TELECOMS
Vodafone Wholesale puts in second fibre link for regional connectivity but huge disparities exist in African wholesale rates as prices fall
17 August 2018
Vodafone Wholesale’s new second link from Ghana to its neighbors is good news for the region. Ghana’s position as a competitive regional hub will hopefully drive more falls in wholesale prices, particularly in landlocked countries. However, there are now huge disparities in both international and national fibre prices. Russell Southwood looks at Africa’s two speed wholesale market. Sub-Saharan Africa now has several regional hubs that service their surrounding regions. These are currently Senegal, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. With more competitive markets and pricing policies, Angola, Cameroon and Sudan could join this elite group. But interestingly, highly competitive Nigeria is…
BROADCAST
The End of Africa’s Mr President TV – Several steps forward and two steps back for the liberalization of the airwaves
9 August 2018
Most African countries have now formally ended the monopoly of state-run TV. Many more countries have liberalized their airwaves over the last ten years but there is a small but stubborn minority that have failed to do so. Russell Southwood assesses the current state of play and looks at the impact of social media on the debate. You cannot mistake Mr President TV when you see it. The news opens with the Agriculture Show opened by the President or his latest overseas visit. At its worst, this is then followed by a succession of Ministers speaking in declining order of…
REPORTS
Africa's Media Deficit and Access to Knowledge
Access to information is a fundamental human right. Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights1 (ICCPR) links the right to information to freedom of expression includes the right to information: When citizens have no access to media or only limited access to media their “freedom to seek, receive and impart information of all kinds” is restricted. Where this position exists, citizens are experiencing a media deficit that affects their access to knowledge. Therefore, this briefing paper sets out to do two things: To outline the scale and extent of the media deficit and the general factors…
