L'impact des médias - étude en anglais

The construction of independent and pluralist media sectors is increasingly included in debates on popular empowerment, good governance, and poverty reduction. A liberalised media environment – in which the state opens up media ownership to private parties – is particularly regarded as contributing to developing nations’ democratic and hence developmental progress. As a result of widespread media liberalisation the African media landscape has diversified rapidly; most notably private radio stations have flourished. But introducing media liberalisation whilst simultaneously introducing multi-party politics, in a country context where (1) identity politics play an all-determining role in defining the social contract between state and society, (2) poverty, deprivation and international marginalisation persists, (3) formal democratic institutions are weak or not yet institutionalised and where imposed external policies have (4) weakened the state’s capacity to govern, the opening up of the radio market to private parties can and has shown to produce undemocratic outcomes in Africa. Radio stations have not only become co-opted by competing (ethnic) political forces in pursuit of protecting vested interests or obtaining political power, they have equally become a ‘battlefield’ on which ethnic differences and ethnic power struggles are fought. A more balanced approach to media liberalisation in which reforms are directed at building institutions and structures that will reduce the incentives for state capture and partisan abuse is needed to inform international policy making.

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