ABSTRACT
Internal pressure from restless populations and external pressure from 'Western' aid donors has ensured that even President Moi has been forced to give way to the demands for political pluralism and with it the fundamental freedoms. But the behaviour of the Lonrho-owned press might serve as a useful warning to those who imagine that it is enough to exchange government ownership of the media for the dubious virtues of the marketplace for all else to follow. Africa is not Europe. In terms of the media especially, the conditions that apply in the one do not apply in the other, a point already made by Professor Paul Ansah at a UNESCO-sponsored conference on the Press in Africa held in Namibia in May 1991. Given the record of African governments to date, one might baulk at the notion of these same governments 'creating' the environment for their own opposition, even in these heady days of UNESCO-sponsored seminars.
