Who owns the media and communications in Africa today and with what implications? The book elegantly answers this urgent question by unpacking multiple dimensions of media ownership through rare and authoritative perspectives, including both historical and contemporary digital developments. It traces the evolving forms of ownership of media and communications in specific African contexts, showing how they interact with broader changes in and outside the continent.
The book also shows how Big Techs, such as Meta (formerly known as Facebook), are involved in a scramble for Africa’s digital ecosystem and how their advance brings both opportunities and concerns about ownership and control. The chapters analyse evolving forms of ownership and their implications on media concentration and democracy across Africa. The book offers a nuanced account of how media ownership structures are in some instances captured with an ever-growing and complex ecosystem that also has new opportunities for public interest media.
Offering a significant representation of the trends and diversity of existing media systems, the book goes beyond the postcolonial geographical divisions of North and Sub-Saharan Africa to highlight common patterns and significant similarities and differences of communications ownerships between and within African countries. The contributors expose media and communications ownership patterns in Africa that are centralised and yet decentralising and in some cases, battling, resurging and globalising.
Author(s): Winston Mano, Loubna El Mkaouar
Series: Routledge Contemporary Africa
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 309
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Contributors
1 African Media Ownership in the Digital Age: An Introduction
PART ONE Regional Mapping: An Overview of Media Structure in North and Sub-Saharan Africa
2 Big Tech’s Scramble for Africa: An Afrokological Critique
3 The African “Hidden Media Capture”
4 Perverted Loyalties: Media Capture, Control and Patrimonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa
5 Media From the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, Communication Systems in Portuguese-Speaking Africa
PART TWO The Current State of Private and State-Owned Media Models: Policy, Licensing, and Advertising
6 Telecommunications and Broadcasting Regulation in Ethiopia: A Dialectical Discussion of Policy and Politics
7 Economic Precariousness and Political Ownership of Media in Nigeria: Implications for Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria
8 Media Ownership, Politics and Propaganda: The Nigerian Example
9 Privately Owned But Government “Tele-Guided”: The Paradox of Private Media Broadcast in Cameroon
10 The Senegalese Council for Broadcasting Regulation: A Giant With Feet of Clay
11 Cosmetic Reforms and Elite Continuity of Media Ownership Patterns in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe
12 Media Ownership and Development in Post-Qaddafi Libya
13 Egyptian Media Ownership and Pluralism: Overview, Performance, and Challenges
PART THREE Change & Challenges: The Way Ahead
14 Community Media Ownership in the Context of Donor Funding
15 Media Ownership and Digital Authenticity in Slum TV
16 Are Traditional Platforms Muffled by Cyber Media? A Review on the Shift in Media Ownership in Nigeria
Index
