Mass communication through the print and the electronic media has not been spared by the post-Cold-War wind of change that is sweeping across Africa and the rest of the world. According to Wilcox (1974: 37), in 1974 over 70 percent of all the newspapers that were printed in Africa were government-owned; in the same year, almost all radio and T.V. stations were owned by government. In the changing socio-eonomic climate, however, a state monopoly of the mass media in many Sub- Saharan African countries is now a thing of the past (see for instance, Bourgault 1995). Where, for example, there used to be only one or two newspapers owned by the government or the ruling party, there now exists a plethora of privately owned competing newspapers and other publications; and where there used to be only one sycophantic radio and T. V. station owned by the government, there now exist several radio and T. V. stations, many of them privately-owned commercial broadcasters. The general philosophy behind the liberalization of the mass media is what has come to be called `the freedom of speech`. Citing the liberalization of the electronic media in Kenya, this paper argues that the liberalization of the media in many Sub-Saharan countries has not been matched by policies that encourage the entrenchment, spread and full utilization of African indigenous languages. It is further argued that the lack of media policy that favours African indigenous languages is likely to lead to negative consequences for the languages of Africa.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:15-qucosa-92283 |
| Date | 09 August 2012 |
| Creators | Musau, Paul M. |
| Contributors | Kenyatta University, Department of Kiswahili, Universität zu Köln, Institut für Afrikanistik |
| Publisher | Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Swahili Forum 6 (1999), S. 137-146 |
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