ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part One|84 pages
Regional Mapping
chapter 4|19 pages
Perverted Loyalties
part Two|138 pages
The Current State of Private and State-Owned Media Models
chapter 6|20 pages
Telecommunications and Broadcasting Regulation in Ethiopia
chapter 7|24 pages
Economic Precariousness and Political Ownership of Media in Nigeria
chapter 9|18 pages
Privately Owned But Government "Tele-Guided"
part Three|43 pages
Change & Challenges