KENYA
By Betty Muriuki, Chief Sub-Editor, The Nation
24 February 2003

Kenya has a vibrant and divergent press. There are five daily newspapers with a nationwide circulation, several weeklies and numerous magazines with specialised readerships.

The largest media outfit in the country is the Nation Media Group. It publishes the Daily Nation and a Swahili daily, Taifa Leo, the Sunday Nation and its Swahili counterpart, Taifa Jumapili, The Weekly Advertiser, the Coast Express, and a weekly regional newspaper, The East African, which also covers Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. It also runs a television and an FM radio station.

The group also has a strong presence in Uganda, where it has majority shareholding in the Monitor Publications Limited, and has also recently extended its physical presence to Tanzania with its acquisition of Mwananchi Communications Limited. Monitor and Mwananchi publish two newspapers and run an FM radio station each.

There has been a proliferation of FM radio stations in Kenya in the past eight years. However, former president Daniel arap Moi's government gave licences and frequencies only to those firms in which it had an interest or which were owned by politically allied individuals. Hence, only radio stations, each run by the government, have nationwide reach. Similarly, only the government-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and the Kenya Television Network, which is owned by high-powered individuals in Moi's government, are licensed to operate nationally.

Despite being the only independent station that is genuinely free of government control, and by far the largest and best equipped financially and in terms of personnel, the Nation Media Group was only allowed to operate in Nairobi.

The new government elected last December has already made encouraging steps towards freeing the airwaves, withdrawing frequencies that had been allocated but remained dormant, or had been sold or leased to second parties. An immediate beneficiary of the cancellations was the Nation Media Group, which was finally, after years of waiting, allocated radio frequencies to cover more of Kenya.

Another major hurdle to press freedom is a controversial media law passed by parliament last year. The act raises tenfold the bond that publishers are required to pay to a staggering Sh1 million (about US$12,820), which few small publications can afford. It also introduces heavy penalties, such as hefty fines, jail terms, or a ban from publishing, for failure to comply with a new set of punitive rules.

The bill was largely viewed at targeting a proliferating "gutter press" of 4 to 8-page news sheets that carried scandalous articles about prominent personalities, but the rules also end up suppressing the mainstream media. There have been calls for the new government to repeal the oppressive law.

On a more positive note, a media council was launched last year to regulate the industry and to provide a forum for redress. The non-statutory body has established a code of conduct for journalists in the country. It has a membership of 17, half of whom are media practitioners and the other lay people. The council plans to set up an office in the next few weeks.