• Display

an Eldis Resource

This brief examines the role played by the media during elections in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper states that for elections to be free, citizens must have access to sufficient information about the candidates and voting procedures to ensure the making of valid choices in the voting process.

The paper reveals that government control over state media is a well-anchored tradition in most African countries, despite the evolution of public media as more administratively and financially independent. Furthermore, journalists face many constraints in their daily work, thus preventing them from accessing even the most basic data. The author additionally finds that: 

• over the past 20 years, the media landscapes throughout Africa have accompanied and reflected the ups and downs of broader democratisation processes
• the new private media opened up spaces for public debate, for denouncing abuses by the authorities and for freeing information from control of political power
• during elections, the media became the main platform through which candidates and parties can make their views and programmes known
• in countries where the return to political competition resulted in instability, media acted as combatants for the various political movements (propaganda tools)
• elsewhere, poverty and threats to press freedoms led many media to seek protection and support from influential politicians and businessmen
• thus, the media tend to reproduce unfair electoral competition, as incumbents are quick to exploit their monopolised access to state resources to secure tenure.
  

The document recommends that donors must pay more attention to African nations’ needs, and search for ways to strengthen a pluralist media-independent landscape. This will enable the media to contribute to realistic opportunities for democratic power alternations rather than supporting an unbalanced political game.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend