TELECOMS
Togo’s partial privatization will not solve the market blockages that are holding back the country’s full potential
12 October 2018
For years Togo’s Government has been dancing around what it is going to do about its inefficient state telcos. It has now pushed them both together into a single entity and announced that it will offer a minority stake to a private operator. Russell Southwood looks at why it has not addressed the key issues that the market needs to develop. On 3 October this year Togo’s Council of Ministers announced that the newly created entity for the state incumbent – TOGOCOM – would be partially privatized. It said that by getting private investment it would be able to “fully…
BROADCAST
Viusasa wants to give Kenyan producers better distribution and is looking for local content
5 October 2018
George Waititu is the CEO, Content Aggregation which has launched Kenya’s Viusasa. It wants to become the local content contender able to take on the other more Pan-African platforms in the market. Russell Southwood spoke to George Waititu about how things have worked after only 11 months in operation. Former market research company Steadman Managing Director George Waititu has launched Viusasa in partnership with Royal Media Services. It went to market in the last week in October 2017 and has been exploring how best to tackle the market. It still experimenting with different price approaches but has firmly staked its…
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…
