Handbook Forum: Encouraging Media Independence in Africa

In 1985 when press freedom was a rare commodity in francophone Africa, Senegal stood out as a relative model of tolerance. But if there were fewer political constraints on journalists there was the formidable barrier of the economics of competing with government owned radio, television and the daily newspaper Il Soleil.

One day that year an enterprising journalist/editor came to our embassy in quest of a new technology. He had learned that desktop publishing was allowing those of modest means to produce newspapers. He wanted to get in on the ground floor of that revolution. He sought to acquire it so that he might eventually convert his quarterly magazine, Sud, into something more like a newspaper. I advised him that our embassy did not have a fund that could provide the few thousand dollars he would need but directed him to the local office of the Ford Foundation, providing him with an introduction to its director. Several months later after receiving a Ford grant, thanks to the technological breakthrough of desktop publishing, he had converted his quarterly into a monthly, then a weekly and eventually a daily newspaper.

The private daily Sud eventually attracted a higher circulation and readership than the government’s own newspaper and became the center of a media empire Sud Communication that today includes a private radio station. It stands today as one of the most successful ventures in independent journalism in francophone Africa, one that provides competing views to those of Senegal’s Ministry of Information. Through its reporting it has made government more transparent and opened new channels for political dialogue thereby bolstering Senegal’s democratic system.

-RRL