Lesotho

Lesotho is a landlocked constitutional monarchy in Southern Africa, an enclave entirely surrounded by South Africa, with a population of about 2.4 million and its capital at Maseru. King Letsie III is the ceremonial head of state, while executive authority rests with the government led by Prime Minister Sam Matekane, whose Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) won the October 2022 general election and formed a coalition. Sesotho and English are the official languages, and the currency is the loti (LSL), pegged at par to the South African rand. The country’s state media are operated as units of central government rather than as autonomous public-service institutions: the Lesotho National Broadcasting Service (LNBS), which runs Lesotho Television, Radio Lesotho and Ultimate Radio, and the Lesotho News Agency (LENA), the national news agency. Both are classified State-Controlled (SC) for 2026.

LNBS and LENA both sit under the Ministry of Information, Communications, Science, Technology and Innovation, whose portfolio is held by Minister Nthati Moorosi. Neither outlet has an independent board or a statutory guarantee of editorial independence; LNBS is administered within the ministry hierarchy rather than through an independent board, while LENA operates under the ministry’s information function. State Media Monitor review indicates that the output of both reflects official government priorities, and that both are structurally dependent on state funding with only limited supplementary revenue. State Media Monitor baseline review recorded LENA’s most recently disclosed subsidy at LSL 5.35 million across 2022/2023 and 2023/2024, while the broader communications portfolio is the subject of a major capital project — a new national Broadcasting Complex to be jointly funded by the Government of Lesotho and the People’s Republic of China, intended to modernise studios and broadcasting infrastructure. Civil-society and media-reform actors have called for stronger autonomy and editorial safeguards for the state media, including the transformation of LENA into a more independent public news agency.

Press freedom in Lesotho is fragile. Reporters Without Borders records that the state media remain largely controlled by the government and politicians, that abuses against journalists are frequent, and that Lesotho remains one of the few countries on the continent with no daily newspaper. The killing of radio journalist Ralikonelo “Leqhashasha” Joki, shot dead outside the Tšenolo FM studio in Maseru in May 2023, remains a defining marker of the risks facing journalists in the country. Lesotho decriminalised defamation in 2018 and adopted legal reforms in 2021 that improved parts of the media-law framework, but other laws that can be used against journalists remain in force. Public perceptions of media freedom are weak: an Afrobarometer survey released in September 2025 found that only 38% of Basotho consider the country’s media free to report without government interference, while 46% disagree. No sector-specific provisions governing AI-generated content, deepfakes, or synthetic-media authentication were identified in Lesotho’s media-regulatory framework.

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