Sub-Saharan Africa is overwhelmingly dominated by the state-controlled media model, with some 98% of 125 state media outlets in the region being state-controlled or captured public/state media, which is the highest incidence of state control in the world. The figure is up by 1% since last year, the increase being mostly the result of the methodology changes that affected the counting of state media entities in Ethiopia and Nigeria, coupled with the inclusion of the state controlled Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) in our sample.
We noted a typology change in the case of three media outlets, namely South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Radiodiffusion Télévision Ivoirienne (RTI) and Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN). In all three cases, they moved from the State Controlled (SC) model to the Captured Public/State Managed (CaPu), technically an improvement, yet they continue to lack editorial freedom.There are only three independent state media entities in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. One is Sidwaya, a media company run by the government of Burkina Faso that consists of several print publications and the Burkina Agency of Information (AIB), the country’s flagship news agency. Although it relies on funding from the government and is subordinated to the Ministry of Communication and Relations with Parliament, there are no formal editorial rules forcing the media outlets run by Sidwaya to grant favorable coverage to authorities. State authorities exert some influence in Sidwaya, yet we could not identify in the past eight years any instances of editorial control by the government. The other two exceptions are Société nouvelle de presse et d’édition de Côte d’Ivoire (SNPECI), a state-owned publishing house in Côte d’Ivoire whose main publication is Fraternité Matin, a widely read tabloid newspaper that enjoys editorial freedom in spite of frequent pressures from high officials, and Agence Ivoirienne de Presse (AIP), the official news agency in Cote d’Ivoire, headquartered in Abidjan, which is predominantly funded by the government and subordinated to the Ministry of Communications, yet remains editorially autonomous.
This considerable state control in the African media is the result of a long period of failed experiments aimed at building vibrant public service media across the continent, but also of the lack of financial sustainability of the African media markets, which forced many publishers to accept the state intervention to stay afloat.
Hendriek Bussiek, a media expert who authored a bevy of reports on African broadcasting, wrote, “Government control over national broadcasters is evident. National broadcasters largely have their boards appointed by the government. They are owned, supervised and maintained by the government and often run as government departments, with employees having the status of civil servants.”
Africa also has one of the highest rates of state ownership in the print media. Nearly a fifth of all state-administered media players canvassed by our research in Sub-Saharan Africa are print media publishers in countries such as Burundi (Publications de Presse Burundaise, PPB), Mozambique (Sociedade de Notícias), Tanzania (Tanzania Standard Newspapers), Zanzibar (Zanzibar Newspaper Corporation, ZNC), Angola (Edições Novembro E.P.) or Namibia (New Era), among many others.
Finally, news agencies across most of Africa remain heavily state-controlled.