Capital Gang is the name of a popular radio programme on Kampala’s Capital FM, Uganda’s premier FM station. It’s a programme that’s succeeded where the institutional opposition has failed – keeping President Yoweri Museveni talking (the Ugandan president has even had to drive to Capital FM’s studios to defend himself on air). So Capital Gang is proof that East Africa is at least reaping some rewards of broadcast liberalisation.
Uganda’s airwaves were liberalised in the early 1990s, years before Kenya’s and Tanzania’s. Today the country has over 200 licensed radio stations, and Kampala alone has more than 20 FM radio stations. Kenya trails Uganda, with about 10 FM stations in Nairobi, including Kiss FM, the brainchild of Patrick Quarcoo, who also owns Uganda’s Capital FM. Kiss FM became a commercial success after only one year of operation, and was brought to life in a broadcast environment saturated with government propaganda.
Kiss FM has neither friends nor enemies; it has listeners. Targeted mostly at an urban audience of between 15 and 35, Kiss FM is now primed at territory most commercial radio stations steer away from – politics. The station has become a legitimate reference point for Kenya’s parliamentary debates, and is especially popular for its two no-holds-barred programmes, The People’s Parliament and Crossfire. The former is a phone-in format where listeners vent their frustrations at government ineptitude and the host then calls the responsible persons, including government ministers. The latter features a panel comprising personalities of antagonistic political views and is so charged that, a few months back, the government was forced to silently withdraw two of its members because they were allegedly cementing resentment by defending unpopular policies.
Both the Kenyan and Ugandan governments appear restive about these programmes. In Uganda there was public outrage when the government said it was considering introducing a parliamentary bill that would force FM stations to only broadcast in-house. This was seen as a very unintelligent way of muzzling the press, so the government shelved the proposition. In Kenya, a government minister recently filed a court injunction against Kiss FM, preventing them from discussing her person. Critics say this will set a dangerous precedent.
In Tanzania, however, the media environment is comparatively illiberal. Radio One, Radio Uhuru, Radio Free Africa, Clouds FM and Radio 5 are some of the top privately owned radio stations in the country, but they are largely sympathetic to the government and the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). In fact, stations like Clouds FM get their news feeds from the state-controlled Radio Tanzania Dar-es-salaam (RTD).
In a general sense, then, although private FM radio appears to be winning the battle in East Africa, the war isn’t over. It would be erroneous to equate the increase in the number of FM stations to media diversity. Patrick Quarcoo, for instance, controls the most popular radio stations in both Uganda and Kenya. In Tanzania, the private media is basically in the hands of two companies: the IPP group and Habari Corporation. Besides which, the legal framework for the broadcast media in East Africa is still fairly repressive. The attempted introduction of a media bill in Uganda and the gagging of Kiss FM in Kenya only serves to show that East African governments still hold the cards. For the bold ones like Capital FM and Kiss FM, it is still more an experimentation with the “bounds of the expressible” rather than an affirmation of a truly liberalised market.
George Ogola was formerly a journalist at the East African Standard (Kenya) and the Nairobi Correspondent for NewsAfrica (UK). He is currently a student at Wits University, pursuing doctoral studies in “Popular Culture and the Media in Kenya”.