Deregulating the 
Broadcast Media in Africa 
HE FOREGOING 
question came 
towards the end of 
a rather stormy 
interview session 
on a novel concept 
in Nigeria and 
indeed most of 
Africa: broadcasting 
as private enterprise. 
However, rather than meet with 
vociferous denials and boring 
recapitalisation of some criteria upon 
which licences are granted applicants to 
run private broadcast media outlets, the 
mass communication scholar and head of 
the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission 
made matter-of-fact admissions of 
extraneous considerations to the process. 
His subsequent explanation, rather 
than entailing 'politics' in the popular 
sense, merely underscored two vital 
features of deregulated broadcasting: the 
sensitive nature of the electronic media 
generally and its capital intensive nature. 
His words: 'What we do in NBC is 
to recommend on the basis of stated 
criteria. The Head of State (Nigeria) in 
granting the final approval may look 
beyond our criteria in determining who 
gets what in the final analysis because the 
bank of information open at that level will 
be far, far more than what we have...' 
Such a bank, he explains, will 
incorporate issues of geo-political spread 
and theall important security check which 
includes ensuring that drug money is not 
ploughed into the foreign exchange 
intensive private broadcast media 
business. 
Perhaps, drawing examples from 
other advanced societies, the advantages 
of plural broadcasting as a purveyor of 
democracy, cultural values and ultimate 
liberator of the mind as well as a money 
spinning venture are afterall not entirely 
GLENDORA REVIEW: How much of politics go into 
granting licences to applicants? 
TOM ADABA: I must say that there must be a good 
measure of politics involved... 
Homeward : Bound 1995, by Oladele Ajiboye Bamigboye, a Video projection 
from the exhibition ' Self Evident' at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 
lost on African governments. 
However, releasing electronic media 
to private managers with its quality of 
immediacy and frightening implications 
for tenuous, even dictatorial clingers to 
power in African countries has not been 
an easy decision to take for most 
governments. 
Thus, it is instructive to note that a 
precursor of the deregulation drive of the 
broadcast media in Nigeria was the 1 988 
decree that first placed hitherto fully 
government controlled outlets like the News 
Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Federal Radio 
Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and 
Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) under 
partial commercialisation. 
Hakeem 
Bello 
The objective here was obvious 
government wanted to be relieved of the 
burden of funding by means of limited 
autonomy to enable broadcast stations 
shore up their resource profile while 
governmentstill had partial control through 
the information ministry. 
It was almost a year later before the 
Nigerian government admitted private 
operators and by extension alternative 
information flow by the granting of licences 
to fourteen open broadcast television 
stations on the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) 
brandwidth and thirteen cable satellite 
operators in mid-1 993 through the NBC's 
stringent guidelines. The first private radio 
station was to get a nod again some 
twelve months after in August 1994. 
African Quarterly 
on the Am 
VoLUNOi
In other parts of Africa, problem still 
remains with iron-clasp government 
control, raising requisite capital to procure 
equipment and train personnel and most 
importantly, create a market that will 
sustain the industry through advertising. 
'When we started', recalls Modibo 
Diallo, president of the management board 
of Radio Bamakan, an independent radio 
station in Mali which went on air two 
years ago, 'the government tried to stop 
us... Now they are putting through a law 
that both accepts and protects private 
radio. We are part of the movement to 
support democracy.' 
Diallo spoke with Pat Machees as 
one of twelve representatives of African 
Radio Stations from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, 
The Gambia, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, 
Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South 
Africa and Zimbabwe who attended a 
two week seminar on radio management, 
sponsored by the Voice of America, held 
in the USA last year. 
Among other participants at the 
seminar whose contributions provided 
revealing insights into the politics of 
broadcast media deregulation in Africa 
were Moustapha Thiombiano of Burkina 
Faso, who reportedly pioneered 
independent radio in Africa and now 
owns seven stations, and George 
Christensen, who owns Radio One FM, 
an independent station in the Gambia. 
'In the first thirty years of African 
independence, people were notgiven the 
chance to speak out,' declares 
Thiambiano. 'We need more than public 
radio if we are going to emancipate the 
African people.' 
According to him many of the private 
broadcast media outlets are using radio 
to address such problems as AIDS, 
vaccinations, education, women's 
liberation, and family planning. 
The urge to offer alternative 
information source is the single compelling 
force behind proponents of private 
electronic media but cost remains the 
forbidding factor. This is the problem of 
an aspiring entrepreneur like, Joao 
Baptista Sousa - commercial director of 
the government-owned Radio 
Mozambique who is part of Nov Antenna, 
a group of announcers, technicians and 
African Qusrurly 
an the Arts 
VaLUN03 
producers currently floating an 
independent station. 
'We are applying for the licence', 
Sousa says. 'But getting the financing is 
the main problem. It costs $50,000 to buy 
the equipment and build the station. Not 
a large one, just basic' In Nigeria, the 
rough estimate for establishing a television 
station stands at the range of 1 50 to 200 
million Naira; for the radio station, 
anything between 80 and 120 million 
Naira will be needed, all in foreign 
exchange and excluding staff training 
and overhead costs. 
Thus, just as in Nigeria, the cost 
factor may be forcing other African 
governments to deregulate even the 
government funded electronic media as 
Joao Sousa contends. 'The government is 
putting pressure on the public radio stations 
to make money because they do not have 
enough... They give you 50 to 75 per cent 
and ask you to raise the rest.' 
Getahum Gebremichael, an acting 
programme manager of Voice of Ethiopia, 
a government-backed station also 
acknowledged this pressure. According 
to him, 'we were socialistic and now are 
becoming capitalistic. The knowledge of 
sales management is all new to me. We 
need to have sales peoples who will go 
door to door and invite companies to use 
radio-especially if they do not know the 
value of advertising. Now we do not go 
door to door, they come to us. We have 
the same sales people for radio, television, 
and print. Radio needs its own sales 
force. We need a different market for 
radio. We will do better than now.' 
In Zimbabwe Ufi Khumalo of Radio 
Three speaks of restructuring sales and 
programming as a way of coping with 
deregulation. 'We have to be more 
customer-focused,' she declares. With her 
seventeen years' experience at the 
Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation which 
she joined as a clerk-typist, she should 
know.
When she joined the Africa Service 
of the network, it broadcast in English and 
one African language; but now it 
broadcasts in eight languages. 'The 
minority languages get two hours or less 
a day, but this is better than the nothing 
they had before independence in 1980' 
We cannot but wonder at this 
juncture why government electronic media 
throughout Africa have been unable to 
raise adequate revenue until forced to do 
so by the partial deregulation stance and 
in the face of stiff opposition from the 
private media. The answer says Machees, 
lies in the lack of reward mechanisms for 
the staff of government-owned radio 
stations'. 
'In the well established private 
stations, sales people are paid based on 
collections from their sales, an incentive to 
get out and hustle. But in governmentowned 
stations, sales people may be civil 
servants who get paid the same whether 
they sell a little, a lot, or nothing.' For 
example, in the government-run Namibia 
Broadcasting Corporation, salaries are 
fixed and commissions are not allowed.' 
A staffer, Alex Tjihera says, 'I have 
been top salesman at my radio station 
every year for several years, and I have 
learned that I was not working hard 
enough.' Hiscolleague, RachelGowasses 
would want to see a delineation of job 
responsibility so that people will know 
who is to do what. 
Such a confusion would definitely 
not arise in a private media with a profit 
motivated management ready to hire the 
best in the market in order to succeed. 
Such is the experience of the Gambian 
radio entrepreneur, George Christensen: 
'It was making money by the second or 
third month... within three to four months, 
we became the most popular radio station 
in our country and blew away all the 
competition.' 
So what are the other problem 
areas for the deregulated broadcast media 
in Africa? 
'We have all the equipment for 
broadcasting', declares Ahmadou Sadio 
Diallo, administrator of the Independent 
Radio Gendal in Guinea. 'We are only 
waiting for the okay from the government.' 
Aside from the feet dragging by many 
African governments and the daunting 
financial outlay of venturing into private 
media, watchers of the industry have 
identified certain intrinsic problems with 
the entire enterprise. 
First, there is the danger inherent in 
having an industry, just like many others,
wholly dependent on imported technology 
and expertise. Thus, asked recently by 
Glend6ra Review in Lagos why the 
independent Raypower Television station 
had not taken off despite three 
postponements and numerous assurances. 
Chief Raymond Dokpesi, the chairman of 
DAR Communications who successfully 
started the first private radio in Nigeria 
said, 'Africa was allocated one satellite 
frequency at the World Radio Conference 
held in Geneva in 1 977, and to utilise it, 
a lot of work had to be done and you have 
to apply to the International 
Telecommunication Union for approval 
for the allocation of the frequency.' 
Besides, there are other 
international broadcast rules to be 
complied with and worse still the Russian 
equipment, the satellite, Interscruitiny 
Express II which he first acquired could 
not fit into the Inter-sat mode which most 
other countries are using hence the need 
to apply to Inter-sat for a Transponder 
Space while also having to reappraise, 
redesign and reallign already acquired 
equipment to the new satellite. 
Again, there is the question of 
programmes of dubious quality for which 
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the NBC has indicted some private 
television stations in Lagos and Kaduna 
just as it indicted radio and television 
stations and cable satellite retransmission 
stations for consistently flouting the agreed 
ratio for local and foreign content of 
broadcast materials. 
'I am saying that we won't be a 
conduit pipe for foreign programmes. Do 
they want to make money so the national 
image should go to hell?' Adaba asked 
angrily when confronted with the 
allegations by private electronic media 
operators that he was being dictatorial 
over the programme ratios in Nigeria 
He explained that he had tried 
without success to establish a relationship 
between the Independent Television 
Producers Association of Nigeria (a 
potential source of credible local 
programmes) and the private media 
operators without success because the 
entrepreneurs prefer merely beaming 
cheap foreign programmes even if such 
are violent, erotic, offensive or repetitive. 
Finally, in view of the lack of 
motivation in the government-owned 
media, private media outfits have created 
room for professionals who are being 
attracted with promise of more rewards 
But how much of such qualified 
personnel are actually available? Critics 
have complained about a lowering of 
broadcasting standards by a crop of 
younger broadcasters who lack the proper 
grounding and exposure of the older but 
Dr. Adaba says this should be an expected 
fall-out of proliferation 
Such a short circuit entry into the 
studio, he said, would not obtain in the 
70s for example, when rigorous training 
was uncompromised and media stations 
were far between. 
Despite the shortcomings and 
problems spawned by deregulation, the 
idea of a deregulated media in Africa is 
indeed welcome. MEDIA WORLD, a 
media development organisation in Lagos 
enthusiastically stated that, 'the licensing 
of private broadcast stations remains a 
wise decision even by current African 
standards and reflects the yearning of not 
only the Nigerian, but also the entire 
world community.' GR