Francis Nyamnjoh

Africa’s Media: Between Professional Ethics and Cultural Belonging

Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2010). Africa's media: Between professional ethics and cultural belonging. Windhoek: Fesmedia Africa, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

In 2005 I published Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Politics of Belonging. One of the main findings of that study was that the media have assumed a partisan, highly politicised, militant role in Africa. They have done so by dividing citizens into the righteous and the wicked, depending on their party-political leanings, ideologies, regional, cultural or ethnic belonging. By considering the Cameroonian experience, the book sought to understand how scapegoatism, partisanship, and regional and ethnic tendencies in the media have affected their liberal democratic responsibility to act as honest, fair and neutral mediators – accessible to all and sundry. It did this by looking at polarisation in the press and at how the media have shaped and
been shaped by the politics of belonging since the early 1990s.

Journalism in Africa: Modernity, Africanity

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh (Originally published in Rhodes Journalism Review No. 25, November 2005, pages 3-6)

The basic assumptions underpinning African Journalism in definition and practice, are not informed by the fact that ordinary Africans are busy Africanizing their modernity and modernizing their Africanity in ways often too complex for simplistic dichotomies to capture.

Pipers, Tunes and Global Hierarchies in African Publishing

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh (originally published in Bookmark: News Magazine of the South African Booksellers’ Association, July-September 2006, pp.29-30)

Drawing on his own foray into the world of South African publishing, Dr. Francis Nyamnjoh unpacks some of the challenges facing African literature – on the African continent. He questions the tacit acceptance that there is only limited space available for work written and published by Africans. This article does not seek to provide practical solutions to the economic, distribution and marketing issues but rather focuses on some of the ideological dimensions of publishing Africa.

From publish or perish to publish and perish: What ‘Africa’s 100 Best Books’ tell us about publishing Africa

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

This paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Asian and African Studies (JAAS) and the final (edited, revised and typeset) version of this paper will be published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol 39(4), 2004 by Sage Publications Ltd, All rights reserved.© Sage Publications Ltd, 2004.

Abstract:

This paper draws on the African publishing industry initiative to determine ‘Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20^th Century’, to discuss writing, scholarship and publishing in and on Africa. It argues that it is not enough to publish or read about Africa, just as it is not enough to pass for an African writer or scholar. There is need to problematise what is published and read on Africa, and how sympathetic to Africa, culturally, morally and scientifically authors and publications are.

West Africa: Unprofessional and unethical journalism

By Francis Nyamnjoh

In the name of freedom

The current democratic process in West Africa has brought with it not only multipartyism, but also a sort of media pluralism. In almost every country the number of private newspapers increased dramatically with the clamour for more representative forms of democracy in the early 1990s. Some countries have also opened up the airwaves while others are still lagging behind. The fact that since independence African governments largely resisted private initiative in the area of broadcasting and waited till the pro-democracy clamours of the 1990s even to contemplate weakening their radio and television monopoly is but a logical continuation of their colonial heritage.

Media ownership and control in Cameroon: Constraints on media freedom

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

The government of Cameroon shows that it is more interested in containing the media politically than in providing its proprietors and practitioners the enabling economic environment they need for professional excellence and financial independence. This has brought about the underdevelopment of the press by imposing on it a series of constraints. No one who knows what a newspaper looks like (in content and form) in Nigeria, Kenya, or South Africa, would take seriously what in Cameroon passes for newspapers.

State of the Media in Botswana, 2001

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Introduction
The 2000 report on media-government relations in Botswana sounded a relative note of optimism, which has been seriously tempered by events and developments in 2001. Relations between the government and the media have grown tenser, and mutual suspicion between the two has increased remarkably. It would appear that both are fast catching up with the reality of government-media relations elsewhere in Africa, making Botswana’s commitment to liberal democracy under increasing scrutiny. What accounts for such change of tone and direction? In what way have the media and the government given each other reason to rethink the importance of tolerance and freedom of expression as the foundation of liberal democracy in Botswana?

The State of the Media in Southern Africa 2000: Botswana

By Francis Nyamnjoh

Introduction
The main development in Botswana in 2000 was in the area of broadcasting. The press, of course, continued to play an active role in the promotion of civil society and democracy. MISA Botswana monitored and reported accordingly on media related issues, and in November there was a sub-regional workshop on Cartoon Journalism and Democratisation in Southern Africa, at the University of Botswana. As the report shows, government-media relations are not, comparatively speaking, characterised by hostility. But there is no room for complacency.