Arbitrary Detentions and Attacks on Journalists Are Rising Across Africa
Somalian journalist Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled was killed by a suicide bomber in November 2021.
A number of factors have contributed to a deficiency in press freedom across the African continent. Journalists are being increasingly targeted both by governments and by independent groups seeking to control the flow of information on the political situations of several countries. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported that between January 1 and December 1 of 2021, over 100 African journalists were arbitrarily arrested and 26 were detained.
East Africa has long been hostile toward journalists, with Eritrea and Djibouti ranking dead last in the world for press freedom. Eritrea even sits below North Korea in press freedom rankings. The country’s president, Isaias Afwerki, banned all independent media from the country in 2001, making the nation a complete information desert. Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Rwanda detained the most journalists in 2021.
Political uprisings in other regions have also increased scrutiny on media and journalists. Coups in Sudan, Mali, Guinea, and Chad, to say nothing about countries in conflict with special interest groups such as Cameroon, and across the Sahel, Congo, Ethiopia and Somalia, have caused further deterioration of press rights as bad actors seek to control the flow of information to the public. Somalia in particular is the most dangerous country in East Africa for journalists: over 50 journalists have been murdered in Somalia since 2010. The latest of these killings took place in late November 2021, when journalist Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled was murdered by a suicide bomber. The Islamic militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the killing, saying they’d been “hunting” Guled for a long time.
"Harassment of journalists has become institutionalized in this country," said Omar Faruk Osman, secretary general of the Union of Somali Journalists. Osman said that the pressure cooker of Somalia’s much-delayed elections, combined with the pandemic, has fostered a hostile climate for journalists that he dubbed “very worrisome.”
Western Africa is also seeing some upsets in press freedom. Ghana, which is ranked in 30th place in RSF’s Press Freedom Report, has become more “oppressive” in its information control and less willing to condemn violence against journalists, according to Ghanaian journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni. In 2019, investigative reporter Ahmed Hussein-Suale was shot and killed in Accra, the capital, months after a Ghanian member of parliament incited violence against him.
South Africa, meanwhile, is in the middle of a tense situation following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma. Protestors targeted and looted four media outlets around Johannesburg, Durban, and Pretoria. The president’s son, Edward Zuma, openly threatened to burn the van of one of the country’s top 24-hour news stations. Samkele Maseko, a political reporter for the public broadcaster SABC, was slapped and allegedly choked by an unidentified Zuma supporter who accused Maseko of “selling-out.” Later that week, an SABC news crew were robbed of their equipment while covering protests in Alexandra.
A new platform, called The Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists in Africa, has arisen in response to these growing tensions. South African President and African Union chairman Cyril Ramaphosa said that for Africa’s situation to resolve, the state must “vigorously defend the right of journalists to do their work, to write, to publish and to also broadcast what they like, even if we disagree with some or all of it.” The platform will facilitate networking among journalists, and push for action when journalists are attacked, detained, or wrongly sentenced. Additionally, the platform will seek to expand criminal justice proceedings against those who commit acts of violence against journalists.
