MEDIA: Kenya Puts A Spanner in Plans For Regional TV and Radio

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 20 1998 (IPS) - In a surprise move, the Kenyan government cancelled a radio and television licence issued to the East Africa Television Network (EATN), just two days after the network had announced plans to go on air later this year.

More than 80 million listeners and viewers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania were supposed to be the target audience for this first regional venture.

But on Thursday, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Joe Nyagah, said the licence was cancelled following the owner dispute between EATN chairman, Sam Shollei, and a Nairobi businessman, Ahmed Rashid Jibril.

“The government has decided that following a dispute that has been brought to the attention of this office by one of the directors of the EATN regarding the sale of shares of the company, to cancel TV and Radio licences issued to yourselves,” Nyagah said in a letter addressed to Shollei on Mar. 18.

The minister told a press conference here Thursday that he had instructed the Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation to withhold the release of the frequencies allocated to EATN until the dispute had been resolved.

In a reply published in the ‘Daily Nation’ newspaper on Friday, Shollei urged the minister to rescind the decision. “We do not accept that there is any basis for revoking our licence. Any party or person who may be aggrieved by the recent changes in the shareholding of our company is at liberty to seek redress in court,” he said.

Shollei rejected claims that the EATN was owned by Jibril. “Mr Jibril has not only resigned, but transferred his share prior to the acquisition of shares by Africa Broadcasting Limited and waived all claims against the company,” he said.

Africa Broadcasting Limited (ABL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nation Group of Publishers, is the majority shareholder in EATN with more than 50 percent of the shares. ABL was set up in 1997 and registered on January 26, 1998.

The Nation Group is a publicly listed company which has assets in excess of 1.2 billion Kenyan Shillings (one U.S. Dollar is equal to 57.75 Kenyan Shillings), and an annual turnover of two billion Shillings.

It is 16th on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, and 55 percent of its shareholding is local. The company which publishes several of the large daily and weekly newspapers has been in the media industry since 1960.

In its scathing commentary on Friday, the ‘Daily Nation’ described the minister’s decision to withdraw the licence as “unreasonable”.

“It demonstrates a deep-seated fear of truth in public life and the values of free expression,” the paper said in a comment printed on the front page of Friday’s edition.

“The decision is dishonest, because the grounds given for cancellation — a dispute over company ownership — have nothing to do with the government and were not invoked during the very long-running quarrel over ownership of the Kenya Television Network,” it added.

The Kenya Television Network (KTN), a private company, is owned by the ‘Daily Nation’s’ rival, the ‘East African Standard’ newspaper.

Before the minister’s decision this week, Shollei was already working on the final touches to build the EATN. “We will establish a network of radio and television stations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to promote the concept of East African Cooperation,” Shollei said when he announced the venture on Mar. 16.

EATN was expected to invest between 300 to 400 million Kenya Shillings over the next two to three years in the venture. EATN, a private company registered in 1996, had received government authority to establish and operate television and radio licences for transmission nationwide from Nairobi.