The Aga Khan
Job: 49th imam of Ismaili Shia Muslims; chairman and founder of the Aga Khan Development Network; chairman and founder of the NMG group
Sphere of influence: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
Major media brands: Daily Nation, Sunday Nation, Taifa Leo, Taifa Jumapili, The East African, The Coast Express, The Weekly Advertiser, Nation TV and Nation FM in Kenya; The Monitor newspaper and Monitor FM radio station in Uganda; stakes in the Kiswahili newspapers Mwananchi and Mwanaspoti and Radio Uhuru in Tanzania.
For his first twenty years he was known simply as Prince Karim. In 1957, as a Harvard undergraduate majoring in Islamic studies, the title was extended a little: the young student became Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, 49th imam of the Ismaili Shia Muslims and spiritual leader to some 15 million people.
Now 66, the Aga Khan’s dazzling lifestyle and incredible wealth are a steady source of fascination to the world’s press. His thoroughbred race horses and yacht on the Costa Smerelda regularly accompany him on the celebrity pages, as does his glamorous second wife, a German princess 27 years his junior.
But the tabloid fodder belies the Aga Khan’s substance. According to Forbes magazine, editorialising in a piece based on a rare interview with the prince in 1999, the Aga Khan has “changed the face of global philanthropy.” Hardly known for its indulgence of any ideology outside the profit motive, Forbes commented: “[The Aga Khan] was early among experts in Third World development to grasp that government handouts and multilaterally funded megaprojects often foster dependence, not self-reliance, in the people they’re meant to help. To counter this danger, the Aga Khan has become a kind of venture capitalist to the Third World.”
The ventures have extended into media. For close on forty years the Aga Khan held around 44% of the shares of the Nation Media Group (NMG) in his personal account. Last year those shares were diverted into the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), a Swiss corporation – total assets approximately US$1 billion – focused on long-term sustainable growth across Asia and Africa.
Founded by the Aga Khan in 1960, NMG is the largest media company in East and Central Africa, and amongst the largest publicly listed information providers on the continent. From its headquarters in Nairobi it publishes seven titles, the most influential of which is Kenya’s largest circulating daily the Daily Nation. Its broadcasting division runs Kenya’s Nation TV and Nation FM.
In Uganda, NMG is the majority stakeholder in The Monitor, the country’s only independent daily, and Monitor FM, the leading news and talk radio station. The company recently acquired a significant stake in Mwananchi Commmunications, based in Tanzania, which publishes two Kiswahili newspapers, Mwananchi and Mwanaspoti, and has an interest in Radio Uhuru.
With all of these brands the Aga Khan’s financial clout facilitates a fierce editorial independence, as evidenced by the Daily Nation‘s hard line against former Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi. The NMG group’s liberalist stance has made a profound contribution to the democratic process in East and Central Africa, a contribution that reflects the philosophy of AKFED and the rest of the agencies within the Aga Khan Development Network.
Koos Bekker
Job: Chief visionary of the MIH/Naspers group; founder and director of M-Net; managing director of Naspers; director of Media24, Nasboek, MIH BV, MIH Holdings, SuperSport International and other companies within the MIH stable
Sphere of influence: 50 countries across Africa; Thailand, China, Greece, Cyprus
Major media brands: M-Net, Supersport, M-Web, MultiChoice Africa, DStv, Irdeto Access, Media 24 (around 60 newspaper and 30 magazine titles), NND, Nasboek, Educor
They call him ‘electronic man’ because he’s a pay-TV visionary. Koos Bekker wrote a thesis on the subject of subscriber television back in 1982, for New York’s Columbia University. At the time Home Box Office (HBO) had just launched in the United States and Bekker thought the concept could work in South Africa. So he approached Ton Vosloo at Nasionale Pers with the idea.
It was an adroit move by the young Bekker—Vosloo, it appeared, was heavily connected. The links between Nasionale Pers and the Afrikaner Broederbond meant there was no difficulty gaining access to the top levels of the incumbent broadcast regulator – the National Party-controlled SABC. Minister Pik Botha extracted a promise that no news would be broadcast, and in 1985 M-Net was launched.
In 1990, after having recouped start-up costs many times over, M-Net was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange along with MultiChoice, the subscriber management and digital services subsidiary. MultiChoice Africa was created in 1995 and today reaches over 1,3 million subscribers in 49 countries across the continent.
As the MIH/Naspers chief strategist, Bekker has played an instrumental role in establishing the group’s uncontested dominance over the African pay-TV market. He has driven the expansion of electronic platforms into the tough media environments of Greece, Thailand and China. His operational control of the publishing arm since 1997 has seen the launch of dozens of magazine and newspaper titles, and Media 24 subsidiaries have recently taken the cue from TV to aggressively pursue African opportunities.
Also, Bekker puts his money where his mouth is. For the last six years he has received “no salary, bonus, car scheme, medical or pension contributions of any nature whatever”, preferring to get remunerated via a share incentive scheme. It seems the gamble has paid off. Business Report recently noted that the surge in the Naspers share price values Bekker’s profit on his initial holding at R75 million, with the second allocation (to be exercised in 2008) at a further estimated profit of R90 million.
Ibrahim Nafie
Job: Chairman of Al-Ahram group
Sphere of influence: Egypt and Arab-language world
Major media brands: Al Ahram Daily and spin-offs Al Masaa’I, Al Dawly and Al Ahram Weekly, and magazines Nesf Al Donia, Al Riaadi, Al Iqtisadi, Al Arabi, Alaa Edeen and Al Syassa Al Dawliah
There are two views of Ibrahim Nafie. Both reflect the position you take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nafie, for his part, is certainly open about his view. “Egyptian writers and intellectuals are the most involved in exposing Israel’s terrorism against the Palestinians,” he once remarked in a television interview. While some may dismiss him as an ideologue, worse yet a firebrand, his pronouncements certainly carry weight in the Arab-speaking world.
A close confidante of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Nafie stands at the helm of the oldest Arabic daily in the world, the state-owned Al Ahram Daily. Founded in 1875, Nafie’s paper has the largest circulation amongst all Arabic newspapers, and now includes weekly English and French-language versions.
There is no discounting the political or economic weight these titles carry – regionally. “[Egypt’s] press is one of the most influential and widely-read in the region,” observed a BBC media survey. This influence has created its own idiosyncrasies. 85% of Egypt’s advertising expenditure is devoted to traditional newspapers, with Al Ahram leading the pack, largely due to favourable billing structures, it is claimed.
Aside from his political dispatches, still regularly published in Al Ahram, Nafie presides over numerous regional press associations. He is credited with founding Arabs Against Discrimination, an Egyptian NGO devoted to monitoring the Israeli media. His stance towards Israel has seen him take some heavy fire. In 2002, the Paris-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism filed a lawsuit against him. The charge: inciting hatred against Jews.
Nafie too is known for his litigious bent, once having filed suit against the editor of an online daily. Editor Ahmed Haridy was sentenced to six months imprisonment for publishing an article alleging that Nafie, and others, were involved in financial dishonesty. Egyptian press laws still allow prison sentences for libel and ‘insults’.
Peter Matlare
Job: CEO, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)
Sphere of influence: South Africa, African viewers of SABC Africa (DStv subscribers)
Major media brands: Television channels SABC 1, 2 and 3, and SABC Africa; commercial radio stations 5FM, Metro FM, Good Hope, Radio 2000; 13 public broadcasting service radio station; Indian and San community radio stations
If SABC CEO Peter Matlare wasn’t following the Hutton Inquiry with avid interest, he should have been. Aside from being British PM Tony Blair’s most astute spin campaign too date – no investigation into Britain’s invasion of Iraq, but focus on the suicide of one hapless weapons expert – the inquiry divulged in absorbing detail the real relationship between the state and a public broadcaster.
Professor Tawana Kupe gives an insightful take of the outcome in his latest column: “[T]he top-level resignations at the BBC demonstrate that even in a mature democracy power can be exerted by politicians on an independent and trusted broadcaster. True, the BBC’s editorial procedures were flawed and some facts did not check out, but Blair’s anger was not really about editorial flaws. It was about lack of support for the government’s position on a politically sensitive matter—”
In the context of the curtain lifted over the so-called “autonomy” of the revered BBC, to say that Matlare isn’t constantly reeling from the weight of the South African government and the ruling ANC is so much nonsense. Which means, as head of the largest state broadcaster in sub-Saharan Africa (at last count there were some 7,000 employees), Matlare probably has the toughest media job on the entire landmass below the Sahara.
He oversees, amongst others, the following: television and radio news divisions which reach 85% of South Africa’s population through a total of 300 daily news bulletins; a 24-hour news service focused on the African continent; 13 editorial offices and a countrywide network of about 1,500 news correspondents; R500 million annual spend on sports broadcasts; 150,000 minutes of annual radio educational programming and 90,000 minutes of annual TV educational programming.
Reginald Mengi
Job: Founder and executive chairman, IPP Group
Sphere of influence: Tanzania and Anglophone East Africa
Major media brands: ITV, Radio One, The Guardian, The Sunday Observer, The Daily Mail and the Financial Times in English and Nipashe, Nipashe Jumapili, Alasiri, Kasheshe and Taifa Letu in Kiswahili.
Diversity is Reginald Mengi’s key attribute. Not only does he own eleven newspapers, three radio stations and a television company operating in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda; this former chairman and managing partner of Coopers & Lybrand (Tanzania) also owns a financial consulting firm, a soap and toothpaste manufacturer, a bottling company in joint venture with Coca-Cola, as well as a diamond and precious gem mining concern. Mengi’s is indeed a varied portfolio.
In tallying-up this accumulated wealth, one is reminded of the rapacious meanness of post-communist capitalism. Mengi is from Tanzania after all, one might add, a country that entertained Julius Nyerere’s disastrous and radically anti-capitalist ujamaa philosophy. But Mengi bears no little resemblance to Russia’s new capitalist. A highly respected African business leader, Mengi is counted as a keen subscriber to the vision of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), having participated in several key fora.
He is also an acknowledged advocate of good governance in Africa, as is attested to in this bit of journalistic excess. “When it comes to corporate governance, Mengi is nothing less than a pathfinder, a pioneer, a seer, a pacesetter.” Honing in on his media interests, Mengi’s television, radio and print assets all tend to announce themselves in resoundingly Anglophone terms: ITV, Radio One and The Guardian.
Best characterised as a philanthropist in the mould of the US’s early twentieth century capitalists, Mengi is noted for the way he uses his influence to challenge the stereotyping and negative reporting of Africa, if only to attract potential foreign investors cynics have added. Mengi is chairman of Tanzania’s national Board of Business Accountants and Auditors, of Tanzania’s Chapter of the International Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Tanzanian Chapter of the Commonwealth Press Union.
Jonathan Moyo
Job: Minister of Information and Publicity, Zimbabwe
Sphere of influence: Zimbabwe
Major media brands: Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation and state-owned newspapers such as The Sunday Mail and The Herald
“He is the department and the department is him,” wrote Wallace Chuma, former Zimbabwe Mirror editor, of Jonathan Moyo and Zimbabwe’s Department of Information and Publicity [The Media, July 2003]. In that article, as in many others, it was pointed out that in the three years since its formation as the propaganda wing of Zimbabwe’s “war cabinet”, Moyo and his department have redefined the relationship between the media and the state – passing draconian media laws, deporting dozens of journalists, and using the state media assets to bombard citizens with the ‘Chave Chimurenga'(now is the time for struggle) campaign.
Ironically, until 1999 Moyo was writing newspaper articles that condemned President Mugabe in the harshest terms. 1999 was also the year he was appointed as a research fellow in the department of political studies at Johannesburg’s Wits University – at the time, South African academic colleagues described him as a “visionary political scientist and a brilliant scholar.” But soon Moyo would be Mugabe’s closest advisor; and Wits would be suing him for acting as spokesman for Zanu-PF while he should have been working for the university.
In his 54 months as Zimbabwe’s information minister, Moyo has often been described in the country’s private newspapers as “the most hated man in Zimbabwe” – by many accounts he’s the editor-in-chief of all state-owned newspapers and a vigilant workaholic, so it’s a given that these letters wouldn’t find their way into papers like The Sunday Mail or The Herald.
Implying, too, that he writes a lot of the copy for these state-owned newspapers himself. Here’s a typical diatribe from The Sunday Mail: “In the age of information, the press or media, which is but a tiny part of the communication cycle, does not have and does not deserve any special rights that are not accorded other people. Freedom of expression is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a preserve of the press whose main reason for existing is to make money and peddle influence.”
Of course, Moyo’s own influence over one nation’s communication cycle is (for the moment) unassailable.
Connie Molusi
Job: CEO, Johnnic Communications (Johncom)
Sphere of influence: South Africa, Namibia and Kenya
Major media brands: Sunday Times, BDFM, The Herald, Daily Dispatch, Johnnic Magazines, I-Net Bridge, Gallo Music, Nu Metro Theatres, Imax, Exclusive Books, Struik Publishers
Addressing the 56th congress of the World Association of Newspapers in Dublin last year, Connie Molusi left the audience in no doubt as to where he stood on a critical question – should journalists be detached observers or involved activists?
“We do regard ourselves as embedded in civil society, and we do see ourselves as activists and instruments of liberation,” the former journalist and current CEO of Johncom said. “It is our mission to ensure our societal transformation is more than superficial, and that our negotiated revolution is more than a transfer of power from one elite to another.”
So it couldn’t have been easy for Molusi to announce, mere months later, that he was firing Mathatha Tsedu, the first black editor of one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most influential and largest circulating newspapers, the Sunday Times. Tsedu, a committed Africanist and a strong advocate of “more than superficial” transformation, had become a concern to Molusi on the matter of the profitability of Johncom’s cash-cow.
Balancing the often conflicting interests of transformation and revenue generation has been Molusi’s key challenge since becoming Johncom chief in March 2003. By most accounts, he negotiated the major minefield with consummate professionalism: “Had Molusi not acted to arrest the decline,” commented a rival group’s newspaper after Tsedu’s axing, “the shareholders would have held him accountable and would have in all likelihood removed him from his position for failing to look after their interests.”
But Molusi’s more enduring challenge will be unlocking shareholder value through expansion into African markets, and here the jury is still out. Johncom has opened a multiplex cinema in Kenya and is looking to establish similar ventures in Ghana, Zambia and Nigeria; a medical publishing division is exploring opportunities in Nigeria; the digital division provides financial information in Namibia and learning content in Kenya – still rather modest for a R1,5 billion media company whose vision it is to be “globally competitive and dominant in the African continent.”
Nduka Obaigbena
Job: Chairperson of Leaders & Co.; editor-in-chief of ThisDay
Sphere of influence: Nigeria and South Africa
Major media brands: ThisDay, African Markets (IMF/World Bank Annual meeting publication)
It wasn’t his audacious plan to launch a highbrow national daily in South Africa that first garnered Nduka Obaigbena media attention. In late 2002 Obaigbena’s Lagos-based ThisDay newspaper published an ostensibly innocuous statement about the prophet Muhammad and the Miss World contest. By the end of the rioting over 200 people were dead. An unfortunate incident, the spectre of this event will doubtlessly hound Obaigbena for a while yet.
Which is a pity, especially since Obaigbena has shown a long-standing commitment to upmarket journalism. A graduate of the University of Benin, where he obtained an honours degree in creative arts, Obaigbena first came to prominence in the 1980s when he held the lucrative pan-African sales rights to Time magazine (except in South Africa). This prompted the launch of his own title, ThisWeek magazine, which led to ThisDay.
Launched in 1995, ThisDay is Nigeria’s second-largest newspaper, with a daily national (all 36 states) circulation pegged at 120,000. The Nigerian paper is used to controversy, Obaigbena having inflamed the ire of former-President Sani Abacha. “In Nigeria,” he once told CNN’s Jon Snow, “the media has a tradition for fighting for democracy, and we are very happy to be part of it.”
It is yet to be determined how this broadly framed statement, paraphrased by the words truth and reason on the paper’s crest, will play themselves out in South Africa. As it is, economics not politics has thus far marked commentary on Obaigbena’s ambitious daily, which targets an “upmarket national rainbow readership.”
Having entered the local media fray with a reported R100-thousand to play with, things went badly wrong when he purchased and rebranded 74 CNA stores; 24 of these were later closed due to poor sales and below-target profitability. Release delays on his flagship brand only added to the woes, fueling nasty rumours about liquidity problems.
Writing in Business Day, Anton Harber admitted that the paper was an “unusual initiative”, elsewhere optimistically stating that ThisDay “comes unencumbered by the historical baggage which has weighed down so many of our existing papers.” Certainly the editorial integrity of the paper has been widely praised. The jury, however, is still out on whether Obaigbena’s entrepreneurial gusto will be rewarded in kind.
Trevor Ncube
Job: CEO, Newtrust Company Botswana Limited
Sphere of influence: Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe
Major media brands: Mail & Guardian, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard
“It’s a record turnaround,” remarked Trevor Ncube, in an interview with Moneyweb‘s Alec Hogg late last year. “It’s a sort of classical Harvard way of how to turn a business around, and we’ve done it in record time, in the worst-case scenario.” The rescued orphan: South Africa’s long-suffering Mail & Guardian newspaper. Having failed to post a profit since its founding in 1995, new owner Ncube is forecasting figures in the black. Talk of the unexpected.
But then ever since Harare-born Ncube acquired an 87,5% share in the liberal weekly’s publishing company, he has been shaking things up. Along with Mondli Makhanya, he charted a brave new editorial direction for the floundering struggle title, one that saw the paper earn journalistic accolades – despite the “annoying” ads, bemoaned by a trenchant old guard. The appointment of Ferial Haffajee as Makhanya’s successor was an equally inspired move.
Ncube’s independent spirit belies a solid grounding in the business. A journalist by profession, Ncube was appointed Assistant Editor of Zimbabwe’s Financial Gazette, in 1989, and later Executive Editor. In 1994 he was awarded the Zimbabwean Editor of the Year Award. His move from editorial into business was signaled soon after. Ncube is a founding shareholder in the Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard, weekly titles he still has a controlling interest in.
Doubtlessly troubles in his home country must have prompted Ncube’s current, outward looking aspirations, which include forays into Botswana too. Unlike ThisDay‘s Nduka Obaigbena, it appears that Ncube’s expansion programme has also been somewhat less troubled. Indeed, Ncube was appointed the new president of Print Media SA, late last year, taking over the reigns of a local association representing 530 newspaper and magazine publishers. Little wonder he is so ebullient in interviews.
Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi
Job: Founder and executive chairman, Daar Communications
Sphere of influence: Nigeria, possibly United States
Major media brands: AIT (Africa Independent Television) and two radio stations, Raypower 100.5FM and 106.5FM.
Raymond Dokpesi is a pioneer. He is also a survivor. Nigeria’s private broadcast media was only recently deregulated, in the early 1990s, by the administration of former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi. Despite the apparent freedoms brought about by these changes, it is said that high input costs and scarce advertising revenues are the bane of Nigeria’s private broadcasters.
The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) has only served to complicate matters. The NTA perennially claims exclusive broadcast rights on all national events, most notably those with a commercial spin. France ’98, Sydney 2000, Korea/Japan 2002; all of these events have generated conflict between the NTA and private broadcasters. Invariably the NTA wins, despite Dokpesi’s competitive advantages, which include “sharp pictures and quality sound”.
Not surprisingly, this unpredictable business environment has impacted on Dokpesi’s bottom line. After securing a massive loan to acquire a global television satellite license, in 1995, a consortium of banks stepped in and briefly took over management of his company. But Dokpesi has not been deterred; he is a survivor.
Late last year, Dokpesi’s AIT began broadcasting throughout Nigeria and the United States, by cable, following an agreement between Dokpesi and Comcast Cable Communications Inc., the largest national television cable operator in the U.S. The ideological importance of the deal, which will enable Daar to benefit from the market coverage of other cable TV operators, was underscored by the presence of President Olusegun Obasanjo at the New York launch.
All this business politicking belies one key fact, that radio – not television – is Nigeria’s most powerful broadcast media. In this regard, Dokpesi’s popular Lagos-based radio station Raypower 100.5FM is widely regarded as a leader. Launched in September 1994, the radio station announced Dokpesi, who trained as a marine engineer before running a successful shipping line, as a fledgling broadcast entrepreneur to be reckoned with.
Co-compiler Sean o’Toole is a freelance journalist, editor of the e-zine artslink, and a regular contributor to the political pages of the Mail & Guardian.