Television Togolaise (TVT)

Télévision Togolaise (TVT) is the state-owned national public television broadcaster of Togo, operating from its headquarters in Lomé and broadcasting through the tvt.tg platform and associated terrestrial and satellite services. The broadcaster was inaugurated on 31 July 1973 by President Gnassingbé Eyadéma as Radio-Télévision de la Nouvelle Marche (RTNM), conceived as a vehicle for national unity and cultural promotion in the post-independence period. Transmitter coverage was extended in 1975 to Agou, Dapaong, Badou and Atakpamé; the first colour broadcast in SECAM format followed around 1979-1981, depending on the historical source; and in 1990 the broadcaster rebranded as Télévision Togolaise (TVT), consolidating its identity as the country’s flagship public television service.

Media assets

Television: TVT

Ownership and governance

TVT’s statutory basis remains décret No. 2012-006/PR of 7 March 2012 organising the ministerial departments of the Republic of Togo, under which TVT is constituted as a direction sous tutelle of the supervising ministry, that is, a departmental unit operating under ministerial oversight rather than as an autonomous body corporate with its own board of directors and independent legal personality. No detailed statutory editorial-independence regime (non-direction clause, public-service-broadcasting charter, ombudsman or board complaints procedure) equivalent to those found in some other African public-broadcasting statutes was identified for TVT during this review.

A major institutional reform was advanced through Décret n° 2022-008/PR du 20 janvier 2022 on the organisation and functioning of Radio et Télévision du Togo (RTVT), envisaging the merger of TVT, Radio Lomé and Radio Kara into a single body corporate with autonomous financing. As of late 2025 and early 2026, however, the RTVT entity has not been operationalised: TVT continues to function as a ministerial department under the 2012 decree, and the September 2025 leadership changes across the country’s public broadcasters were all made on an interim basis pending RTVT operationalisation.

The supervising ministry was renamed and reorganised under the post-2024 constitutional-reform reorganisation of government: the previous Ministère de la Communication et des Médias (which gave the historical “Ministry of Communication and Media” framing) was reconstituted as the Ministère de la Communication, des Médias et de la Culture, with the culture portfolio added to the ministerial brief. The Minister is Yawa Kouigan (also referenced in official material as Florence Yawa Kouigan and Yawa Ahofa Kouigan), who also serves as government spokesperson and succeeded the previous Minister Akodah Ayewouadan, who held the portfolio in the 2022-2024 period.

The current Director-General is Komou Désiré (also known as Komou Tchaa Panéipésseï), appointed interim Director-General by ministerial decree on 3 September 2025, a decree signed by Minister Yawa Kouigan. Komou Désiré had previously been Director-General of Radio Kara since October 2018; he is a journalist by formation and also teaches in public universities. He succeeded Joseph Yao Amégan, who had been Director-General of TVT and was dismissed by ministerial decree on 2 September 2025. The same set of 3 September 2025 ministerial decrees also installed Gerson Dovo (previously rédacteur en chef) as interim director of Radio Lomé and John Abalo Takou as interim director of Radio Kara, confirming that the public-broadcasting leadership turnover was a coordinated ministerial intervention across all three state outlets pending the long-delayed RTVT reform.

Source of funding and budget

TVT is primarily state-funded, sustained mainly through public appropriations under the Ministère de la Communication, des Médias et de la Culture budget envelope, supplemented by limited operational and advertising income. The issue from an SMM-typology perspective is not that TVT has no commercial income at all, but that there is no independent funding settlement and no standalone audited public accounts. The broadcaster does not publish standalone audited annual reports or financial statements, and no comprehensive standalone financial statement for 2024 or 2025 was identified during this review.

Government authorities have historically disbursed TVT’s funding in piecemeal tranches, which the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and other research organisations have identified as undermining the broadcaster’s ability to execute long-term editorial planning or substantial technological upgrades. The structural dependence on state appropriations, without an independent funding settlement comparable to a licence-fee or autonomous-financing model, was the explicit rationale for the proposed RTVT merger (which would have given the new entity its own financement autonome); the continued non-operationalisation of RTVT means that the underlying funding dependence on the ministry persists.

External infrastructure support has been a recurring feature of TVT’s modernisation trajectory. According to documents reviewed by the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC), approximately US$12 million in Chinese funding was channelled to TVT and Radio Lomé between 2017 and 2022, supporting infrastructure development, equipment supply and technical cooperation. The MJRC noted that while these investments modernised aspects of TVT’s operations, they also raise questions about the influence of external partnerships on domestic media narratives. Togo’s currency, the West African CFA franc (XOF), is pegged to the euro through the broader UEMOA monetary arrangement, providing exchange-rate stability for foreign-denominated equipment imports but doing little to address the underlying weakness of the public-service broadcaster’s domestic funding base.

Editorial independence

TVT’s editorial output has historically been closely aligned with the communications priorities of the executive branch. A February 2024 survey conducted by the Media and Journalism Research Center among ten Togolese journalists found that respondents unanimously characterised TVT’s coverage as closely aligned with government messaging. The broadcaster does not have a publicly available editorial charter, an ombudsman, or an independent complaints procedure specific to TVT; the appointment of senior leadership through ministerial decree (rather than through an arm’s-length board procedure) further consolidates the structural dependence on the executive.

The 2025 protest cycle directly tested the wider media-freedom environment within which TVT operates. In early June 2025, Togolese rapper Aamron (Essowe Tchalla) was arrested after criticising governance online, helping trigger a wider protest cycle that spread through Lomé. On 6 June 2025, TV5 Monde journalist Flore Monteau was detained by gendarmes while covering the protests, forced to delete protest footage, and released the same day, an incident condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). In April 2025, police had earlier arrested Albert Agbeko, editor of Togo Scoop, and forced the deletion of photographs from his phone during an electoral-list revision operation. The protest cycle continued in 26-28 June 2025 demonstrations in Lomé and intermittently through mid-2025 and beyond, with reports of arrests, violent dispersals and deaths during the late-June demonstrations. The government withdrew a planned 12.5 percent electricity-price increase, but the constitutional framework remained in place.

These structural conditions place TVT firmly in the State-Controlled (SC) category. TVT remains Togo’s state television broadcaster within the supervising ministry’s public-media structure, rather than an arm’s-length public-service corporation with its own independent board and editorial-governance framework. Its Director-General is appointed by ministerial decree and, since 3 September 2025, holds office on an interim basis pending the long-delayed operationalisation of the RTVT reform. The broadcaster is primarily funded through public appropriations, with no standalone audited accounts, no independent funding settlement, no published editorial charter, no ombudsman and no TVT-specific complaints mechanism identified. The SC classification therefore continues to apply for 2026.

AI and digital policy

TVT operates a public-facing digital platform at tvt.tg alongside terrestrial and satellite broadcasting and social-media distribution. No TVT-specific published policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, C2PA or content provenance standards was identified during this review. At sector level, however, Togo’s regulatory environment is changing: the HAAC/HARC transition expands the media-regulatory perimeter toward written press, audiovisual and digital communication (including social networks); Togo has had a comprehensive personal-data-protection framework since the adoption of Loi n° 2019-014 du 29 octobre 2019, with the Instance de Protection des Données à Caractère Personnel (IPDCP), an independent administrative authority created under Article 57 of the law, officially launching its activities on 28 March 2025 under President Bédiani Béléi, appointed by presidential decree of 30 September 2024; and the government has begun preparing a national AI strategy while discussing AI in public-communication and disinformation contexts. The 2020 Code de la presse et de la communication (adopted December 2019) remains the principal media-law framework, retaining the 2004 removal of custodial sentences for press offences. These sectoral developments are relevant to TVT’s future digital operations, but they do not yet create a TVT-specific newsroom AI policy.

June 2026