surveys were commissioned by either large commercial conglomerates (Coca-Cola, cigarette manufacturers, etc.) in large cities (Abidjan, Dakar etc.), or international media (RFI, BBC, or UN-backed radio stations) wanting to demonstrate their audience reach to their donor agencies. Two major companies currently implement audience surveys in Francophone Africa: Kantar (previously TNS-Sofres) which developed Africascope to monitor media consumption in the capitals of six countries (Cameroon, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, Mali, and Gabon), and the Franco-Algerian company IMMAR (which has conducted ad hoc studies mainly for international NGOs in the DRC and Burundi). Privately owned radio stations in Africa generally cannot afford to buy Kantar’s data, which are very broad and rank the listenership of stations without detailing which programs are most popular. IMMAR’s data are easier to access but they are mainly focused on the particular concerns of the commissioning organization. Nevertheless, stations have started to take interest in surveys, due to increasing competition and the commercial value of a demonstrable listenership. In the DRC, a local survey agency, TARGET, has carried out surveys of the media audience in Kinshasa since 2012, and did its first national-level survey in 2017. The fact that many audience research companies have started appearing in several countries (sometimes making fanciful claims), demonstrates that media owners are beginning to grasp that audience figures can help them attract advertisers. Nevertheless, in many countries, these polling companies lack credibility and the widespread perception is that media owners can actually “buy” a higher place in these audience rankings. Aid organizations are also commissioning an increasing number of audience surveys, often by foreign companies, to help identify radio stations that warrant support, but also to demonstrate to their own hierarchy or funders that the public funds invested in media (be they local, UN-backed or international) are worth the investment because they reach large audiences. Managers at Radio France Internationale (RFI), for instance, are aware that their audiences must remain high in order for the French government to continue supporting their French language “Africa Service”. (These data could, in theory, be shared with local stations, so the latter could approach advertisers with reliable figures, but they are not).
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These surveys often demonstrate that audiences are lower than claimed by local radio stations because of issues relating to terrain or deficient equipment (e.g.,many transmitters are not well maintained and suffer from inclement weather and the consequent reduction in transmission capacity). Despite its popularity, radio, especially in rural areas, is unable to make its listenership profitable, because the audience is too poor and insufficiently segmented and studied to interest advertisers. In rural areas, some radio stations earn extra income by organizing concerts or renting out sound equipment. For example, community radios in Cameroon and the DRC have used their Wi-Fi to generate revenue by offering high-speed Internet access to the community and public secretarial services. 3.4
The Limited Scope but High Popularity of Television
Television is becoming the most popular medium in several large cities (Kinshasa, Abidjan, Dakar etc.). It is still generally consumed collectively compared to radio which is becoming a more individual experience. The price of a television set remains high (about a third of a government employee’s monthly salary) and remains dependent on the power grid, which can be an issue in a number of large cities (N’Djamena, Bujumbura, Brazzaville, etc.). With the exception of the evening news, television consumption is predominantly entertainment (soap operas, telenovelas , music shows, debates about social issues, etc.). The incentive for media companies to set up a television channel is linked to the quasi-mythical fascination of the medium and its purported power of persuasion. In most Francophone African countries, if privately owned television channels exist at all, they are confined to the capital and only state television is broadcast outside the capital. The DRC is an exception: not only does the country have over 500 private television stations (of which 50 or so are in Kinshasa), but some broadcast over the entire country (Digital TV, Télé 50, and DSTV1 are available via satellite). In rural areas, television functionality is limited by the fact that it is not battery operated, though some units can be powered by a car battery (which must then be recharged in town), solar panels, or a generator. Despite its educational potential, television remains largely an entertainment medium. Television (both private and state-owned) attracts more advertisers than radio, despite its smaller audience, because this audience includes those with higher purchasing power. There are no more reliable figures
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for television audiences than for radio, but advertisers, making their own assessment of the market, tend to favor the former. Burundi’s Télé Renaissance (the only privately owned television station offering news programming), at its outset, ran both a radio and a television channel, and it was its television advertising revenue which supported the radio station. However, because the cost of production is much higher for television, higher advertising revenue is not always adequate to fully cover operating costs, rendering television not necessarily more financially stable than radio. Media consumption therefore essentially reflects the general consumer structure in countries with huge disparities in purchasing power and access to consumer goods. On one side is a small elite that has access to foreign imports and media—and who are of interest to advertisers, and on the other is the large majority of the population with limited financial resources, and who, even if they are able to afford a transistor radio, still do not have enough disposable income to be of interest to advertisers.
4
The Widespread Opacity of Finance: The Dark Side of the Media?
Given that the press and broadcasters are trapped in a media system where audiences are either limited to a wealthy urban elite, are generally too poor to attract advertisers and/or are too geographically remote to be reached, then the question is: how come these media exist and keep operating? While many newspapers have disappeared over the past 20 years, the number of media outlets keeps growing, and most broadcasters have survived. Political scientists Chabal and Daloz concluded, at the end of the 1990s, that African political systems, while appearing disordered, have continued to benefit a certain elite, which has been able to translate that social disorder into patronage resources and that, therefore, Africa “worked” (1999). They emphasize the fact that disorder can be politically instrumental for leaders, in order to capture the democracy-building industry and its foreign resources, while not fundamentally changing their mode of governance. The same can be said of media systems in Frenchspeaking Africa: despite a disorganized sector (or maybe thanks to it) and an unfavorable economic context, African media work… Where does their sustainability come from? In this section, we will explore the four major sources of revenue for most media: personal investment by the owner (the Big Man or his covert
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backers such as political parties or other groups), the opaque advertising sector, sponsored features and programs, and ultimately the multiple variants of “gombo” and “coupage”, so crucial to the survival of individual journalists. 4.1
Seed Money: The Unsaid and the Reckonings
Each time a new media outlet appears in French-speaking Africa, the first question asked is: who is behind this initiative? Who has provided the required funding? Even if some administrative steps are necessary, and an owner has to be officially registered, it is not always clear where the money has actually come from. Most publishers behind newspapers, whether printed or online (which cost less to establish), are coy about the capital base of their enterprise, which is often comprised of a “personal contribution” sprinkled with “a little help from friends”. This was certainly the modus operandi at the beginning of the 1990s when the press blossomed. Many companies that are well structured and professionally managed today started in more shadowy financial circumstances that blended opportunism of a particular moment in time (e.g. elections, social upheaval), personal motivation, and individual backing from personal acquaintances in the political or business sectors. After all, starting a newspaper only requires a computer, a small advance to pay the print shop, or a good internet connection and a web host for online projects. At least that is what many would-be publishers thought, whose newspapers or websites were short-lived. In broadcasting, start-up costs are higher and specialized imported equipment is required. It is not uncommon, however, for a well-organized and cohesive group to raise the funds necessary to get their community radio off the ground. The low-tech nature of most of the equipment means that a radio station can be set up at about 10,000 USD. The capital requirements for television are exponentially greater than for the written press or radio, especially if original programming is planned. Because television stations are often created out of a preexisting radio infrastructure they can profit from a certain economy of scale, but starting budgets are still high for a studio, control room, and equipment. Personal investment (by, for example, the well-known singer, Youssou N’Dour, in the Future Media Group, Senegal; or by the wealthy businessman and former Governor of the Katanga province, Moïse Katumbi in Lubumbashi, DRC) or support from another Big Man is almost always
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necessary because media enterprises cannot obtain bank credit allowing them to set up and develop their projects in Francophone Africa. Exceptionally, the Rwandan radio station Contact FM and the newspaper Iwacu in Burundi were both granted bank loans at start-up, but as a rule, media are considered to be high-risk enterprises by lending institutions. The origin of investments in private media is generally shrouded in secrecy19 but rumors as well as the analysis of media content can help identify who is “behind” the project. It is bewildering, on occasion to find some media (or “press mercenaries”) suddenly changing editorial line after receiving money from a new political or economic actor. But for outlets financed by foreign institutions and cooperatives (like UN-sponsored media or community radios) the situation is different, since usually well-established guidelines on the makeup of the media enterprise receiving support are followed. Funding is derived from national budgets allocated via bilateral or multilateral aid organizations, and donors may be answerable to their own parliaments on this type of funding. 4.2
Publicity and Advertising: A Poorly Structured and Highly Politicized Market
For media outlets that are not officially linked to a political party or a rich individual, what makes the press sustainable (or even profitable) should be advertising. In Francophone Africa, the context has not been conducive, and the advertising market is poorly developed. Until the end of the 1990s most enterprises belonged to the state and enjoyed a monopoly in their segment of the market (telecoms, breweries, airlines, insurance companies and banks), and therefore had no interest in advertising. The large corporate entities who were potential advertisers were far more apt to advertise in state- or in government-friendly media (Frère et al. 2014). In Cameroon, for example, public media consumes 75% of the advertising market; evaluated at 20 billion FCFA (30.5 million e) (Atenga 2012, 18). Commercial African dailies usually count on advertising by
19 Mor Faye (2008), studying the press in Senegal, notes that two major senior journal-
ists, the investigative journalist, Abdou Latif Coulibaly from Sud Communication and the former director of Le Soleil, El Hadj Kassé, both wrote books about politics (Coulibaly 1999) and the media (Kassé 2002) in Senegal without mentioning anything concerning the origins of the funding for their press groups or concerning the relationships between politics and the media.
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low-cost government notices (legal notices, calls for tenders) or social notices (obituaries) rather than commercial advertising. When mobile phone companies arrived on the scene, they boosted media budgets: MTN, Airtel, Orange, and Tigo have, at times, been the only commercial advertisers in the written press. But these large companies do not always settle their advertising contracts promptly. Public institutions and ministries are also notoriously in arrears on advertising accounts with both public and commercial media. Even international institutions like the UNDP and the World Bank are often slow in settling advertising accounts. Unpaid government notices have a serious impact, especially on the budgets of state media. Many state services continue to consider public media to be just another branch of government and paying for notices published or broadcast remains low on their list of priorities. The volume of public notices is far from negligible, given every position filled in the public sector calls for a public announcement to be considered official. In Guinea, there exists a long-standing conflict between the OGP (Office guinéen de la publicité), whose mandate is to manage the advertising revenue of public media, and the RTG (Radio Télévision guinéenne), which claims not to receive the fees it is due (Matras et al. 2015, 51). In commercial media, competition puts downward pressure on advertising revenue, as media enterprises accept lower advertising fees to get ahead of their competition. To avoid these cut-throat practices that tilt advertising rates heavily in favor of the buyers, media in several countries (Burkina Faso, Chad and Congo-Brazzaville, among others) have tried to adopt a common price scale for advertising and notices. Such fixed pricing does not sit well with everybody. Some publishers protest the practice, claiming that it interferes with free-market practice. But where controls are not in place, the devaluing of advertising space creates an inflationary spiral that results in a saturation of advertising. For example, the pages of the Burkinabè daily L’Observateur Paalga, will sometimes be covered 75% with advertising and public notices (Nikiéma and Tiao 1999, 31). Media bosses also complain of the absence of a “culture of advertising” among advertisers; that is, an incomplete understanding of marketing parameters and how to interact with the various media. Also at issue are the increasing demands of advertisers: without regulations or an
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advertising code of ethics,20 advertisers put increasing pressure on media establishments, with contracts that are constantly renegotiated in an unstructured and saturated sector. If the line between the newsroom and the advertising desk is indistinct within media outlets, it is even more blurred in the mind of some advertisers who do not understand how a newspaper or radio station that sells them advertising can possibly be critical of them in their news coverage. In Cameroon in 2009, when a strike broke out at Orange (telecom company), one of its managers contacted local media, threatening to suspend advertisements if these outlets covered the strike. In Francophone Africa most media outlets negotiate directly with each advertiser, as there are no centralized advertising agencies, and because personal relations between the owner/director of the media house and the advertiser is the decisive issue. Some agencies have emerged over the last few years, but many do not offer professional quality work and only a handful of media houses use their services. Fondation Hirondelle—the original supporter of Radio Okapi in the DRC—has tried to create a management hub to centralize advertisements broadcast by its partner radio stations (of which there are dozens), but this has proved very difficult, given the personal-contacts culture. The lack of commercial services within media establishments, especially in rural radio, contributes to their lack of solvency. Most radio stations obtain advertising contracts as a result of individual efforts by staff members or the director. Community radios are not allowed to broadcast commercials, or allowed to do so in a severely limited quantity. But in some of these stations the difference between commercial advertising and community notices is nuanced: for example, when a local traditional healer speaks on air about the benefits of his medicines, is it advertising? Commercial advertisers also have a preference for entertainment programming that is usually not locally produced, and have very little interest in news programs which tend to have lower audiences. Latin American melodramas, which attract viewers likely to respond to advertisements for laundry detergent or bouillon cubes, are particularly favored
20 Côte d’Ivoire is the exception in that in 1979 it created the Conseil supérieur de la publicité (CSP, reformed in 1996). It is comprised of representatives from several government departments (Communications, Commerce, the Interior, Health, Justice, and Industry), the media regulator (HACA), advertisers, consumers, and professional associations. It is responsible for regulating advertising and laying out a code of ethics.
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by advertisers. Furthermore, Francophone Africa is infamous for its clandestine advertising practices. In Chad, for example, radio hosts at Dja FM and FM Liberté slip in unofficial advertisements on air for which they are paid off the books; and in the DRC, at one commercial radio station actors in a radio play negotiated private deals with commercial concerns to insert the company’s name directly in the script of the sketch without consulting the director (and, naturally, pocketing the fee personally). In these informal economies, every journalist tries to find the funds necessary for his/her own programs; therefore, many accept guests who are willing to pay for being on screen or on air. Poverty is a downward spiral for many media outlets: financially precarious publications have trouble meeting their publishing schedules, which makes them less attractive to advertisers, and the lack of advertising revenue then threatens the publication schedule, and so on. On the other hand, advertisers have confidence in well-established media and provide them with revenue to guarantee publication schedules. In African media, wealth attracts wealth while poverty cycles downward. Finally, it should be noted that many major companies in Africa, particularly in the extractive sector, do not want to advertise at all. Africa is not a service economy (in which advertising is necessary), but remains, similar to colonial times, in what Achille Mbembe calls an economy of mining and predation, where natural resources are exploited by foreign companies, with very little profit for locals (Mbembe 2010). In this type of unfettered capitalism, mining companies and their ilk prefer to operate away from journalists’ prying eyes, in isolated and secure locations, often engaged in illegal trade with local leaders or rebel movements, or with those at the heart of the state apparatus. This form of “criminal” and “informal” enterprise is absent from the advertising market. Why would an Israeli company extracting diamonds in Central Africa have any interest in making itself known? Why would a Canadian or South African gold mining company in Eastern Congo, Burkina Faso, or Mali have anything to do with the media? They might interact with the Big Man behind a media outlet, but if so, it would be to ensure that local journalists do not delve too far into their murky deals. 4.3
Sponsored Features and Programs
When it comes to the evening television news, all such bulletins on both commercial and state channels consist of a succession of “paid
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for” features. Most television stations price these prime slots at between 75,000 and 250,000 FCFA ($135–455 USD) for two minutes of coverage, which means that the evening news can bring in several million FCFA to the television company. But the way these benefits are redistributed or invested remains a mystery. Editors in chief argue that the money earned by these “paid for” pieces of news allow the team to cover “real” hard or breaking news which otherwise would not get funded. Another way media outlets can generate income is by having a partner co-produce a feature or program on a specific theme. Sponsors are often development and/or funding agencies who want to produce programming or articles on specific topics like health, the rights of women and children, the environment, etc. (Adjovi 2012). For instance, the Institut Panos (Paris and Dakar) has supported newspapers and broadcasters to cover environmental and migration issues. In Burundi and other conflictaffected countries, many sponsors support independent radio stations to produce and air programming aimed at peacebuilding, reconciliation, disarmament, and transitional justice. The status of these productions can be ambiguous: are they journalistic productions or paid-for “infomercials”? The survival of many community radio stations depends on this type of funding. This confers on the main donors a certain influence over media owners and may serve to steer the editorial line of a media outlet in a particular direction. For example, donor priorities might include the fight against HIV/Aids, reconciliation, peaceful elections, etc., at the expense of other topics that might hold more interest for local journalists and the audience. A 2007 study in Bujumbura discovered that sponsored thematic news programs on Burundian radio were considered boring by many listeners (Fyon 2007). And, of course, these programs come to an end as soon as the financial support finishes. Some donors and development partners produce their own programs in local production studios, mainly to ensure that the messages transmitted adhere strictly to their required standards. These are then given as ready-to-air programs to radio stations, along with the requisite airtime fees. These programs are often in an ill-defined zone between news and communication, they convey information but also promote the donor’s perspective on the issue. In Burundi, where several such production studios exist, independent radio stations complain about these programs (even if they do bring in revenue from airtime sold) because they sidestep the stations’ own production facilities. They accuse production studios
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of hoarding human resources and hijacking foreign donor funding that could otherwise be used to support radio stations, which become mere “relays” (Nindorera et al. 2013, 164). In Bukavu (Eastern DRC), the former director of the community radio, Maendeleo, has complained that these sponsored or pre-produced programs fill all the available airtime, leaving no spare for his own journalists who wanted to launch their own news programs on other topics, but he could not refuse these partnerships since they made his station financially sustainable. In Goma (also Eastern DRC), at Radio Pole FM at least 30% of its daily schedule consists of programs related to or provided by humanitarian institutions (Fierens 2018). In an unstable zone like Eastern DRC, where fighting has continued for almost three decades, there is a plethora of humanitarian organizations—providing the primary economic force in cities like Goma, and many journalists view their jobs, ultimately, as “go-betweens” between these organizations and the population. Donor-backed programming is less significant for television because most funding agencies do not regard television as the best medium for educating the population. Nevertheless, these same agencies are often willing to “invite” television journalists to come to visit their projects or to pay them to cover their workshops, in order to appear in the evening news. It is at this point that “gombo”—often the main source of personal revenue for individual journalists—permeates the whole media economy. 4.4
Individual Revenue: “gombo” and Its Many Aliases
If African media “works”, it is not only because there is often a Big Man behind it, or because advertisers or partners buy space and airtime to disseminate their messages, it is also because every morning there are men and women who get up to make their living as journalists. Salaries may be low, and sometimes nonexistent, but, as already mentioned, there are the personal side benefits of “gombo”, “per diems”, “coupage”, “camorra”, “giti”, “nem nem”, “transport”, “communiqué final” and others (as discussed in Chapters 3 and 5). Though they might not indeed figure in a media outlet’s business accounts, these sources of revenue are an integral part of the media economy, and are linked to what Thomas Atenga terms the “lumpénisation”—or the precarity—of African journalists (2012, 20). The origin of gombo varies from one country to another. In some places, it was in fact development NGOs who (unknowingly) contributed to etching it into media professionals’ daily practices. NGOs, anxious
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to show their effectiveness to the donors, sought to ensure that their activities were covered by the local press. This led them to provide local journalists with the means to travel to cover their projects or to press conferences, which eventually mushroomed to include food, lodging, and a per diem to ensure their presence. The practice has taken on a life of its own to include all organized events, where at the end of the ceremony, meeting, or assembly, journalists are slipped an envelope containing at least 5000 F.CFA ($9 USD). The articles or news spots journalists then produce are presented as news and not infomercials. In Cameroon, the practice started at the state broadcaster (CRTV) after the CFA franc was devalued in 1994, and developed alongside the growth of multipartyism, with each new political party eager to pay for press coverage (Nyamnjoh 2005). Though it is difficult to estimate the monthly or cumulative value of these per diems (they are individually managed and unrecorded), journalists acknowledge that these “envelopes” constitute a significant portion of their monthly salary. Media managers tolerate and even promote this practice, knowing full well that it is the only way their staff is able to earn a living wage. In Guinea, over 25% of journalists work as “volunteers”, that is to say, their only pay being what they receive as “nem nem”, and this is the predominant work arrangement outside the capital (Matras et al. 2015, 51). Deals are especially lucrative during elections, when candidates who do not own their own media outlets pay to gain visibility. This informal revenue for the journalist creates an earning shortfall for the media enterprise, and has caused some bosses to respond by systematically charging for this kind of reporting: a reporter is only allowed to attend an event if the organizer pays the media outlet directly, as per a certain invoiced amount. This in turn may deprive the reporter of the complementary revenue, but, increasingly, both the media outlet submits its invoice and the reporters and technical crew as well. Some research has demonstrated that this small-scale “merchandising of journalistic work” may obfuscate more substantial corruption practices whose only goal is to increase personal wealth (Adjovi 2003). Emmanuel Adjovi deploys Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan’s “corruption complex” system21 to identify three types of corruption practices present in Beninese media: besides the “per diem”, he identifies a practice that he calls 21 For Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, a “corruption complex” encompasses all the practices of “nepotism, abuse of power, obstruction, embezzlement and other financial malfeasance, influence peddling, maladministration, insider trading, misuse of company
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“grand corruption”; which consists in setting up a permanent deal with a politician to polish his/her image or to destroy or bring discredit to his or her opponents. In this case, the journalists or the editor is hired to serve a specific communication campaign goal. The governments of Togo and Cameroon are well known for practicing these types of deals. Adjovi shows how these interactions can be profitable for both parties: for a young generation of politicians who need the press to make themselves known because they do not yet have the regional basis or ethnic network allowing them to be major political figures; and for the media owner who can make a large profit (a profit that will not necessarily be invested in their media outlet but will be for personal enrichment). Sometimes, this can lead to blackmail: some journalists will let a political or economic actor know that s/he has some evidence about some kind of misconduct (or sometimes stories completely made up), and will ask to be paid to remain silent. Emmanuel Adjovi insists that these corruption practices have a twofold effect: they promote pluralism (because they allow media to survive and convey a diversity of opinions, as, in the same newspaper, different journalists may have different arrangements with different politicians, and therefore a plurality of voices appear in the news) and they weaken the democratic process (because they are at odds with the public’s right to honest and accurate information). Adjovi also distinguishes a third type of interaction generating personal revenue for Beninese journalists, which is commonplace in many other countries: the double dipping as journalist and as press attaché. As mentioned before, many journalists boost their work in the newsroom with (more or less official) positions as communication officers for other institutions or business organizations. Therefore, they are sometimes in the position of paying “gombo” to their colleague after a press conference that they themselves have organized. The interactions between journalists and institutional or business communicators are at the core of the fieldwork implemented in Cameroon by Thomas Atenga (2014). He borrows from Bourdieu the expression of “mutual lucidities” (“lucidités croisées ”), which means that, within their field, both parties have internalized the way they should interact, so that each one’s interest is fulfilled. The two
assets…” that “insinuate themselves into a common normative fabric of social attitudes” (1996, 97).
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professions are different, they are at the same time partners and opponents,22 but in Africa the border is especially blurred. Communication executives know perfectly well that if they do not pay the standard amount to journalists, the latter will publish a negatively biased report of their event or institution, or just not publish anything at all. But for a journalist who makes just 120,000 FCFA (approx. $220 USD) per month, adding 10,000–25,000 FCFA ($18–$45 USD) for each article or broadcast (sometimes several times on the same day) makes a huge difference at the end of the month. Another strategy that some journalists have developed is to develop a privileged relationship with the PR teams of large companies, of Big Men or of political parties, circumventing the actual director or owner. In Cameroon, journalist clubs of “friends of MTN”, “friends of Orange”, or “friends of Paul Biya” have been established (Atenga 2014). In Burkina Faso, journalists “friends of Blaise Compaoré” used to be well known. In Togo and Benin, journalists can earn more than their monthly salary by reporting the opinions of each individual in their newsroom to the intelligence services or directly to the president’s office. And international NGOs have contributed to the creation of journalist clubs called “friends of Unicef”, or “friends of the Red Cross”, that they will call, as a priority, if they organize a workshop or a press conference which they want covered by the press. Belonging to such groups not only increases journalists’ financial capital but sometimes also gives them prestige that they can use to find better jobs in politics, business, or in the “aid industry”. Ndangam (2006) has identified six other strategies that journalists can implement to get “gombo”, including the following: pre-publication payment (agreeing on story focus and negotiating payment before publication); “ambushing” (visiting an elite individual after publishing a particularly positive story on him or her); blackmail (running a teaser about a potentially “explosive” story concerning an individual or organization and then ask them to “do something” to halt publication). All these financial and strategic interactions that journalists may implement in their daily coverage or maintain with their own privileged “partners” constitute a large part of the media economy but are impossible to quantify. They contribute greatly to the fact that journalists 22 The French sociologist Jean-Baptiste Legavre (2011) uses the expression “associésrivaux” (“partner competitors”).
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actually remain in the profession even though the pay is low. According to Mor Faye (2008), the generalization of “gombo” or “per diem” practices is in fact a form of “externalization” by media outlets of the burden of their payrolls. Media bosses know they can keep wages low because the majority of journalists’ earnings will be derived from other sources. If a journalist succeeds in buying a motorcycle or a car, or in building a house (three major markers of social advancement in many African countries) in just a few years in the job, it will be clear that it is not thanks to his/her salary. These practices have more of an impact on media content than staff numbers or skills, or the available equipment in the newsroom. This reflects the dark side of the media, which, again, raises the issue of who the media is really talking to: a public that deserves to be informed or a “partner” who has paid-for media visibility?
5
Foreign Aid, the Imported Revenue Stream of the Media Economy
One particular trait of the media economy in French-speaking Africa is that many enterprises receive financial aid from foreign donor agencies and international NGOs in addition to the more conventional local revenue streams. These donors have been very attentive to the media sector since the beginning of the African democratization process of the early 1990s.23 Dozens of “media assistance”24 organizations have sought to support the media sector in Africa in a variety of ways (Fra 2000): NGOs dedicated themselves to helping the new private media; large donors like the European Union have spent substantial amounts of money supporting journalists’ democratic role during electoral processes; while others supported explicit efforts (in regions that had experienced 23 According to Kumar (2006), international media assistance programs started during the 1990s with the fall of the USSR and the will of western donors to rebuild “democratic” societies in the former Soviet empire. Then came the wars in the Balkans that focused the attention on the role of media during and after civil wars. At around the same time international funding for media projects was directed to “many African countries – such as Burundi, Congo and Liberia – to ease ethnic and religious tensions while promoting tolerance and peaceful coexistence” (Kumar 2006, 6). 24 Much information on this subject is available on the Washington-based CIMA (Center for International Media Assistance) website: www.cima.org (consulted on 23 April 2021). The main organizations active in the sector are members of the Global Forum for Media Development: https://gfmd.info/members/# (consulted on 23 April 2021).
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armed conflict) by local media to restore peace and move towards reconciliation (Frère 2013). As Krishna Kumar (2006, 1) has underlined: “Such assistance is based on an underlying assumption that independent media contribute to the building of democracy and economic development”. Many French-speaking media organizations have benefited from this democratization “cash cow”, as media assistance is included in donors’ “toolkit” of democracy assistance, alongside the development of civil society, the consolidation of new democratic institutions, political pluralism, and decentralization, and, of course, free and fair elections. 5.1
Thirty Years of Various Media Projects
International aid to media can be defined as “any kind of support that helps foster free and unbiased media in developing countries” or in transition towards democracy (Myers 2009, 8). In Francophone Africa, media assistance projects have been implemented by multilateral donors (EU, Unicef, Unesco, Pnud, OIF, FAO, African Development Bank, World Bank), bilateral donors, and their main aid agencies or ministries (mainly UK-FCDO (formerly DFID), US-USAID, France, Canada-CIDA, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden-SIDA, DenmarkDanida). Most of them do not implement the projects directly but use “intermediaries”, e.g. specialized international NGO’s that may be more or less linked to their home governments (e.g. Fondation Hirondelle in Switzerland; La Benevolencija and Free Press/Press Now in the Netherlands; Développement et Paix in Canada; the National Endowment for Democracy, Search for Common Ground and Internews in the U.SA; International Media Support in Denmark; Institut Panos Paris and Gret in France). Professional international organizations in this sector (e.g. International Federation of Journalists, Reporters without Borders [RSF] and the World Association of Newspapers) also hold important positions in what has become a huge market. Public institutions (the major international broadcasters, such as RFI, BBC Media Action, Radio Netherlands, Deutsche Welle Akademie) have developed their own projects to support media, American foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, and Open Society Foundation for instance), as well as German political foundations (Friedrich Ebert, Friedrich Naumann and Konrad Adenauer Stiftungen) have also invested in media assistance in Africa for decades. The first years of media liberalization in Africa witnessed an explosion of such media assistance initiatives, haphazard and uncoordinated, with
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the basic goal of training journalists and better informing the public. One workshop after another was offered on various themes (which would often be repeated) such as journalism ethics, the role of journalists during elections, parliamentary or legal journalism, economic or cultural journalism, and so on. In the 1990s, for about a decade, a sort of journalists’ jet set developed. The same publishers and media directors were invited by international organizations to workshops in Africa or all over the world; always the same people traveling to fancy hotels, complaining loudly about the attacks on press freedom in their countries, but silencing the other types of interactions, the dangerous liaisons between parts of the press and the political and economic Big Men, and the way much of the media were actually more political than democratic tools. Several media outlets and journalists insisted on their positions as “victims” of old dictatorships (Cameroon, Togo, Zaïre), protesting loudly each time one of them was arrested or jailed, even when actually guilty of libel, insult, or blackmail. International organizations then started to better structure their interventions in order to “professionalize” the sector, which meant, in general, besides training, visits from Western consultants, financial and technical assistance to media outlets (especially the ones in politically sensitive positions), and assistance to state media in order to facilitate their conversion into public broadcasters. Development partners quickly refined their approaches and strategies to focus on longer-term programs and to develop their vision of what role the media should play in Africa and how they should work—often reflecting their own systems: for US donors, the main idea was (and is) to build independence from the state and from business concerns, thanks to the revenue from advertising, in order to play a real “watchdog” role. But European countries such as the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, France, Germany, and the Netherlands were/are more aligned to the public service broadcasting model, and also pay attention to strengthening public monitoring and regulatory institutions. The aim of Western donors was no less than to transform African media systems in order to contribute to global political change. (However, as mentioned earlier, China’s growing media assistance has completely challenged these normative views; China emphasizes cooperation with governments, many of them undemocratic, but also completely melds media assistance and public diplomacy.)
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Indeed, from the very beginning of media assistance, two positions stand out: the first considers media to be vectors of a specific message, for example, as vehicles to help consolidate the democratization process (Berger 2010); development (Scott 2014); or fight poverty (like the World Bank’s efforts); support good governance; or make media instruments of peace and reconciliation (like efforts by the American group Search for Common Ground, the Dutch Benevolencija, or the Swiss Fondation Hirondelle, etc.). The second position, as exemplified by the Institut Panos Paris and Gret, approaches media as enterprises to support by helping them acquire good management skills, enforce employee status, and support efforts to modernize infrastructure, without influencing content. This distinction reflects a larger and sometimes hazy differentiation between “media development” (an approach that aims to strengthen and professionalize media businesses) and “media for development” (an approach whose goal is to mobilize media in support to reach the population and reach other goals) (Scott 2014), which we will discuss in Chapter 7. A delicate issue has been to make the donors distinguish the difference between “media assistance” and “public diplomacy” (Kumar 2006). Where media development aims at strengthening local journalism, public diplomacy aims at reinforcing the visibility of the donor organization or donor-country and uses the media to convey a positive image. This confusion (again between information and communication) has remained a constant concern within radio stations backed by UN peacebuilding missions. The same problem arises with China’s interventions: “rather than use the terms of media assistance and aid, Chinese actors prefer to frame their activities in the media sector as forms of ‘collaboration and exchange’, aimed at encouraging ‘mutual understanding’ and at counterbalancing the negative reporting of both China and Africa in Western media” (Higgins 2014, 10). The types of support efforts initiated by funding agencies and international NGOs vary: some prioritize community initiatives (the creation of “maisons de la presse” and professional associations, or the training of journalists, technicians or managers); others support one type of media, or even the creation of new media outlets (in particular community radios and radio production studios). Foreign funding can be ad hoc or integrated into ongoing global programs that support several different actors in the media sector (like the programs sponsored by Institut Panos, Gret, Internews, and others).
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Some projects are concerned only with journalists and media outlets, while others include diverse actors (e.g. regulators and self-regulating agencies, professional organizations, production studios, etc.). Much of this activity takes place within larger programs (support for good governance, organization of free and peaceful elections, human rights, economic reform, etc.), but others focus on the media sector, and especially on journalists. The most significant governments supporting the media sector in Francophone Africa are the US and European bilateral donors. Worldwide, the US currently leads with donations in support of media worth approx. $450 million USD between 2010 and 2015, while Germany, Japan, and Sweden were second, third, and fourth over the same period (donating respectively just over $300 million, just under $200 million, and $150 million USD) (Myers and Juma 2018). Our own country-specific research in the D R Congo (Frère 2011) showed that over a decade (2001–2011), donors spent $80 million USD on the media in the DRC, aimed at creating “neutral” and “apolitical” media (such as Radio Okapi), as well as direct support to existing outlets, media staff training, strengthening of local professional organizations, and supporting public institutions regulating the media sector. This interest in the media sector by donor agencies has had several consequences. For one, competition for money is fierce, especially between specialized Western-based agencies. International NGOs answer the same call for tenders launched by big donors (e.g. EU, Sida, USAID) and interact with the same local associations of journalists or publishers because they need local partners in each country they operate in. This means they tend to be secretive and share little about their activities, least of all critical appraisals of their successes and failures (even though project assessments are piled up on their shelves). All is well, it would seem, in the media support world, because open discussions among donors and NGOs about difficulties or failures of some projects are rare and public declarations denouncing wrongdoings are not welcome. In 1995, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs financed the establishment of ParMa (Partenaires des médias africains), a network that was supposed to create a conducive communication between donor agencies to share program scheduling and minimize overlap on projects and strategies (too often three different training workshops on the same subject would be held in the same city). However, ParMa had mitigated success because of a lack of effective exchange of information or critical distance:
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each agency boasted of the success of its activities; congratulated themselves on their choice of local partners; and waved around evaluation reports praising their own activities. ParMa disappeared in 2001 for a lack of funding. The Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) was created in 2010 to unite several hundred organizations specialized in supporting media across the globe. This network has undertaken various campaigns to keep media near the top of the agenda of the big funding agencies, especially in the context of the adoption of new sustainable development goals in 2015 by the UN (Orme 2015), and then around the adoption of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal number 16:10, dedicated to access to information and fundamental freedoms. But the GFMD also finds it difficult to work for better coordination among international organizations, given they are competitive by nature. A second consequence of the significant funding available to African media has been that some local media actors have survived by being “tube fed”. A study conducted in Burundi, for example, demonstrated that the main independent news media outlets depended on foreign funding agencies for 35–80% of their financing (Nindorera et al. 2013). Before its near total destruction in May 2015, Burundi’s independent media sector was completely dependent on outside funding. In the DRC, the only public media outlet worthy of the name (Radio Okapi), is still almost entirely subsidized by the international community, which makes its sustainability extremely precarious (Orme 2010). A third effect can be seen at the level of local professional associations and organizations of media personnel who have quickly understood the possible benefits of foreign partners. They have set up strategies designed to attract funds that have sometimes involved realigning their initial goals to match those more likely to attract financing. However, in this bountiful market of African media funding, local organizations and media have often found themselves in the untenable position of trying to avoid conflict with the large NGOs of the global North, which provide the majority of funds for media projects (whilst also using these funds to pay for their own offices and salaries in Brussels, New York, London or Paris), while also accusing them of skimming large dividends off the top of these budgets, intended to help local initiatives (Frère 2009b). The frustration of these small-scale organizations is even greater given the hurdles they face to access the substantial multilateral financing granted on the basis of project tenders. At the most, they may receive a modest sum from
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a benevolent consulate to organize a workshop or a one-off event, but they cannot compete with the large international NGOs who justify their presence in the sector by invoking the skills gap that exists between themselves and local organizations in terms of general competence, technical capabilities, and monitoring and evaluation capacities. Applying for an EU-funded project, for instance, requires substantial knowledge and time to fulfill EU bureaucratic procedures, such that today many media assistance projects are submitted by private consultancy companies who do not know anything about the media (nor elections, or the police or the judiciary, or whatever system they wish to professionalize by answering calls for tender) but who have the capacity to deal with the burden of paper work required, in association with specialist organizations. In the current environment of media assistance, some INGOs have developed specialist knowledge and a cadre of experts who share a “transnational media culture” that crosses borders (Miller 2009). These INGOs and experts are generally internationally mobile, carrying around, and spreading, a shared media assistance culture. However, in French-speaking Africa, very few have been able to transfer their skills to local experts or organizations: although aid has not succeeded in making the media sustainable, it has done well in giving sustainability to most of the international NGOs involved in the sector. 5.2
A Mixed Assessment
It is not easy to evaluate the real impact that the plethora of projects and the sometimes colossal sums of aid money have had on strengthening the media sector in Francophone Africa, especially given that a culture of evaluation only appeared relatively late in this sector of foreign aid (Leroy 2014). Here and there (e.g. Burundi, Burkina Faso, Senegal), the sector has made undeniable progress thanks to that support. Some media enterprises have made the most of the lifelines offered them in developing their operations and making them more professional: their readership or audience has grown, the quality of their product has improved, and the credibility of their journalists has made strides. International aid has also played a significant role in the integration and optimization of digital technology. Mary Myers (2014) is also convinced that without donor support, French-speaking Africa would not enjoy the high number of
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community radio stations that currently exist, which inform local populations in their own language about the local and national news, and provide space for people to express themselves. But, in other cases, aid has largely “developed” media owners’ bank accounts, allowing them to contribute to local traffic snarls behind the wheel of a glossy SUV, while their unstable and poorly qualified staff continues to suffocate in positions of precarity as stifling today as they were 20 years ago. Media concerns have acquired equipment that is poorly adapted to or incompatible with the local infrastructure and sits idle. Personnel who have taken advantage of training opportunities have often subsequently left the sector to join the better-paid staff of international institutions or large multinationals as marketing or PR personnel. Regional gatherings, apprenticeships in Europe and North America, and other forums have certainly fostered interactions, broken the isolation in which professionals practiced in their far-flung countries, and even helped create a continental solidarity among African journalists. But the impact these varied activities have had on the development of local media and the strengthening of their capacities remains difficult to evaluate. One of the main problems is that many of the media assistance projects implemented have been based on the experience of INGOs based in other countries with completely different media systems. But, as Kumar (2009) writes, “one size does not fit all”, and many projects completely lack any understanding of the way media actually operate in French-speaking Africa. Given the multiple and complex economic logics of the sector, how could a model based on independence from political and economic stakeholders actually work? In our own research (Frère 2015b), at the local level, we compared media assistance programs during elections in 2010 and 2011 in Burundi and DRC respectively (both countries were then qualified as “fragile states”). Financial support amounted to approximately $2.13 million USD for Burundi and $1542.00 million USD for the DRC. Donors and foreign partners focused on three main priorities: neutral reporting (through training sessions), equal access for the candidates to the airwaves (through collaboration with the regulatory body and the public/state broadcaster), and electoral education (disseminating ready-made programmes produced by INGOs to educate the voters). The first priority made little sense: how can “neutrality” be achieved where media are propaganda tools belonging to politicians, the government, or where the political opposition is denied access to public media? Equal access was also a failure, as, besides short TV or radio advertisements
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for the main candidates (or, in the case of Burundi, via joint production mechanisms during media ‘synergies’), the broadcasters could use all the rest of their available airtime to disseminate propaganda for their own preferred candidate or to attack his/her opponents. Last but not least, the fact that electoral education programs were provided by INGOs and broadcast in exchange for payment convinced journalists once more that these types of programs were not their job, and that they could leave them or even monetize them with foreign partners. Without a doubt, aid to African media has become more professional, and specialized agencies have developed operational methods and evaluation tools useful in understanding and tracking the development of media systems (in keeping with the proliferation in the West of “new public management” emphasizing measurable results). In keeping with this trend, Unesco initiated a project in 2008 aimed at producing “indicators” of development in the media sector to facilitate a follow-up of development initiatives. But the “aid” rationale (despite being strongly criticized in other sectors) seems to have gotten the upper hand over real “cooperation”. A handful of projects prioritizing a mutual exchange of expertise and a co-construction of knowledge have been undertaken, but they remain marginal in number when compared to those following the “donation” rationale. In his study of the written press in Francophone Africa, Thierry Perret concluded that aid to media has not only been “useless”, but “poisonous… because it dispossesses the people to whom it is destined of responsibility and autonomy” (2005, 295), which reflects the popular West African adage: “The hand that gives is always above the hand that receives.” Doubtless, and despite their goodwill, donors supporting media have assumed positions of superiority by: creating training content without consulting those addressed; undertaking aid projects in the sector without trying to understand its subtle workings; imposing technical choices based on experiences from outside Africa; basing their approach on a utilitarian perspective of African journalists (who had to be trained to transmit the “correct” message); and not questioning their convictions about what constitutes the “real” journalism the African public wants and needs. And those receiving the aid did not challenge this state of affairs, conforming to expectations in exchange for a means to survive. The problem is a complex one. It is difficult to discern positive prospects for home-grown economic sustainability of media, particularly where states are not always ready (and not always able) to support the
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media’s public service mission (as well as wary of the media’s potential to hold them to account); where the public is poor and the advertising market limited; and where competition between media businesses is as brutal as the hostile environment in which they are trying to survive and which hinders all attempts to gain any bona fide solidarity between them. To accept aid may very well be the only option, even if the form it takes and how it is distributed is decided unilaterally. Has media assistance truly contributed to democracy building? “It’s better than nothing at all…” is what most African media bosses who are involved in partner relations with the West think.
6
Conclusion
The media in Francophone Africa are embedded in a great variety of market conditions (characterized by an informal economy, very close relations with political leaders, the state apparatus, and even with the military—these relations are often tainted with criminality and corruption) that differ fundamentally from Western models. In contrast to Anglophone Africa, where media concerns are usually created with profit in mind, Francophone media are generally created out of an individuals’ will to establish tools of influence or vehicles for news, but without much hope of being sustainable. And if this generates some profit, it is rarely due to the size of the audience, the win–win strategies of advertisers, or the quality of the news produced. Media outlets “work”, because owners, managers, rich “friends” and journalists have built their own ways to benefit from the job of spreading news. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand how some newspapers in Benin appear on the market now and then, when their circulations are only a few hundred copies and they carry no advertisements. Likewise, how would radio stations survive (even with controlled costs, including low salaries, low-quality programming, and a bare minimum of technical equipment) if they did not derive money from their sources and from sponsored programs, and get aid from media assistance programs? As for television, the cost of production and equipment should be enough to dissuade any start-up initiative, but the small screen is often the favorite medium of the “Big Men” (politicians, business people, preachers, etc.) who are happy to open their wallets for a little airtime or to possess their personal strategic media asset to serve their own ambitions.
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Yet, at the same time, the French-speaking African media perhaps should be congratulated for having invented so many different survival strategies in such an unfavorable economic context: dependent on Western technology and often on financial aid; limited by the low disposable income of consumers; and handicapped by substandard infrastructure… media reflects the plight of the African economy, continent-wide. But the final question is: does this economic creativity that allows both individual journalists and media outlets to survive another day produce the news that the audience actually expects or can use?
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Damome, Étienne. 2014. Radios et religions en Afrique subsaharienne. Dynamisme, concurrence, action sociale. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux. Faye, Mor. 2008. Presse privée écrite en Afrique francophone, enjeux démocratiques. Paris: L’Harmattan. Fierens, Marie. 2018. Humanitaires et journalistes à l’Est de la République démocratique du Congo. Une amitié négociée. Les Papiers de la Fondation 16. Paris: Fondation Croix-Rouge. Fra, Daniel. 2000. Appui aux médias africains. Les politiques des bailleurs de fonds. Paris: GRET. Fra, Daniel, and Eyoum Ngangué. 1998. Créer, gérer et animer une publication. Paris: GRET. Frère, Marie-Soleil, Willy Nindorera, and Anke Fiedler. 2014. Promouvoir des médias professionnels et responsables contribuant aux processus démocratiques dans la région des Grands Lacs. Rapport pour la Coopération suisse. Bujumbura: IPGL/ABR/IPE. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2009a. Le paysage médiatique congolais. État des lieux, enjeux et défis. Kinshasa: FEI. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2009b. Appui au secteur des médias. Quel bilan pour quel avenir? In Réforme au Congo (RDC). Attentes et désillusions, Cahiers africains no 76, ed. Théodore Trefon, 191–210. Tervuren / Paris: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale/L’Harmattan. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2011. The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Case Study on Donor Support to Independent Media, 1990–2010. Philadelphia: Internews/Media Map Project / World Bank Institute/Annenberg School of Journalism. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2013. Media Sustainability in a Post-Conflict Environment. Radio Broadcasting in the DRC, Burundi and Rwanda. In Conflicts and Peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes Region, ed. Tricia Redeker Hepner and Kenneth Omeje, 161–178. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2015a. Les voix des internautes burkinabè : Typologie des contributeurs en ligne dans un régime semi-autoritaire. In Les médias et la dynamique du français en Afrique subsaharienne, ed. Martina Drescher, 245– 269. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2015b. Media as Watchdogs and Election Monitors in Fragile States. In Communication and Peace: Mapping an Emerging Field, ed. Julia Hoffman and Virgil Hawkins, 247–261. New York: Routledge. Frère, Marie-Soleil. 2016. Censure de l’information en Afrique subsaharienne francophone ou de la censure dans les régimes semi-autoritaires. In Les censures dans le monde, XIXe-XXIe siècles, ed. Laurent Martin, 341–356. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
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CHAPTER 8
The Audience and the Media in French-Speaking Africa
This chapter explores media’s role in shaping society and politics through its influence on audiences and how, in turn, audiences make use of media. The unique position media have in society, and their potential impact on politics, the economy, and on social dynamics means they have become integral actors, whether they like it or not: to disseminate information is not merely to spread the word, it is to act. The relationship between media and audience can be viewed through two lenses. The first—and historically the most popular when dealing with African media—is to view what media “are doing to their public”. This approach has been criticized for emphasizing a passive vision of an easily manipulated public. The second approach views the media/consumer relationship through the lens of what the public “does with media”, highlighting both the receivers’ faculties of interpretation and the creativity they may bring to bear on their relationship with the entertainment and news on offer. These two dimensions have been implicit in the preceding chapters, which have often called forth “the audience” when analyzing media systems: these readers, listeners, viewers, and online users have appeared as historical actors in the first three chapters (a history characterized by a succession of ideologies designating a precise role for these consumers/actors within the system); as citizens in relation to the political sphere, by way of media, in the fourth chapter; as citizens with the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M.-S. Frére, Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3_7
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right to information as produced by a group of professional journalists in the fifth; and as consumers with an important role in the media marketplace in the sixth. This “audience” has been commonly viewed from the perspective of media structures, but not as consumers in their own right or for the use they make of media, nor for their own points of view. The theory of media systems does not, in fact, consider consumers to be one of the parameters defining the media apparatus, while in fact the public as imagined by the media, and the active audience (the “consom-acteur” in French, or consumer/actor in English) from whom feedback is received, are two vital defining elements of any media enterprise. This chapter will first look at the different approaches taken in the study of African media consumers. The second section will examine socalled “communication for social change”, so prevalent in Francophone African media, which targets consumers with messages meant to transform their daily lives. The third section will examine media consumers as citizens, that is to say, active in the democratic process, and will attempt to pin down what has changed over the last 20 years in the relationship between the audience and media in a context of development and increasing pluralism. And the last section will shed light on the influence media have on their audiences, in particular in the context of conflicts in which media may potentially incite mass violence or promote peace.
1 Where is the Research on African Media Consumers? Studies on media consumers, whether to shed light on impact or usage, are rare (Capitant 2006, 70; Willems and Mano 2017). There are several reasons for this. On the one hand are practical concerns, including the dearth of means to conduct audience surveys, resulting in a lack of available data, as discussed in the last chapter (Lenoble-Bart and Tudesq 2008, 91–103). Additionally, scientific research in this field is lacking, as few media consumer studies are undertaken locally, in contrast to the many analyzing media content. However, there do exist three types of studies on the subject: consumer and opinion surveys; impact studies that analyze changes in behavior attributed to media; and anthropological research of media consumption.
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Consumer and Opinion Surveys
Consumer surveys may provide interesting information, but they are of little use in understanding the public’s relationship with media. They often provide data only on the number of household media devices that exist, for example, or the popularity rankings of radio broadcasters, television stations, newspapers, and websites in a region or country. They are often sponsored by international media keen to demonstrate their relevance and the merits of their continued existence to their funding agencies. Some are also conducted for multinationals exploring expansion or the introduction of a new product onto a local market. These surveys are scarce in Francophone Africa where data are collected on a regular basis only in the large urban centers (usually the capitals) of Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire (Mytton 2010, 36). In addition, results are not readily available because commercial sponsors of studies are rarely willing to share proprietary data. Some quantitative studies are also carried out by individual researchers (Ph.D. theses or MA dissertations), but their subjects often comprise very small samples with limited representativeness and their data, too, are not easily accessible. In Anglophone Africa (most notably in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria), quantitative data are collected more systematically and media consumer profiles are easier to compile. They may even be correlated with other data regarding perceptions of political, economic, and social questions to establish a working knowledge of public opinion. Afrobarometer’s1 surveys tend to include more Anglophone countries than Francophone, but can be useful in affording the opportunity to cross reference media exposure (the time spent watching television, listening to radio, or reading a newspaper) with the importance of democracy in the eyes of the consumer. These studies have demonstrated, for example, that confidence in the democratic system is more prevalent among consumers of newspapers and radio than television. They have also demonstrated that criticism and dissatisfaction with government was directly proportionate to media exposure (Bratton et al. 2005).
1 The Afrobarometer project is based on independent studies carried out at a national scale in several African states that examine citizen perceptions of democracy and governance, the economy, civil society, and other themes. Data are available on their website: www.afrobarometer.org.
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1.2
Impact Studies
These types of studies set out to determine the impact of media on consumers and the degree to which changes in behavior can be attributed to the consumption of a particular type of media. In Francophone Africa, these are often carried out by NGOs seeking confirmation that their projects have had the desired effect. Various impact studies have been carried out in Burundi. One of them (Frère 2012), commissioned by Panos Institute, aimed to ascertain the influence of a cross-border radio news program (covering Burundi, Rwanda, and eastern DRC). Another study, commissioned by NGOs, La Benevolencija and Search for Common Ground (SFCG) (Helbig de Balzac and Ingelaere 2010) set out to assess their so-called “synergie” (“synergy”) of 2010, a joint project covering the electoral process to see if media influenced voter choices. La Benevolencija also commissioned studies from Yale and Princeton Universities (Levy Paluck and Green 2009) to evaluate the impact on Rwandans of a radio play it broadcast, promoting reconciliation in Rwanda after the genocide. SFCG is an organization that has pioneered this type of research, trying to pinpoint how media campaigns may help to “transform conflicts”. Analyses of media impacts on consumers have focused on three main sectors that have attracted the most research: rural development (including health), the democratization process, and peace-building. Radio has been the most studied because it is the medium most often used by development agencies. These studies seek to determine how effective these various projects are in influencing consumer behavior (the adoption of attitudes and practices that promote autonomy, societal cohesion, or reconciliation). But they are very difficult to conduct and, ultimately, are rarely convincing. It is tricky to try to isolate the impact of media from other social and institutional networks through which information is disseminated, and, furthermore, these studies are often too deeply anchored in the problematic conviction that media have a direct influence on consumers—an idea that is important to call into question, both in Africa and elsewhere. A critical study has been completed in Burkina Faso on the effectiveness of a radio project aimed at reducing child mortality. Development Media International (DMI), a London-based international NGO, has partnered with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to measure, through a complex, long-term (five years) study, the influence
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of regular radio spots (10 times a day for 30 months) in local languages. The mathematical model created predicted a reduction in infant mortality of up to 23% in communities receiving the radio broadcasts, but ultimately no effect on child mortality was proven with certainty, although it showed that mass media alone can change health-seeking behaviors such as attending ante-natal clinics and deliveries in health facilities (Sarrassat et al. 2018). 1.3
The Anthropological Approach to Media Consumption
Over the last 20 years, several anthropologists working in Francophone Africa have studied media consumption practices. They have focused on exploring how media affects interpersonal relationships and transforms the representations individuals have of themselves and of the world around them (Spitulnik 1993). Debra Spitulnik (1998), for example, studied the changes brought about by radio, which was introduced in Zambia during the colonial era: the introduction of this new medium was accompanied by a suite of new cultural practices and new notions of progress, consumption, innovation, and Westernization. The anthropological approach emphasizes case studies carried out on a small scale in communities comprised of one or two villages, and focuses on one medium or program (entertainment or religious), or on a specific formula like call-in shows or talk shows. Jean-Francois Werner, who studied how telenovelas were consumed in Dakar (Werner 2012), holds that the relationship between the telenovela and the viewer flows both ways: television has, indeed, come to permeate the private space of urban families, but how it is consumed is a personal choice. He demonstrated how the consumption of these soap operas generates an individualization of female viewers and may contribute to generational conflicts. Khadidia Touré (2007) studied the consumption of telenovelas in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali. Her work shed light on how these Brazilian and Mexican series not only influence viewers’ fashion sense, but also parent/child relations and romantic relationships. Studies of media and consumer habits have also examined religious programming. For example, research has been conducted by Dorothea Schulz (1999) in Mali (on the interaction of Islamic programming and women), by Katrien Pype (2009, 2012) in Kinshasa, and by Lundby and Dayan (2004) in Zimbabwe.
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Call-in shows and talk shows make up a second field of study. Tilo Grätz (2014), for example, analyzed the relationship between the audience in Benin and radio programs formulated around anonymous letters seeking advice on relationships and romantic issues. According to him, this very popular genre offers an anonymous channel for addressing taboo subjects that would otherwise not be discussed in other social spaces. He argues that this appropriation of radio programming by a listenership is distinct and creates a new forum for public discourse. A third field of study has attracted researchers examining patterns of consumption of online media, especially chat rooms and social media that are considered to have played an important role in the creation of social movements in Burkina Faso in October 2014, in the DRC in 2015, and in Burundi in May 2015. As Tilo Grätz has written, media consumption does not take place within stagnant cultural systems; new instruments and configurations are constantly being integrated. At play is a perpetual renegotiation and co-production of the relationship between media and consumers. Nick Couldry’s contributions to the field of media culture have informed the recent work of Wendy Willems and Winston Mano (2017) that envisions a new way of studying African consumers by observing their everyday interactions with media. Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy (2012, 14– 15) has proposed that the anthropology of audience reception, especially in non-Western societies, has shown how both “creators and spectators are brought to expose, debate, argue, and negotiate representations” in a variety of contexts: in relation to modernity (and the constant questions regarding modernity’s relationship with “tradition”), political imaginaries (and the makeup of Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities”, [1983] recomposed to reflect the new reality of the digital age), the exogenous representation or self-representation of certain specific groups (minorities, militants, etc.), gender relations, morality (the perception of “good” and “evil”), the management of emotions, the transnational dissemination of content, and within the “bottom-up” relativization of Western imperialism. The anthropological and sociological aspects of audience reception serve as an interesting complementary lens through which to study data coming out of consumer and impact studies.
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Communication for Social Change
Communication for social change (also referred to as “communication for development”) is the field of study that has until now been the most concerned with measuring the potential impact of media on Africans and to what use they are put. Communication for social change can be defined as “the sharing of knowledge aimed at reaching a consensus for action that takes into account the interests, needs and capacities of all concerned” (Servaes 2003, 15). According to the 2006 World Congress on Communication for Development, Communication for Development (C4D) is defined as “a social process based on dialogue using a broad range of tools and methods. It is also about seeking change at different levels, including listening, building trust, sharing knowledge and skills, building policies, debating and learning for sustained and meaningful change”. Communication for development, also called information, education, and communication (IEC), behavior change communication (BCC), or communication for social change (CSC), can use mass media, but also other vehicles like interpersonal relationships. Nevertheless, mass media, and in particular radio, offer advantages over other communication vehicles: they can reach a large number of individuals simultaneously; cross geographical, social, and cultural boundaries; offer frequent and repeated contact with the audience; store and archive information; and they are cost-efficient (Colle 2003, 144). This is why, within C4D, a specific sector called media for development (M4D) has emerged. The M4D approach mobilizes the media in Africa to undertake campaigns to help bring about behavior change in the areas of health, education, environmental protection, and more recently, good governance. The use of media for this type of communication therefore raises the question of the distinction between journalism (whose main purpose is to inform) and communication (persuasion), and explains why both are often called upon, and tend to overlap, in projects that aim to change the values and behaviors of consumers. Using media for social change is reminiscent in some ways of the “development journalism” of the 1960s, though the concept has evolved considerably since the era of the first rural media. For example, the once-popular vertical model (in which media informed the public about development initiatives and called upon citizen participation in these projects) has been replaced by a horizontal and interactive approach in which “consumers” participate actively in the process. This new approach,
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heavily influenced by Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1974), seeks above all to give a voice to the traditionally voiceless, in whose name others can express themselves. Indeed, if development is defined as “an improvement in humankind’s capabilities or social, economic, political, and cultural conditions” (Kiyindou 2010, 11), dozens of years of failure of innumerable projects have served to bring to light that this improvement has a much better chance of success if the beneficiaries are directly involved in identifying problems and coming up with solutions. 2.1
Community Radio: From Myth to Reality
Community radio is the news medium of choice for many practitioners of communication for social change or C4D (Ilboudo 2000, 42–71). There are thousands of community stations in Africa, whose foundational principles call for local communities to not only produce programming, but also to take decisions about the direction and priorities of the station (Jallov 2015, 61–80), an ideal that is rarely met. Community participation in station management is often low. Also, the NGOs that usually establish these stations tend to gradually make themselves indispensable to the development process of local communities. As a result, a large number of so-called community radio stations do not in reality belong to the community, but to an NGO or association that thinks it knows best about the needs of listeners. However, some community radio stations located in rural areas can be genuinely hosted by members of the local community and often broadcast only a few hours a day, usually in the evenings after hosts and audience have returned home from a day in the fields. Studies undertaken within the context of development projects attest to their success in reflecting the concerns and daily reality of the rural population. Despite nearly half of all Africans living in villages and practicing agriculture, fishing or handicrafts, these topics are rarely addressed by commercial media which are typically based in urban centers. One of the societal benefits of community radio is their use of local languages that are often not heard in national radio broadcasts. In Burkina Faso, home to nearly 70 languages, the state-run Radio Rurale, based in the capital, Ouagadougou, only broadcasts in 16 of those languages, of which 13 are only heard 5 min or less a day. As a result, local radio stations based in the provinces where minority languages are often spoken are the only news source in some of these languages (Dramé 2007, 190).
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All the same, despite being geographically and linguistically local, community radio stations often do not have a good understanding of the public they are meant to serve, educate, and represent. The resulting programming (created for a presumed public) does not correspond to the needs of the actual listenership, for lack of audience research. For instance, the Panos Institute in Paris worked for several years (2008–2011) on subregional programming meant to promote reconciliation with community radios in Burundi, the DRC, and Rwanda. The broadcasts were produced in French despite the fact that several studies carried out in Burundi showed that 95% of Burundians only listened to radio in Kirundi. Knowledge of the listenership is vital to all local news or communication outreach efforts. Who listens to community radio? When, where, and how does the public listen to broadcasts? What are the favorite programs of which segments of the population? Has community radio had an impact on the daily lives of listeners? (Ilboudo 2000, 45). Without answers to these questions community radio programming is, at best, a shot in the dark. To better understand their listeners and their expectations, some community radio stations in Francophone Africa have created “radio clubs”, inspired by the groups created by rural public radio in the 1970s, when development funders became interested in rural media. Radio clubs are groups that listen to radio programs together and provide producers with feedback who in turn try to answer the concerns raised. With over a hundred radio clubs to its credit, the DRC’s Radio Maendeleo is an outstanding example in a country that is home to hundreds of community radio stations. The station’s Journal des radio-clubs, which broadcasts listeners’ comments, is one of Radio Maendeleo’s most popular programs. Burkina Faso’s La Voix du Paysan, based in Ouahigouya, has also been able to establish a close and lasting relationship with its listenership based on a rural network of associations (the Naam groups). Sylvie Capitant (2008) refers to these types of media organizations as genuine “media hubs”. La Voix du Paysan devotes three hours a day to announcements from listeners (obituaries, convocations to meetings of various local groups, information from local government) and this outreach programming is indispensable to the community it serves. The Panos Institute West Africa has supported the creation of Clubs Radio Citoyens by community radio stations (in Senegal and other countries), with the explicit goal of promoting citizen participation in debates on governance and offering them an opportunity to voice their concerns to politicians.
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The FAO has developed a similar project (Dimitra Clubs)2 promoting community radio listenership to try to strengthen dialogue and help locals take charge of community problems. Community radio therefore serves several functions. Studies demonstrate that listeners depend on their radio stations not only for news, but also for “education”. The audience look to the radio to provide information to guide them in their daily lives (Grätz 2014, 34). Two critical issues facing community radio are economic survival and lack of resources and capacity at the local level (Ba 2005, 115–128). Even if listeners recognize the value of their local radio stations, they are likely poor and obliged to turn to foreign funding agencies for financial assistance to keep them running. In addition, radio broadcasters with inadequate training can not only commit ethical missteps (in Mali, numerous local community radio stations have been accused of discriminatory rhetoric), they also hamstring production. The low skill levels at these radio stations with respect to both news quality and broadcast efficiency mean development agencies are often compelled to step in and provide pre-produced programming. Radio stations thus end up serving as mere transmission channels in direct contradiction with the initial spirit of community radio. 2.2
Internet and Cell Phones: The Latest Utopias
With the arrival of the Internet, funding agencies and organizations specializing in C4D and M4D jumped feet first into projects focused on ICTs for development (ICT4D). Digital technology combined with the Internet were seen to confer advantages over traditional media: the availability of vast numbers of diverse news sources, permanent and ondemand; the speed and low cost of online communication, even over great distances; and the potential for any consumer to become a producer of “bottom-up” news, either individually or in collaboration with others online (Colle 2003, 144). The World Summit on the Information Society (Geneva 2003) highlighted this confidence in the capability of ICTs to transform the daily
2 See FAO website: http://www.fao.org/in-action/dimitra-clubs/en/ (accessed 6 August 2021).
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lives of the most disadvantaged (WSIS 2004). Sharing in this conviction, funding organizations, UN agencies, and NGOs set about establishing community tele centers and multimedia centers (CMCs), merging community radio, computers connected to the Internet, public secretarial services, and training opportunities. Alain Kiyindou (2010, 66) has discussed the positive outcomes of these initiatives: “CMCs became spaces for citizens to create social ties. People gathered there from sometimes very different social, economic, and cultural milieus, who might otherwise never have interacted”. In the many years since its appearance, the impact of digital technology on development has received mixed reviews. Some countries (Senegal, Rwanda), have placed ICT front and center and invested heavily in the necessary infrastructure. Elsewhere, however, many projects have served more to line the pockets of equipment suppliers and the middlemen profiting from technology transfer. In many areas, broadband connectivity and Internet access have been prioritized at the expense of local content production. Deficient infrastructure and skills have also dampened the possible economic benefits made possible by ICT, not to mention the poor governance in some countries (Burundi and the DRC) that has delayed considerably the provision of affordable universal access to the Internet (Frère et al. 2014).
3
Audiences as Active Citizens
Media’s possible contribution to development has been discussed since the 1960s, but their potential contribution to the democratization process only started in the 1990s with the liberalization of the sector. Media’s place vis-à-vis the state, citizens, and civil society changed drastically compared with the period before the 1990s, as states in Francophone Africa experienced “transition” (often to “semi-authoritarian” regimes). A democratic state implies, at least formally, a change in the citizen/consumer’s place within the media system: he or she is no longer the bound recipient of the state’s brand of top-down communication, but should now be able to count on media to inform, represent, relay his/her concerns (or those of the community), and monitor political, economic, and social actors on his/her behalf.
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From a normative point of view, the relationships between media, citizens, and civil society,3 and their respective relationships with the state in a professed democratic context, can be represented by the model below.
Supervision, support
Representation
Information
Control
Public institutions
Civil society
Representation
Information
Medias
People
Direct citizen action : election, participation, advocacy Public authority action: administration, supervision, support Media action: information, representation, monitoring
Many aspects of the relationships between these four groups of actors did not exist in Francophone Africa before liberalization; they have developed in step with changes in the media and the socio-political landscape 3 The question whether or not the media are part of civil society is debated. Regarding market-driven economic entities with commercial interests, these media do not correspond to the definition of civil society (citizen-based organizations that serve as intermediaries between citizens and political leaders). Nor do state-owned media. The exception perhaps is of community media and non-profit digital start-ups.
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that have taken place since the turn of the millennium. Some have changed drastically to reflect political regimes. Others have disappeared entirely. Since the late 1990s, for each of the new functions attributed to media, for each of the new uses consumers have made of these media, change has been the only constant. Obstacles still exist and constantly appear in new forms. This flux calls for a certain elasticity in defining the role media can play in the democratization process and the strengthening of the citizenry. 3.1
The Role of News
Citizens rely on media for news about their social environment, community, and beyond. Since the beginning of the new millennium, pluralism has been the most significant driver behind change in citizens’ relationship with media. Most Francophone Africans now have access to a wide range of local, regional, national, and international media. The rise in number of pluralistic news providers is in itself a marker of democratic progress. The handful of studies that examine audiences clearly demonstrate a rise in the diversity and plurality of media consumer habits (Frère 2012). Technological convergence has made news more accessible: newspaper content is available in rural areas through news reviews, radio is available through cell phones, and the Internet provides access to national and international media. Pluralism alone does not, however, guarantee citizens will receive all the information they need to fulfill their role in society. For one, citizens offered a choice of news sources do not necessarily opt for the most journalistically rigorous content. Audiences possess a mind of their own. For example, a study of media consumers carried out during the 2006 elections in Kinshasa demonstrated that television stations that aired political debates lost vast swaths of their viewership to stations airing Nigerian soap operas (Frère 2009a). Likewise, programming sponsored by international organizations (that are indispensable to the economic survival of local media, as we have seen), is often formulaic and uninspired, and often likely to bore consumers. In the aforementioned study (Frère 2012), which was carried out in the Great Lakes region, Burundian radio audiences complained about the “I-know-best” attitude of journalists in programming promoting peace. Given the vast choice available, consumers often opted for more entertaining programming.
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Another concern regarding pluralism is the sharp uptick in the number of media excesses (in particular personal attacks by both professional journalists and program hosts) that have followed the arrival of freedom of expression and the rise in number of platforms. Defamation, slander, and libel lawsuits have multiplied and the social impact of media abuses has come into question. In Cameroon, the tabloids (L’Anecdote, La Nouvelle Presse—now La Nouvelle, La Météo) went so far as to publish the names of public figures suspected of being homosexuals, papers practicing this type of “fact-finding journalism” have seen sales rise dramatically in line with the development of a kind of “populist voyeurism” (Tcheuyap 2014, 258). Nor is diversity necessarily synonymous with pluralism. In the DRC, for example, where media outlets number in the hundreds, a 2008 study suggested a rise in a “pluralism without diversity”, where, despite their proliferation, media still censored opposing opinions, some of which were totally silenced (Frère 2009b). And finally, despite pluralism, a fundamental inequality exists in terms of access to news, due to cost (radios, TV sets, newspapers, and internet-access are not universally affordable) and the rural/urban divide. Populous fringes of society remain marginalized, relegated to poverty, and unable to inform themselves. Poorly distributed domestic wealth means unequal access to information, which translates into curtailed citizen participation among some underprivileged groups. In countries having recently experienced conflict, the number of refugees and internally displaced make up a significant excluded cluster of the population. Women’s media access is often less than men’s due to lack of literacy, poor buying power, and patriarchal patterns of control. 3.2
The Function of Participation
The expansion of the media sector has brought about both an increased capacity for the public to be heard, via the media and civil society organizations, and the resurgence of the notion of the public sphere.4 Mobile phones have unleashed a revolution (De Bruijn et al. 2009) both in terms 4 Citizen participation obviously includes dimensions other than the public expression of ideas and opinions. It is now recognized and enshrined legally (citizens have rights and obligations), practically (citizens participate in the political realm, for instance, elections), and politically (citizens may run for office to participate in decision-making).
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of access (FM radio is available on most cell phones) and media participation (cell phones allow listeners to participate easily in increasingly popular radio call-in programs). Today spaces (of varying scope) exist everywhere for debate and criticism, both individual and collective. Programs like Benin’s Grogne matinale 5 or Burkina Faso’s Affairages 6 (a program providing listeners the opportunity to call in with complaints about public services) are very popular. Such programs have become important channels of participation, especially given that callers can voice complaints in their native dialect, even if the program is presented in the country’s official language. Citizens not only have a say in topics of discussion, they can also monitor and demand accountability from other social and political actors by way of public criticism (Tettey 2011, 22). There have been numerous instances where media have allowed listeners to question local authorities, denounce violations of their rights as citizens, and ask governments to justify their actions. In Mbuji Mayi (DRC), for example, water supply was restored to neighborhoods following a live radio debate in which the governor was called out about the situation. Radio Oxy-Jeunes in Pikine (a suburb of Dakar in Senegal), broadcasts the rural council’s live debates, which offers the population some input in decision-making (Senghor 2015, 88–89). Citizen participation in public debate has increased with the arrival of private media that have given a voice to individuals and communities, and have positioned themselves as “messengers” between people and politicians. This dynamic is amplified as many countries commit themselves to decentralization (with powerful incentives from international funding agencies and organizations), bringing administrator and administered closer. In this context, local radio can become a forum through which local communities can voice their opinions on how the common good is managed (Senghor 2015). And finally, online and social media also offer a type of participation by providing anonymous spaces for debate and points of view that would otherwise be dangerous to express openly in semi-authoritarian contexts (Frère 2015).
5 Translates as “morning gripes”. 6 Virtually untranslatable, but roughly “this and that of public affairs”.
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It is important to point out that the participation promoted by media is sometimes indirect: some listeners may not call in (sometimes simply because they do not have the means to pay for a call), but they will discuss what they heard on the radio with friends and acquaintances (Grätz 2014, 34). Also, some online content will be discussed in “cabarets” (small drinking establishments) well outside the small circle of people with online access. In such a context, some proponents have hailed the information technology revolution of modern Africa as a new manifestation of the public sphere of Habermas.7 This idealized vision of citizen participation through media in contemporary Africa should be tempered for at least four reasons. First, what people say is sometimes disrespectful of the rights of others. Callers and online contributors who make their position known through media are sometimes guilty of defamation, insults, or abuse. In several countries, call-in shows have been banned as a result of the unmanageable nature of live audience participation by regulatory agencies. For example, in 2015, following the insurrection that toppled Blaise Compaoré’s regime, the regulator, (the CSC) canceled all programs of this nature, including the infamous Affairages, fearing they would become out-ofcontrol kangaroo courts. Some hosts of call-in shows have paid dearly for letting citizens speak their mind on their show. In the DRC in March 2012, the journalist Mira Dipenge from Radio Télévision Kindu Maniema (RTKM), was forced into hiding after receiving threats following the broadcast of an open-mic show (Parole au Peuple) during which callers criticized the management policies of the local governor (JED 2012). Secondly, audience members participating in live programming sometimes create false identities for themselves: thus, while these shows may claim to be handing the mic to ordinary citizens, in reality participants are members of organized groups who have developed strategies to monopolize the airwaves. For example, during the highly popular call-in program
7 The German sociologist Jürgen Habermas identified the emergence of the public sphere in the eighteenth century in England at a time when, through public discussion rooted in reason (in meetings, salons, and cafés), the bourgeoisie sought to take control of government by way of critical argument that was echoed in media. Tanja Bosch (2011) adapted the concept to the situation in South Africa.
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Kabizi in Burundi, observers noticed the systematic presence of participants; obviously inserted in advance to serve up scripted speeches. In Senegal, organized groups that conspire to monopolize the airwaves and crowd out the voices of ordinary citizens are called “jeton militant” (token activists) (Sonko 2010). In such instances, what is meant to be a public discussion is in fact the one-sided voice of a well-organized group, dubbed “professional listeners” by Henri Assogba (2012). Contributors to online discussion groups in Burkina Faso on sites like lefaso.net sometimes upload posts that give the impression of being spontaneous and behind which hide organized groups that infiltrate forums to promote their positions and settle scores with rivals (Frère 2015, 245–269). Thirdly, citizen participation is also obstructed by economic, social, and cultural factors. If media do in fact constitute a forum of expression, in reality, it is not accessible to all. In Burkina Faso, online discussions are moderated by a tiny minority of the population that is connected to the Internet, that is to say, a small, urban, French-speaking, and well-heeled elite. This is why discussions take place almost exclusively in French, out of reach of most of the illiterate population that does not understand the language. There is also a gender barrier. Call-in radio programs often struggle to hear from female callers, therefore discussions often reflect a mainly, if not exclusively, male position. Partly related to economic issues (women tend to be less able to afford to make phone calls), women will not express themselves in the public sphere in some African societies, also due to cultural and social barriers. The actual degree of representativity of the African public sphere should therefore be nuanced, given that a group consisting of over 50% of the population expresses itself little (or not at all) within that space. And finally, citizen participation does not always lead to democratic discussion (an element that is fundamental to Habermas’ notion of the public sphere). In Africa, where media are heavily politicized, public participation can be framed to suit the particular media outlet’s position, while opposing viewpoints may be absent or edited-out. In state media, criticism is disqualified as being fomented by the opposition, or worse, traitors within the party. “You are either with us, or against us”, seems to be the motto of many regimes. This understanding of political relations and the context in which public debate takes place reflects the semi-authoritarian character of the African state that allows this type of participation, while also trying to neutralize its critical aspects.
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3.3
The Function of Representation
Journalists and the media are quick to let you know that their raison d’être resides in serving the people. Typical are newspapers calling themselves Le Citoyen (The Citizen) and Le Journal du Citoyen (in the CAR and DRC respectively), or radio stations called, for example, Le Messager du Peuple (The Messenger of the People) (DRC). Media do, in effect, represent the people in two ways: by offering them an image of themselves and of events (in other words, making available to them specific “representations”), and by conveying their individual and collective positions by rendering them visible within the public sphere. With respect to the first form of representation, for over two decades some media in Francophone Africa have been promoting an image of an active citizenry with rights and obligations, playing a role in democracy. This is why media will prioritize providing citizens with news that allows them to fulfill their democratic obligations. For example, in 2006 in the DRC, during the first truly free and democratic elections since independence, Le Journal du Citoyen encouraged their readers to vote and explained how to correctly fill out their ballot papers. Media can also contribute to the consolidation of a democratic citizenship through stories illustrating the importance of respecting the law, and valorizing individuals’ contribution to collective national solidarity. Model citizens of the highest order have been promoted by media, like Nelson Mandela, who became a model for an entire generation of young Africans in search of a political figure to emulate. In contrast to media’s positive efforts to put citizen rights and obligations front and center, they have spared no effort in criticizing and shaming elected officials for not respecting the collective interest and the common good. By doing this they have contributed to a popular disillusionment with democracy and politics, which has translated into successively lower voter turnouts and perpetual regime changes in some countries since the early 1990s (Mali, Benin, Senegal). Corruption and cronyism, together with the absence of control mechanisms to monitor and put an end to abuses, has served to dampen citizen participation. In countries where political violence takes place (often sanctioned by the state that is meant to protect its citizens) it can be splashed across the headlines. The representation of this violence can lead to dissent between the state and news professionals who are accused, like Radio Okapi in
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the DRC or Burundian private radio, of creating a negative image of the powers that be. As for the second aspect of representation (voicing citizens’ demands and making their concerns visible), the situation varies greatly between countries and between media. Some media and journalists are held in high esteem and are considered to be authentic mouthpieces for groups of citizens who will not hesitate to jump in the fray to support them. Thus, when Bob Rugurika, director of Radio publique africaine (RPA), was released from prison in Burundi in February 2015 (after spending a month incarcerated for airing an investigation that embarrassed high ranking officials of the governing party), thousands gathered to greet him all along the 60 km route from the prison to his radio station in Bujumbura. Such public shows of support serve to demonstrate the recognition some news professionals can receive from the population.
4 An Easily Influenced and Manipulated Audience While it is true that the liberalization of the media has promoted a representation of an active public that makes strategic use of media and has even shown a commitment to supporting that media, another image of African media consumers has emerged as a result of recent research: that of an easily manipulated audience, willing to accept the most poisonous talk, and easily incited to violence against persons and property. The part played by Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM)8 in the 1994 events in Rwanda is important in this representation, even though the notion of “hate media” predates the Rwandan genocide.9 Not satisfied with promoting hate and fanning the flames in already volatile situations, some media become preachers of violence. In Rwanda, as many as two million people appeared before the gacaca courts created to try those who participated in the Tutsi genocide of 1994, which shows the extent of participation in the massacres by an indoctrinated population. In Côte d’Ivoire, citizens also took part in violence against certain communities beginning in 2000 (first massacres of Burkinabè
8 See also Chapter 3. 9 The expression “hate media” was popularized by the press freedom organization
Reporters without Borders.
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immigrants, followed by Dioulas from the north, then Muslims, etc.), encouraged by the inflammatory rhetoric of certain media. These two countries have become the most cited cases of hate media in Francophone Africa (Chrétien 1995; Blé 2009).10 Other African examples have demonstrated that media discourse can fan tensions in a violent context. For example, in the CAR, at the height of the conflict between the ex-Séléka and anti-Balaka factions, several radio stations were accused of conveying hateful propaganda against the Muslim population (RSF 2015). 4.1
Hate Media: A Phenomenon Difficult to Define
The expression “hate media” is applied to discourses of ethnicity and exclusion but is difficult to define: it is not easy to identify precisely where propaganda ends, and inciting hate and persecution begins. Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire have very different political and media histories, but there are some resemblances. In both instances, ethnic issues were invoked by politicians unable to deal with national challenges. Some media outlets (both private and state-run) became major actors in the construction of mutual hatred, and some private media, created during the economic and political liberalization of the early 1990s, fomented intolerance (Frère 2005). Journalistic discourse was gradually overrun by political discourse, and alternative points of view were silenced by shutting down foreign radio broadcasters and obstructing the distribution and dissemination of opposition media. Venomous partisan media that spewed extremist rhetoric asserted their supremacy, while those that considered themselves “neutral” were attacked and even eliminated (Chrétien 1995; Sendín 2013; Thompson 2007). Content gravitated toward a journalism of opinion that jettisoned fact-checked and credible news in favor of commentary and editorializing. Media essentially became a vehicle of rumor. And finally, threats and violence created fear and self-censorship among journalists, particularly within state-run media, which, in both countries, had been reappropriated by government. Journalistic discourse is not the only means through which hate can be promoted by media. In radio, distortions and excesses can take place 10 See Benoît Scheuer’s film, Côte d’Ivoire: La poudrière identitaire (“The identity powder keg”), available online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvyu1pJuHyk (accessed June 13, 2021).
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in all programming, including music. In Côte d’Ivoire and Rwanda, for instance, hate was transmitted through songs and entertainment. This explains why the singer Simon Bikindi (whose political songs were broadcast by the RTLM and the national radio of Rwanda before and during the genocide) was considered a “criminal of the highest order” by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) (Gordon 2010; La Mort 2009).11 As for the written press, illustrations, satirical depictions, and caricatures can all accompany and corroborate hateful journalistic writing. The power of hate speech to incite is proportional to its repetition— or its ability to go viral—through multiple channels (media or other), spewing the same partisan, xenophobic and discriminatory messages to the same public. The RTLM radio station was convincing in Rwanda only because its message was so coherent with similar messages disseminated by other social institutions (schools, church) and organizations (political parties, associations, etc.). 4.2
Direct Incitement to Commit Crimes Against Humanity and Its Consequences
There exists no internationally accepted legal basis for prosecuting hate speech. All attempts to adopt one would run headlong into resistance from countries like the USA that believe that there should be very few legal measures to impede free speech. This was the argument used during the ongoing genocide in Rwanda to quash a request to the USA (the only country with the technical capability) to jam the RTLM’s radio signal (Metzl 1997). Case law, as discussed in Chapter 4, is not very extensive, but it is consistent: for someone in media to be prosecuted for speech disseminated by their outlet it is not enough for hatred to be instilled in people’s minds, the media must have directly and explicitly called for crimes against humanity or acts of genocide to be carried out. Both the ICTR and the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned crimes of genocide after the massacres had taken place, however. It remains to be
11 Bikindi was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but not for his lyrics, which were hotly debated by linguists in Arusha. He was sentenced for encouraging the population with a megaphone while in a vehicle. Judges were of the opinion that his aura and notoriety were instrumental in inciting violence.
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seen how a court would judge a direct incitement to commit a crime that did not lead to one being committed. The role of the RTLM in Rwanda could not but pique the curiosity of academics interested in media and their influence. That is why a number of researchers (mostly Anglo-Saxon) have examined the issue: some to demonstrate its impact (Li 2004), and some others to minimize it (Straus 2007). Some of the more extreme studies have compared a cartographic representation of the massacres with maps of the reach of the radio station’s signal, and have even tried to quantify the proportion of the violence due unequivocally to the RTLM (Yanagizawa-Drott 2014). According to Keith Somerville (2012), it is not easy to determine precisely how much of the massacre is attributable to the RTLM’s influence and how much to other elements: the hate-inciting speeches delivered at meetings, the menacing presence of the Interahamwe (the militia at the extreme fringe of Hutu power), or the highly organized, disciplined, and controlled nature of Rwandan society that had long been under the thumb of a central power structure but whose roots remained deeply embedded in the countryside. In fact, “the role and influence of media cannot be divorced from the historical, cultural, and politicaleconomic environments in which they function” (Kellow and Steeves 1998, 108). As for the Rwandan public, it is clear it found itself facing a mixture of propaganda, social pressure, and coercion in a context of generalized fear. The fact that the messenger was radio, the only media reaching the Rwandan hills, and that radio had long been the official voice of the state, probably contributed to the effectiveness of propaganda. Radio would not have had this influence had the Interahamwe militia not first been indoctrinated by other agents and armed and trained to carry out the genocide. Radio constituted a part of a complex web that implicated a host of other actors. It “implicated” listeners more than it “manipulated” them (Li 2004, 24). The reason similar causes do not always produce the same effects is that media do not exist in identical social systems. Hate propaganda may take hold in some contexts and influence the minds and behaviors of some audiences, while generating only indifference in others. What is more, in some crises, media may disseminate hate speech, calls to violence, and the stigmatization of certain communities, while in others media will prioritize verification of facts in their journalism and voices that urge restraint.
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The Ivorian case in 2000 is an interesting counterpoint because it serves to counter numerous arguments that link the adoption of extremist positions to the lack of training of journalists and the weak financial position of the media. In Côte d’Ivoire, many journalists were well trained, professional associations existed, a self-regulatory agency was active, a collective agreement guaranteed (in principle) journalists acceptable working conditions, and media concerns were doing well financially, in part because of a dynamic advertising market. But these favorable conditions did not prevent the Ivorian media from egregious excesses. Other elements must obviously be taken into account to explain why some media may adopt inflammatory positions. Hate speech and the incitement to commit acts of violence are abetted by a specific set of systemic circumstances in which they can thrive. Their impact on consumers depends on a number of contextual factors and the nature of interactions between media and other actors. 4.3
Peace Journalism as an Antidote?
Given the negative influence certain media can have over their audience during conflict, an alternative model has been developed and experimented within Africa, known as “peace journalism”. The concept rests on the conviction that journalists have the power (even the duty) to develop specific professional practices that will allow them to contribute to peace-building. This notion goes back to the 1970s when the Norwegian conflict and peace specialist, Johan Galtung, demonstrated that media coverage could influence both the evolution of a conflict or of peacebuilding (Galtung 2002): the normal functioning of media, including the selection and handling of news, favored conflict and the sensationalization of violence and not peace-building. Changing the way media worked could help reach peaceful resolutions to conflict. Defenders of this approach usually begin by noting that many of the media abuses during periods of conflict could be avoided if journalists simply followed basic rules of professional conduct. Authentic journalism can provide the public with a nuanced and non-partisan perspective of a situation. It can also serve as a watchdog over governmental authorities and institutions, as well as warlords or opposition militia; analyze and present the hidden factors driving conflict, crises, and events; and give a voice to all actors without necessarily taking sides (Howard 2003). By
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working this way, media would automatically contribute to reestablishing confidence between communities and give peace-building a chance. But some Anglo-Saxon theoreticians and actors believe that this call to reestablish basic professionalism is inadequate and that other practices need to be implemented by those covering conflict. This perspective is rooted in the following tenet: “Journalists are conflict mediators, whether they like it or not” (Baumann and Siebert 2000, 182). In Africa, this approach emerged in post-apartheid South Africa where, given the fractured character of the society and its highly volatile nature, some journalists raised the question whether they should act proactively to prevent and resolve conflict. According to Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick (2005), former war correspondents and the two prime movers behind peace journalism, journalists should orient their work toward finding and promoting peaceful solutions. The basic principles of peace journalism, as they describe them, echo—but reverse—the mechanisms of propaganda described above. They involve, for example, avoiding facile emotion and exaggeration (avoiding terms like “genocide” or “massacre” if they are inappropriate); not using terms that the warring parties use with respect to each other (“invaders”, “terrorists”, “fundamentalists”, etc.); and avoiding presenting opinion as fact. Much of the debate on peace journalism is drawn from the way Western media cover foreign wars. This approach has been implemented in many NGO programs supporting African media and the training of journalists in post-conflict contexts. Many media operating in conflict zones have adopted these principles (in Burundi, for example). In Rwanda, as well, numerous projects have been inspired by them (Laliberté 2012). The “peace journalism” perspective, despite numerous nuances brought to it, has remained controversial (Hanitzsch 2007). The main criticism is that good journalists should not be at the service of any cause, even something as noble as peace. As emphasized by Ronald Koven (European representative at the World Press Freedom Committee), “to oblige media to work towards specific goals is an infringement upon free will and therefore a negation of press freedom” (cited in Howard 2005, 17). As for the Swiss Fondation Hirondelle, which has established radio stations in several post-conflict countries (the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan, the CAR, Guinea, Mali), “There is no such thing as peace journalism or
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war journalism, there is only good journalism” (Labrecque cited in Thiaw 2010, 43). A second criticism of “peace journalism” argues that such approaches are unrealistic and do not take into consideration the reality or the conditions in which media conduct their work. Firstly, the work of journalists can only be understood within its context and constraints, and by taking into account newsroom pressures (time, space, formats, financial resources, commercial interests, etc.). Secondly, media should not be expected to single-handedly bring about peace. It is above all a political issue (or perhaps economic or social) and only the correct decisionmaking by those in charge can bring an end to a conflict. If the basis for discord lies in unfair access to land, employment, or resources, media will not be able to solve the problem. This criticism is in line with sociologist Sandrine Lefranc’s with respect to efforts to bring about “peace from below” by mobilizing media and other civil society groups to reconcile populations in countries emerging from conflict. According to her, such an approach unfairly puts the onus of reconciliation on actors “below” and neglects the responsibility of those “above” who are often the ones to have brought conflict to the communities in the first place (Lefranc 2007). And lastly, some critics of peace journalism hold that it overestimates the capacity of media to influence society: their impact on individuals is less than we would be led to believe, and their potential to change, on their own, the actions and attitudes of communities in conflict, by slightly modifying how news is handled, is doubtful (Spurk 2002, 18). In short, the debate about peace journalism refers back to theoretical approaches to the sociology of media that try to understand audiences: on the one hand is the critical paradigm that proposes the all-powerful nature of media seen as instruments of domination consumed by a submissive public; and on the other, the empirical paradigm that sees consumers as autonomous individuals who take responsibility for what they watch and read, and journalists as actors evolving within the constraining parameters that influence their work. Because peace journalism has served as a reference point in conceptualizing and setting up numerous projects supporting media in countries emerging from conflict (Howard et al. 2003), implementing agencies and international donors have often gone out of their way to evaluate the
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impact of the projects in terms of the social changes they have supposedly brought about. And yet, it remains tricky to isolate and demonstrate that the public’s view of a conflict or of an aggressor has changed as a direct result of media messages. Some change can certainly be identified regarding the attitude of the population (at least with respect to what interviewees say), but it is difficult to infer that media were the prime movers behind changes in behavior. In the same way media may be accused of fueling hatred, they can also play a part in promoting peace, but they do not act alone: they are a component of an environment in which they are only one of many actors. Where changes in behavior have been observed, they have never been the result of media acting in a vacuum, but rather reflect a combination of factors. Hence the argument for approaching the media sector as a system because media do not act in isolation. They cannot build peace, institute solidarity, or guarantee good governance if they have to battle political, economic, or social forces. This systemic approach must integrate the essence of what constitutes audiences: even misunderstood, diverse, and unruly they make up an important piece of the puzzle, not only through their participation and feedback, but also through the representations media enterprises make of them, which shapes how media interact with their imagined audiences.
5
Conclusion
In Francophone Africa, audiences remain the part of the media system that is the least understood, yet most referred to by other actors. In a context heavily influenced by the tradition of “communication for social change”, consumers are still essentially perceived as targets of disseminated information which aims to transform society by promoting development, strengthening democratic citizenship, escalating, or de-escalating conflict. It is because of media’s capacity to transform individuals and how they interact that international organizations support media, both public and private, in these countries. This view of audiences is popular in the eyes not only of foreign agencies, but also of media concerns and other social actors, perhaps because some of the research produced is subsidized by the very organizations that wish to confirm the impact of their actions on the behavior and attitudes of consumers. A nuanced analysis of data from audience surveys, impact studies, and anthropological research on consumers could help clarify not only how
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media influence an African public, but also how the latter take ownership and make use of the media products they consume. As a result, African audiences—central, but too often neglected—could finally find the place they deserve in the way the media system is configured.
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General Conclusion
This book’s aim was to present some important characteristics of the media landscape in French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa. Starting from the idea that media and journalistic practices in Africa cannot be analyzed only with reference to a scientific literature based on European and North American experiences, this manual tried to provide elements on which reading grids adapted to the media systems of the countries in this region could be built. The media in French-speaking Africa are the products of interactions between a certain number of actors described throughout the different chapters: journalists, public authorities, economic operators, civil society, the public, foreign donors, and development agencies. These interactions take place both outside and within the journalistic profession, at different moments in the process of producing and disseminating information. In order to be understood, they must be situated in a particular environment, marked by the relatively recent nature of press freedom (and therefore of the figure of the journalist as a “neutral informant” and “counter-power”), by the “semi-authoritarian” nature of several of the region’s political regimes, by the preponderance of the informal economy, as well as by the dynamics of ownership and citizen participation.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M.-S. Frére, Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3
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At the end of this journey, two conclusions can be drawn. On the one hand, approaching the media of French-speaking Africa requires indeed to decentralize the gaze (to “de-Westernize” it), in order to take fully into account the specificities of the systems in which they are integrated. On the other hand, the term “system” must obviously be used in the plural, because the nuances of interactions are numerous between different countries (and within the same state), between cities and the countryside, between literate and non-literate publics, between affluent consumers and the most deprived. The regular references to the media environment in the English-speaking part of the continent also made it possible to underline the diversity of the continent’s media systems. Faced with this diversity, this synthesis work has sought to identify the concepts and dynamics from which each specific system can be approached and thought about. Other researchers will be concerned with showing how these elements apply or do not apply to the more specific entities they set out to explore. The first prism through which the systems can be observed is that of history (Chapters 1, 2 and 3), which implies, for each media landscape, continuities and ruptures, a heritage that has shaped—and still shapes— both the information production companies and those who work in them. Secondly, the study of the legal, political and institutional environment (Chapter 4) makes it possible to highlight what authorizes or hinders certain dynamics, sets limits on freedom of expression, and traces the framework of what is admissible or not in the eyes of the public authorities. The media reflect the nature of the “hybrid” political system which, in the majority of French-speaking African countries, combines the institutions and mechanisms of democracy with authoritarian traits. In this particular context, the way in which journalists define their role and core values, and the way in which they organize themselves to defend their working principles and collective interests (Chapter 5) constitute a third central element of media systems that deserves to be observed. While African journalists practice a profession that exists throughout the world, it does not have the same objectives everywhere, which leads those who claim it to construct particular identities or missions for themselves in their own space. Fourthly, the producers and broadcasters of information must also be considered in their economic dimension (Chapter 6), in a
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context where the emission of any word in the public space has a cost that must be assumed, both on the side of the sender and the receiver. However, the economic environment, although it differs greatly from one country to another, is generally marked by informality, low average incomes, and a makeshift economy that deeply penetrate the media sector. Finally, the forms of interaction with the public (Chapter 7), the way in which the media inform (in the primary sense of “shaping”) their users, constitute another fundamental characteristic of these systems. It is revealed, in particular, in the dynamics of participation of the citizens in the media, but also through the role that these last ones and the representations that they convey can play in the construction of individual and collective identities. It is these diverse interactions that underpin the media systems of Francophone Africa and explain “why the media are the way they are”.1 To try to identify these relationships and to understand them is also to take a look at the whole society in which these media operate. This handbook is the result of 25 years of daily experience with African media and aims to share a reflection that has developed through the author’s travels, contacts, and projects. It does not claim to give a global and exhaustive vision of the media systems of 17 countries (which would be impossible), but it is intended to be useful to all those (historian, researcher, journalist, development worker, diplomat, student), from Brussels to Ouagadougou, who wish to better understand the African media that they are led to consult, consume, study, produce and design. The media that members of a society produce in order to speak to each other, are today accessible not only within the society, but also beginning to be available to those from without. The analysis in terms of “systems” makes it possible to understand the context of the emergence of these discourses and the way in which they circulate in the public space, by an approach which, at the same time, trivializes its object (by using the same concepts as those employed in the approaches of the Western media systems) and recognizes and integrates its specificities.
1 This was the initial question that Siebert, Peterson and Schramm wanted to answer in 1956, and which Hallin and Mancini (2004) continued to reflect on half a century later.
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Of course, these systems are neither closed nor fixed, but in constant evolution. Media dynamics and journalistic practices are changing and redefining themselves, in Africa as elsewhere, as a result of technical innovations and political, economic, cultural, and social changes. The analytical framework proposed in this manual can be useful in providing a snapshot of the media landscape in a country, region, or city, but also in identifying the issues and challenges of the future. What are the chances of survival of a print media with limited circulation when improved connections and the generalization of 3G (and higher) telephones progressively make information accessible without going through the paper stage? Why is radio still the dominant medium and how is it changing both in the formats it offers (press reviews, participative programs, religious programs) and in the way listeners appropriate it (individualized listening via cell phones)? What will happen tomorrow, if the density and diversity of available information increases, to international radio stations whose persistent popularity, in some places, seems to be linked to the shortcomings of local media? How does citizen journalism, information produced by amateurs, including through participation in online discussion forums or talk radio programs, profoundly question the limits of what the “professionals” offer? How will the arrival of digital radio and television broadcasting disrupt the systems by bringing new economic actors into African media markets? Can freedom of expression and the room for maneuver of the media be safeguarded in a context of insecurity (terrorism, civil war), of confiscation of power by a party or a small group, of impunity for human rights violations, while African states seem less and less convinced of the need to maintain a democratic façade? What is the role going to be of organized disinformation campaigns on social media and on encrypted social messaging applications, and how will media respond to these? Each of these issues will be decisive for the evolution of African media systems: this book hopes to have nourished the reflection of all those who must or will have to, today or tomorrow, face these challenges and contribute to imagining and building the future of journalism in Africa.
Appendix
See Table A1. Table A1 Congo (Brazzaville)
Congo (DRC)
Côte d’Ivoire
The principal news media of the state L’Homme nouveau Dipanda Mweti La Nouvelle République Under Mobutu: eight newspapers in the “Network”, all privatized in 1990 Fraternité Matin (Société nationale de presse et d’édition de Côte d’Ivoire) www.fratmat. info
1960– 62 1963– 67 1977 2002
Radiodiffusion Congolaise Télévision Nationale Congolaise Radio Télévision nationale congolaise (RTNC)
1964
Radiodiffusion Télévision Ivoirienne (RTI) www.rti.ci
1940 (radio) 1962 (TV)
Agence congolaise d’Information (ACI) (1960) www.agence congoinfo.net 1945 Agence (radio) congolaise de 1966 Presse (ACP) (TV) (1960) http:// 1983 acpcongo. (OZRT) com/acp/ 1951 Agence (radio) ivoirienne de Presse (AIP) 1963 (1961) www. (TV) aip.ci
(continued)
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M.-S. Frére, Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3
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(continued) Gabon
L’Union 1974 (SONAPRESSE) www.union.son apresse.com
Radiodiffusion Télévision Gabonaise (RTG)
1959 (radio) 1963 (TV)
Guinea
Horoya (ministère de la Communication)
1961
Radio Télévision Guinéenne
1958 1977 (TV)
Mali
L’Essor (AMAP: Agence Malienne de Presse et de Publicité) www.essor.ml Chaab ⦁ Horizons (Agence Mauritanienne d’Information: AMI) http://fr. ami.mr/ Le Sahel (Office National d’Édition et de Presse—ONEP) www.lesahel. org/ Imvaho ⦁ Imvaho Nshya La Relève ⦁ La Nouvelle Relève Privatisés en 2014 Le Soleil (Société Sénégalaise de Presse et de Publications) www.lesoleil.sn
1947
Office de Radio 1957 Télévision du Mali (radio) (ORTM) 1983 (TV) 1992 (EPA) Radiodiffusion de 1959 Mauritanie (radio) Télévision de 1984 Mauritanie (TV) http://tvm. mr/ar/
Mauritania
Niger
Rwanda
Senegal
1975 1991
1974
1960– 94 1994 1973– 94 1994
1970
Office de Radio Télévision du Niger (O.R.T.N.) www.ortn.ne
1958 (radio) 1964 (TV) 1967 (ORTN) Office Rwandais 1960 d’Information (radio) (ORINFOR) 1992 Radio Rwanda TV (TV) Rwanda—Rwanda 2014 Broadcasting Authority (RBA) www.rba.co.rw Radiodiffusion 1939 Télévision (radio) Sénégalaise (RTS) 1965 (TV) www.rts.sn 1973 (ORTS)
Agence gabonaise de presse (AGP) (1960) www. agpgabon.ga Agence guinéenne de presse (AGP) (1960) www. agpguinee.org Agence malienne de presse
Agence mauritanienne d’information (AMI) (1975) http://fr. ami.mr/
Agence nigérienne de Presse (ANP) (1987) www. anp.ne/ Agence rwandaise de presse (1983) (ARP) disappeared in 1994
Agence de presse sénégalaise (APS) (1959) www.aps.sn (continued)
APPENDIX
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(continued) Chad
L’Info (ATPE)
2012
Togo
Togo-Presse (EDITOGO) www.editogo. tg/presse.php
1962
Radio nationale tchadienne—RNT Télévision tchadienne TV Tchad—Office National de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision du Tchad (O.N.R.T.) http://www.onr tv.td Télévision togolaise (TVT): http://tvt.tg Radio Lomé: www.radiolome.tg
1955 (radio) 1987 (TV) 2006
Agence tchadienne de presse et d’édition (ATPE) (1966) www.atpe-tch ad.org
1959 (radio) 1973 (TV)
Agence togolaise de presse (ATOP) (1975)
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APPENDIX
Bibliography Hallin, Daniel C., and Paolo Mancini. 2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siebert, Fred S., Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm. 1956. Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Index
A Abidjan, 37, 81, 110, 117, 229, 230, 268, 269 Abidjan-Matin, 70 Accra, 45, 47, 59 Accra Herald, 34 Africable, 125 Africa n°1, 117 African Council on Communication Education (ACCE), 232 The African Interpreter and Advocate, 34 African Union (AU), 131 Afriethics, 213 Afrique équatoriale française (AEF)/French Equatorial Africa, 48, 57 Afrique Nouvelle, 51, 61, 70 L’Afrique occidentale, 36 Afrique occidentale française (AOF)/French Occidental Africa, 37, 48 Afrobarometer, 299
Agence congolaise d’information (ACI)/Congo Information Agency, 83 Agence congolaise de presse (ACP)/Congo Press Agency, 323 Agence France Presse (AFP), 86 Agence ivoirienne de presse (AIP)/Ivorian Press Agency, 84 Al Arabya, 127 Al Jazeera, 127, 256 Amnesty International (AI), 138, 151 Amtsblatt Gazette, 38 L’Anecdote, 126, 310 Anfani, 118 Anfani FM, 118 The Anglo-African, 34 Antenne A, 125 L’AOF , 37 area studies, 7, 19 Arusha, 164 Association burundaise des radiodiffuseurs (ABR), 258 Association des journalistes du Bénin (AJB), 227, 236
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M.-S. Frére, Politics and Journalism in Francophone Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99399-3
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INDEX
Association mondiale des journaux (AMJ)/World Association of Newspapers (WAN), 151, 282 Aube Nouvelle, 70, 83 L’Avenir colonial belge, 43 L’Avenir, du Congo, 54, 55 Azikiwe (Nnamdi), 45 B Bamako, 70, 81, 125 Bangui, 259 Barayagwiza (Jean-Bosco), 164 Belga, 86 Belgian Congo, 37, 38, 44, 48, 53–55, 68, 70 Belgium, 3, 14, 20, 43, 54, 164, 228 Bemba, Jean-Pierre, 130 La Benevolencija, 256, 282, 300 Benin, 3, 17, 30, 32, 37, 77, 78, 81, 92, 93, 105, 107, 112–114, 116, 118, 125, 126, 156, 160, 162, 166, 170–172, 174–178, 180, 182, 190, 193, 197, 209, 214, 219, 220, 222, 224, 234–236, 238, 261, 280, 290, 302, 311, 314 Bikindi, Simon, 317 Biya, Paul, 107, 130, 160 Brazzaville, 7, 43, 49, 51, 114, 118, 126, 131, 173, 198, 229, 246, 259, 269 De Breteuil (Michel), 59, 70, 73 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 47, 48, 58, 94, 117, 120, 248, 268, 282 Bujumbura, 57, 81, 269, 276, 315 Bukavu, 57, 255, 260, 277 Burakeye, 56 Burkina24, 253, 267 Burkina Faso, 3, 4, 7, 12, 20, 22, 31, 50, 57, 74, 89, 93, 107, 109, 110, 114, 115, 118, 125, 126,
129, 133–135, 138–140, 152, 155, 161, 163, 170–172, 174–176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 189–191, 198, 209–211, 214, 220, 224–227, 230, 235, 236, 238, 246, 248, 249, 253, 259, 263, 265, 267, 273, 275, 280, 287, 300, 302, 304, 305, 311, 313 Burundi, 12, 17, 22, 38, 56, 70, 92
C Le Cafard Libéré, 109 Cameroon, 2, 3, 12, 17, 18, 20, 38, 52, 68, 69, 72, 92, 93, 105, 107, 108, 110, 113, 114, 118, 126, 130, 131, 135, 160, 161, 163, 170, 171, 179, 190, 192, 193, 195, 198, 209, 214, 224, 228, 237, 246, 250, 260, 262–264, 267–269, 272, 274, 278–280, 283, 310 Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV)/Radiodiffusiontélévision du Cameroun, 179, 228, 252, 278 Cameroon Tribune, 70, 179 camorra, 277 Canal 3, 125 Canal France International (CFI), 128 Canal Info, 125 Canal Kin, 125 Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser, 33 Capp FM, 214 Central African Republic (CAR), 7, 31, 50, 107, 121, 124, 134, 136, 163, 176, 218, 246 Centre de formation des professionnels des médias (CFM), 226
INDEX
Centre de ressources audiovisuelles (CERA), 226, 258 Centre de ressources pour la presse (CRP)/Press Resource Centre, 226 Centre interafricain d’études en radio rurale de Ouagadougou (CIERRO)/Inter-African Center of Studies in Rural Radio, 79, 232 Centre national de presse (Burkina Faso), 225, 226 Chad, 7, 12, 50, 57, 88, 105, 124, 127, 131, 136, 138, 163, 173, 177, 182, 192, 194, 198, 224, 234, 236–238, 256, 257, 264, 273, 275 Charlie Hebdo, 215 China, 122, 135, 180, 194, 196, 197, 283, 284 La Chronique Congolaise, 56 Le Citoyen, 110, 314 communication for social change (C4D), 298, 303, 304, 306, 322 community multimedia centers (CMCs), 307 Compaoré, Blaise, 107, 198, 227, 312 Congo-Brazzaville. See Republic of Congo Congo-Kinshasa. See Democratic Republic of Congo Conscience Africaine, 55 Conseil national de la communication (CNC)/National Communications Council–Burundi, 167 Conseil national de la communication (CNC)/National Communications Council–Cameroon, 167 Conseil national de la communication (CNC)/National
339
Communications Council–Gabon, 167 Conseil national de la communication (CNC)/National Communications Council–Guinea, 167 Conseil national de la presse (CNP)–Côte d’Ivoire, 167 Conseil national de l’audiovisuel et de la communication (CNAC)/National Audiovisual and Communications Council–Benin, 167 Conseil supérieur de la communication (CSC)/High Council for Communications–Burkina Faso, 167 Conseil supérieur de la communication (CSC)/High Council for Communications–Mali, 167 Conseil supérieur de la communication (CSC)/High Council for Communications–Niger, 168 Conseil supérieur de la liberté de communication (CSLC)/High Council for Freedom of Communication–Congo-Brazzaville, 167 Contact FM, 272 Coquilhatville. See Mbandaka Côte d’Ivoire. See Ivory Coast La Côte d’Ivoire, 37 Coulibaly, Abdou Latif, 137, 272 coupage, 112, 216, 217, 271, 277 Courrier Confidentiel , 265 Courrier international , 266 Le Courrier d’Afrique, 44 Le Courrier d’Égypte, 33 La Croix du Congo, 44
340
INDEX
La Croix du Dahomey, 51, 70 cultural studies, 95–97 D Dahomey, 30, 37, 39–42, 49, 70, 77 Dakar, 36, 37, 42, 43, 50, 51, 57, 90, 117, 128, 215, 228, 229, 265, 268, 269, 276, 301, 311 Dakar Matin, 70 La Décade Égyptienne, 33 Le Démocrate (Niger), 152 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Congo-Kinshasa, 31, 112 La Dépêche du Ruanda-Urundi, 56 Les Dépêches de Brazzaville, 177 dependency theory, 86, 91, 92, 95 Deutsche Welle (DW)/La Voix de l’Allemagne, 79, 256, 282 development journalism, 77, 79–81, 303 Development Media International (DMI), 300 Die Burger, 46 Digital Congo, 260 Digital TV, 131, 172, 269 Diouf, Abdou, 119 Diouf, Galandou, 42 Dja FM, 275 Douala, 51, 130, 267 Drum, 59 E The East African Chronicle, 45 The East African Standard, 45, 59 Les Échos (Mali), 105 Les Échos d’Afrique Noire, 51 Les Échos de Guinée, 51 L’Éclaireur de la Côte d’Ivoire, 43 L’Effort Camerounais , 51, 70 Ehuzu, 81, 175
Elima, 81 Elisabethville. See Lubumbashi Elolombe Ya Cameroun, 38 Equinoxe TV, 130 L’Essor (Mali), 70 L’Essor du Congo, 43 Ethiopia, 38 L’Étoile du Congo, 38 European Union, 281 Eyadema (Gnassingbé), 88, 93, 107 F Fédération syndicale des travailleurs de la communication (FESYTRAC), 236 Le Flambeau (Cameroon), 52 Le Flambeau de Côte d’Ivoire, 43 Florence Agreement (1950), 250 FM Liberté, 256, 275 Fondation Hirondelle, 256, 274, 282, 284, 320 Fonds de soutien et de développement de la presse (FSDP), 190, 249 France, 3, 14, 18, 20, 33, 39, 40, 50, 52, 57, 60, 73, 79, 89, 95, 135, 136, 154, 181, 182, 196, 228, 230, 282, 283 France-Afrique, 43 Fraternité Matin, 70, 86, 174, 238 Freedom House, 91, 154, 155 G Gabon, 50, 58, 105, 107, 109, 113, 114, 136, 163, 170, 180, 190, 194, 195, 259, 264, 268 Gambia, 38 Gandhi, Mohandas, 46 La Gazette du Golfe, 105, 118 Gbagbo, Laurent, 93, 177 Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), 79
INDEX
Ghana, 3, 33, 45, 47, 48, 59, 179, 234, 235 Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), 286 Gold Coast, 35, 38, 43, 47, 59 Golfe FM, 118, 126 Golfe TV, 126 Goma, 135, 277 gombo, 112, 217, 231, 253, 271, 277, 279–281 La Griffe, 109, 170 Le Grognon, 109 Gueye, Lamine, 42 Le Guide du Dahomey, 40 Guinea, 22, 37, 70, 81, 112, 114, 118, 162, 182, 215, 236, 258, 262, 273, 278
H Haské, 105, 106 Haut Conseil de la communication (HCC)/High Communications Council–Central African Republic, 167 Haut Conseil de la communication (HCC)/High Communications Council–Chad, 168 Haut Conseil de la presse (HCP)/Media High Council–Rwanda, 168 Haute Autorité de l’audiovisuel et de la communication (HAAC)/High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication–Benin, 167 Haute Autorité des médias (HAM)/High Media Authority–DRC, 167 L’Hirondelle, 247 Horizon FM, 115 Horizons , 84, 334 Horoya, 70, 81, 84
341
Houphouët-Boigny, Félix, 50, 51, 68, 93, 107 Human Rights Watch (HRW), 138, 151
I Igihe.com, 267 Ikwezi Le Afrika, 46 Imvaho, 70, 85, 334 L’Indépendance, 55 L’Indépendant , 37 L’Indépendant Colonial , 43 Infor-Burundi, 70, 83 Information and communication technology (ICT), 133, 232, 307 Institut congolais de l’audiovisuel (ICA)/Congo Audiovisual Institute, 21, 228 Institut de formation aux techniques de l’information et de la communication (IFTIC), 228 Institut des Sciences et Techniques de la Communication (ISTC), 230 Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Information (ISTI), 90 Institut facultaire des Sciences de l’information et de la communication (IFASIC)/Institute for information and Communications Sciences, 228, 230 Institut Panos Paris (IPP)/Panos Institute, 21, 23, 282, 284 Interahamwe, 318 International Criminal Court (ICC), 164 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), 164, 317 International Crisis Group (ICG), 138 International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), 4, 5, 224, 238
342
INDEX
International Monetary Fund (IMF), 136 International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), 155 Internews, 282, 284 Ivory Coast, 37 Iwacu, 161, 194, 260, 262, 267, 272 Iwe Ihorin, 35 J Jeune Afrique, 94, 106 Le Journal du Citoyen, 314 Le Journal du Jeudi, 109, 110 Le Journal du Katanga, 38 Journaliste en danger (JED)/Journalist in Danger, 163, 192 K Kabila, Joseph, 130, 259 Kabila, Laurent-Désiré, 189 Kananga, 57 Kangura, 164 Kassé, El Hadj, 177, 272 Kass FM, 164 Katanga, 271 Katumbi, Moïse, 131, 193, 271 Kayibanda, Grégoire, 55 Keita, Modibo, 70 Kenya, 3, 4, 45, 47, 59, 164, 165, 299 Kenyatta, Jomo, 45, 61 Kérékou, Mathieu, 105, 107 Kigali, 57, 81 Kinshasa, 81, 90, 110, 127, 130, 131, 139, 140, 189, 216, 227–230, 237, 255, 257, 259, 260, 262, 264, 268, 269, 301, 309 Kinyamateka, 44, 55, 70 Konaré, Alpha Oumar, 107 Kongo Kingdom, 31
L Lagos, 34, 45, 48, 59 Lagos Times and Gold Coast Advertiser, 35 LC2, 125, 126 Lefaso.net , 135, 140, 265, 267, 313 Léopoldville, 57 Liberia, 33, 34, 38 Liberia Herald, 33, 36 Liberté, 70 La Libre Expression, 110 Lissouba, Pascal, 107 Lubumbashi, 38, 57, 131, 193, 271 Luluabourg. See Kananga Lumumba, Patrice, 55, 68 Lusaka, 48 M MacBride, Sean, 87, 90 Madagascar, 43 Maheshe, Serge, 192 Maison de la Presse (Burundi), 226 Maison de la Presse (Mali), 225 Maison des Médias (Chad), 257 Mali, 31, 32, 50, 57, 70, 78, 105–107, 114, 115, 122, 127, 138, 158, 173–176, 180, 182, 190, 194, 195, 215, 226, 234, 238, 246, 256, 264, 268, 275, 301, 306, 314, 320 Matadi, 38 Mauritania, 6, 31, 111, 113, 118, 127, 135, 141, 153, 163, 223, 262, 264 Mbandaka, 57 Media High Council (MHC), 168, 214 Le Messager, 105, 160 Le Messager du Peuple, 314 Mikado FM, 122 Minsamu mia Yenge, 38 Mitterrand, François, 104
INDEX
Mobutu (Joseph Désiré/Sese Seko), 93 Modernization theory, 75 Le Moniteur administratif du Sénégal et dépendances , 36 Muiguithania, 45 Mulee-Ngea, 38
N Nahimana, Ferdinand, 164 Nahimana, Vestine, 170 Nairobi, 45, 48, 229, 247 La Nation/The Nation, 59, 83, 175 The Nation Media Group, 247 Ndadaye, Melchior, 107 N’Djamena, 57, 89, 229, 259, 269 Ndongozi, 56, 70, 92 N’Dour, Youssou, 126, 271 Net Press , 134 New Era, 34 New International Economic Order (NIEO), 86 Ngeze, Hassan, 164 Ngyke, Franck, 192 Niamey, 81, 228 Niger, 31, 32, 50, 69, 78, 79, 88, 105–107, 110, 114, 118, 125, 127, 136, 138, 162, 163, 170, 174, 176, 215, 230, 235, 238, 246 Nigeria, 3, 35, 36, 38, 45, 57, 59, 179, 232, 234, 299 Njawe, Pius, 160 Nkrumah, Kwame, 61 La Nouvelle, 310 La Nouvelle Expression, 126 La Nouvelle Marche, 85 La Nouvelle Presse, 310 La Nouvelle Relève, 85, 334 La Nouvelle République, 177 Ntetembo Eto, 38
343
Nyerere, Julius, 61 O L’Observateur (Senegal), 126 L’Observateur Paalga (Burkina Faso), 253, 273 Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les médias (ODEM)–Benin, 221 Observatoire de la liberté de la presse, l’éthique et la déontologie (OLPED)–Ivory Coast, 221 Observatoire de la presse burundaise (OPB)–Burundi, 221 Observatoire national de la presse (ONAP)–Burkina Faso, 221 Office de coopération radiophonique (OCORA), 73 Office de radiodiffusion et télévision du Bénin (ORTB)/Benin Radio and Television Broadcasting Agency, 178, 235 Omega FM, 139 ONUCI FM, 122, 248 Organisation des médias d’Afrique centrale (OMAC)/Central Africa Media Organization, 224 Organization of African Unity (OAU)/Organisation de l’Unité africaine (OUA), 91 Ouagadougou, 228, 229, 232, 253, 259, 304, 331 Oubangui-Chari, 50 Ousmane, Mamane, 107 P The Pan-African News Agency (PANA), 91 Le Paon Africain, 109, 110 Paris-Congo, 43 Paris-Dakar, 43, 70
344
INDEX
Paris-Tana, 43 Patassé, Ange-Félix, 107 Le Pays , 253, 266 peace journalism, 319–321 per diem, 112, 277, 278, 281 Le Petit Sénégalais , 36 Le Phare du Dahomey, 49 Le Potentiel , 118 Présence Congolaise, 54 La Presse de Guinée, 51 La Presse du Cameroun, 51, 52, 70 Q Quebec, 3, 9, 20 R Radio 7, 118, 126 Radio Bonesha, 121, 123 Radio Brazzaville, 48, 57 radio clubs, 78, 305 Radio Congo, 178 Radio Congo Belge, 57 Radio Dahomey, 57 Radio Dakar, 48 Radiodiffusion nationale belge (RNB), 48 Radiodiffusion-Télévision du Burkina Faso (RTB), 129, 178, 179 Radiodiffusion-Télévision française (RTF), 57 Radiodiffusion-Télévision sénégalaise (RTS), 177 Radio Elikya, 255 Radio Equinoxe, 126 Radio Fort-Lamy, 57 Radio France Internationale (RFI), 94, 106, 117, 181, 229, 256, 268, 282 Radio Futurs Médias (RFM), 126 Radio Haute-Volta, 57 Radio Isanganiro, 121, 260
Radio Isango Star, 260 Radio Izuba, 255 Radio Lomé, 57 Radio Maendeleo, 255, 260, 305 Radio Maria, 230 Radio Mauritanie, 84 Radio Moscow, 94 Radio Moto, 7 Radio Ndeke Luka, 121, 248, 256 Radio Nederland, 256 Radio Niger, 57 Radio Okapi, 122, 123, 139, 192, 217, 218, 235, 248, 260, 274, 285, 286, 314 Radio Pole FM, 277 Radio publique africaine (RPA), 119, 121, 260, 315 Radio Soudan, 57 Radio Télévision guinéenne (RTG), 273 Radio Télévision ivoirienne (RTI), 130, 234, 238 Radio Télévision Kindu Maniema (RTKM), 312 Radio Télévision libre des mille collines (RTLM), 16, 121, 163, 164, 215, 315, 317, 318 Radio Télévision nationale congolaise (RTNC), 171, 179 Radio Télévision nationale du Burundi (RTNB), 215 Radio Télévision Renaissance, 126 radio-trottoir (pavement radio), 94 Radio Usumbura, 57 Raga TV, 125 Rassemblement démocratique africain (RDA), 50, 51 Le Récadère de Béhanzin, 39 Le Recueil mensuel des Ordonnances , 38 La Relève, 85
INDEX
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), 154, 155, 193, 194, 282 Le Républicain (Mali), 110 Le Républicain (Niger), 258 Republic of Congo or Congo-Brazzaville, 70, 105, 107, 113, 134, 170, 176–178, 180, 182, 193, 226, 236, 247, 257, 259, 273 Le Réveil du Sénégal , 36 The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, 33 The Royal Gold Coast Gazette, 33 Ruanda-Urundi, 38 Ruggiu, Georges, 164 Rugurika, Bob, 224, 315 Ruvakuki, Hassan, 161, 224 Rwanda, 16, 38, 44, 55–57, 68, 70, 76, 92, 106, 107, 113, 121, 139, 155, 161, 163, 165, 171, 176, 181, 195, 198, 211, 212, 214, 218, 225, 260, 267, 300, 305, 307, 315–318, 320 Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA), 334 S Le Sahel , 81, 84 Saint-Louis, 36, 37, 42 Sall, Macky, 163, 215 Sang, Joshua Arap, 164 Sankara, Thomas, 89 Sassou Nguesso, Denis, 178 Satellite FM, 126 Le Scorpion, 109 Search for Common Ground (SFCG), 300 Sekukianga, 37 La Semaine Africaine, 51, 70 Senegal, 3, 4, 7, 17, 20, 36, 37, 41, 42, 50, 52, 58, 68–70, 74, 86, 92, 105, 108, 109, 112,
345
116–119, 125, 126, 136, 137, 152, 155, 163, 170, 174, 176, 177, 180–182, 189–191, 198, 209, 215, 234–236, 238, 246, 264, 268, 271, 287, 299, 305, 307, 311, 313, 314 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 50, 68 Sidibé, Ismaël, 125 Sidwaya, 89, 93, 175 Sierra Leone, 33–35, 38, 47 The Sierra Leone Gazette, 33 The Sierra Leone Observer and Commercial Advocate, 34 The Sierra Leone Weekly Times and West African Record, 34 Silla, Mactar, 177 SMTV, 125 Société de radiodiffusion de la France d’outre-mer (SORAFOM), 57, 73 Société des éditeurs de la presse privée (SEP), 224 Société nationale des entreprises de presse (SNEI/SNEP), 73 Soglo, Nicéphore, 107, 160 Le Soleil , 7, 70, 86, 160, 174, 177, 265 Soma, 55 South Africa, 3, 11, 35, 46, 59, 136, 213, 234, 299, 320 South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), 47 Studio Tamani, 256 Sudan, 50, 320 Sud Communication, 272 Sud FM, 119 Sud Magazine, 105 Sud Quotidien, 118, 177 Syfia, 256 Le Syndicalisme Indigène, 54 Syndicat autonome des travailleurs de l’information et de la culture (SYNATIC), 227, 236
346
INDEX
Syndicat des agents de l’information, techniciens et journalistes de presse publique (SAINTJOP), 236 Syndicat libre de la communication (SYNLICO), 236 Syndicat national des professionnels de la presse (SNPP), 236 Syndicat Professionnels Information Communication Sénégal (SYNPICS), 236, 238
T talk shows, 129, 301, 302 Tanzania, 3, 45, 164 Télé 7, 126 Télé 50, 269 Télé Kin Malebo, 125 telenovelas , 127, 179, 269, 301 Télé Renaissance, 126, 270 TéléSud, 125 Télé Ténéré, 125 Télévision Futurs Médias (TFM), 126 Le Temps du Niger, 70 Temps nouveaux d’Afrique, 56 Togo, 22, 38, 52, 78, 88, 93, 105, 107, 114, 159, 163, 170, 178, 195, 209, 225, 236, 247, 254, 262, 279, 280, 283 Togo-Presse, 69, 81 Top Congo, 260 Le Trait d’Union, 43
U Ubuntu, 213, 233 Uganda, 45 Umshumayeli Wendaba, 35 L’Union africaine, 36 Union burundaise des journalistes (UBJ), 224, 236
Union des journalistes d’Afrique de l’Ouest (UJAO)/West African Journalists’ Association (WAJA), 224 Union des journalistes de la presse privée du Bénin (UJPB), 224, 236 Union des journalistes indépendants du Togo (UJT), 236 Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), 52, 69 Union des radiodiffusions et télévisions nationales d’Afrique (URTNA)/Union of African National Television and Radio Organizations, 79, 232 Union nationale de la presse congolaise (UNPC), 225 Union nationale des journalistes de Côte d’Ivoire (UNJCI)/National Union of the Journalists of Ivory Coast, 77, 218 United Nations, 121, 138, 249 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/Programme des Nations unies pour le développement (PNUD), 131 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), 76, 79, 87, 91, 108, 225, 228, 250, 256, 282, 289 United States of America (USA), 91, 196, 317 V Voice of America (VOA), 94, 120, 125 The Voice of the Arabs/La Voix des Arabes, 57 La Voix du Congolais , 54 La Voix du Dahomey, 40, 49
INDEX
347
La Voix du Paysan, 305 La Voix du Peuple du Cameroun, 52
World Summit on the Information Society (2003), 132, 306
W Wade, Abdoulaye, 119, 177, 189 Wal Fadjiri, 105 Walf FM, 126 Walf TV, 126 The West African Pilot , 45 Windhoek, 108, 109, 112, 122 World Bank, 76, 136, 207, 256, 262, 273, 282, 284
Y Yaoundé, 90, 228, 267 Z Zaïre, 93, 115, 283 Zambia, 301 Zimbabwe, 3, 232, 301 Zongo, Norbert, 192, 226