Radio-télévision du Niger (RTN)

Radio-Télévision du Niger (RTN) is Niger’s national public-service broadcaster, operating the country’s principal television channels and its national radio network. The broadcaster was created on 11 February 1967 as the Office de Radiodiffusion et Télévision du Niger (ORTN) by Law 67-011, merging the country’s radio and television operations within a single state-owned entity. The 2022 reform separated RTN’s programme-editing role from the broadcast-diffusion/transmission function, assigned to the separate public transmission structure now operating as Télédiffusion du Niger. Headquartered in Niamey, RTN is supervised by the Ministry of Communication and New Information Technologies, currently headed by Adji Ali Salatou, appointed in a 17 April 2025 cabinet reshuffle, and its Board of Directors and Director-General are appointed by the government, with the Director-General named by executive decree.

Media assets

Television: Tele-Sahel, TAL TV

Radio: La Voix du Sahel, Radio Jeunesse Sahel

Ownership and governance

RTN is a state-owned établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial (EPIC), supervised by the Ministry of Communication and New Information Technologies. Its current institutional framework was confirmed by Council of Ministers decree n° 2022-409/PRN/MC of 12 May 2022, which established its statutes after the April 2022 reform separating programme-editing from broadcast diffusion. Its Board of Directors is appointed by the government, and its Director-General is appointed by executive decree. The current Director-General is Abdoulaye Coulibaly, appointed by the Council of Ministers in early November 2023 in a wider November 2023 wave of public-media appointments and confirmations affecting RTN, Télédiffusion du Niger (TDN), the publishing house ONEP and the news agency ANP. He replaced Toudou Mariama Issaka, the veteran journalist who had been appointed Director-General by the civilian Bazoum government in January 2023 and was removed shortly after the coup.

Coulibaly has been an active and visible junta-aligned voice during the review period: in a June 2025 public commentary at the installation of Niger’s Conseil Consultatif de la Refondation he denounced Radio France Internationale as “a tool of sabotage against the refoundation of Niger” and accused the French broadcaster of waging a “media war” against the AES. RTN has no statutory editorial-independence safeguard, no independent oversight body, no ombudsman and no published editorial charter. After the coup, the pre-existing Conseil Supérieur de la Communication (CSC) framework was sidelined and, by ordinance of 1 September 2025, replaced for the transition period by the Observatoire National de la Communication (ONC), provided for in Article 71 of the Charte de la Refondation; the journalist Ibrahim Manzo Diallo was appointed as its president, with the new body sworn in on 21 November 2025. Separately, the authorities had already suspended the umbrella body Maison de la Presse on 29 January 2024 by decree of the Minister of the Interior, after having barred it in late 2023 from holding its General Assembly to elect a new board.

Source of funding and budget

RTN is primarily state-funded. The State Media Monitor baseline records a funding mix of state subsidies (around 70 percent of an annual budget estimated at roughly US$2 million, up from about 52 percent a decade earlier), a household licence fee, and modest commercial revenue from advertising and programme sales, with the underlying figures relying on expert assessments in the absence of publicly disclosed financial reports. The financial situation during the review period has been visibly stressed: on a 27 May 2025 visit by Minister Salatou, Director-General Coulibaly told the minister that “since the start of 2025, RTN has been operating without a budget, it has still not been approved, and we are running on the basis of the twelfth-provisional, which makes investment difficult.” Coulibaly also asked the minister to resolve a stalled recruitment process for 92 staff positions. No audited financial report for RTN for 2023, 2024 or 2025 was identified in the public domain during this review.

Editorial independence

RTN does not operate under any statutory pro-government editorial mandate, but the State Media Monitor review records that the broadcaster is widely regarded as “blatantly pro-government” in practice, broadcasting official communiqués at length and steering clear of criticism of state institutions, and that this alignment deepened sharply after the July 2023 coup. The broadcaster has functioned as the principal voice of the junta throughout the transition: the Director-General has publicly framed RFI as a hostile actor, praised AES solidarity in similar terms in November 2025, and RTN gave prominent coverage to the 28 June 2025 installation of the Conseil Consultatif de la Refondation, the body anchoring the five-year transition.

The broadcaster’s alignment with the transition authorities was also formally recognised in October 2024, when RTN received the Médaille de la Souveraineté Sarauniya Mangou, created in May 2024 to reward “acts of patriotism, engagement and sacrifice for the cause of national sovereignty”, for its role in supporting CNSP and government actions, promoting patriotic messaging and countering Western media narratives.

The broader press-freedom environment in Niger deteriorated severely during the review period. Niger fell from 83rd to 120th of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders 2026 World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 46.02 in the “difficult” band, a 37-place drop, which RSF identifies as the steepest single-year fall in the entire 2026 Index. RFI and France 24 were suspended within days of the coup in July 2023; the BBC was suspended in December 2024; and on 8 May 2026, by a decision reported the following day, the Observatoire National de la Communication suspended nine further French and Western outlets: France 24, RFI, AFP, TV5 Monde, TF1 Info, Jeune Afrique, Mediapart, LSI Africa and France Afrique Média.

These conditions place RTN firmly in the State-Controlled (SC) category. The broadcaster is a state-owned EPIC supervised by the Ministry of Communication and New Information Technologies, with leadership appointed through executive channels and no statutory editorial-independence safeguard, independent ombudsman or published editorial charter. Since the July 2023 coup, RTN has functioned as the central broadcast vehicle of the CNSP-led transition, including through sustained coverage of official communiqués and refoundation messaging. It remains primarily dependent on public funding, and in 2025 its Director-General publicly stated that the broadcaster was operating without an approved budget, relying on provisional monthly allocations. The replacement of the CSC framework by the ONC, the suspension of the Maison de la Presse, the 2024–2026 wave of foreign-media suspensions and the 2026 defamation conviction of RTN’s Director-General all took place within a wider deterioration of media freedom. The SC classification therefore remains unchanged for 2026.

AI and digital policy

No RTN-specific published policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure or content-provenance standards such as C2PA was identified. The broadcaster maintains a digital presence through its rtn.ne platform and the institutionnel.rtn.ne portal, but no sector-specific framework governing AI-generated or synthetic content in Niger’s state media was identified during this review.

May 2026