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The Political Economy of the Media in Kenya: From Kenyatta's Nation-Building

Press to Kibaki's Local-Language FM Radio

Article  in  Africa Today · March 2011

DOI: 10.1353/at.2011.0010

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The Political Economy of the Media
in Kenya: From Kenyatta’s Nation-
Building Press to Kibaki’s Local-
Language FM Radio
George Ogola

This article teases out some of the key drivers that have
shaped the character and development of Kenya’s news media
over four constructed phases since independence. The article
demonstrates how Kenya’s news media are entangled in a
complex power structure, which has enabled but also con-
strained its development. Mapped against the country’s politi-
cal and economic history, the article disaggregates and traces
the development of these media, from their cooption by the
Kenyatta state in the 1960s through Moi’s Nyayo republic to
the narrowcasting of the polity in Kenya’s 2007 elections and
its subsequent role in the reinvention of the nation through its
negotiation of an elusive new discourse of political consensus.

In August, 2009, one of Kenya’s leading media entrepreneurs, Jane Kimotho,

sold her media company, Regional Reach, to an investment group led by the
Kenyatta family.1 Regional Reach was the holding company of the Kikuyu-
language station Kameme FM and the TV station K24, both at the time
reportedly experiencing serious financial difficulties. The sale of Regional
Reach was significant in two ways. First, it raised questions on the viability
of the local-language news media in the country. Kameme FM, by far the
most famous of these news media, was widely credited with spearheading
the reemergence of Kenya’s local-language media, a sector that had struggled
to develop since independence. Kameme FM’s decline thus marked a worry-
ing turn of fortunes for a sector that was finally finding its feet in a highly
unpredictable and competitive economic environment. Second, the sale
bore imprints of the problematic relationship between the news media and a
powerful parallel political infrastructure, without whose support it appeared
most news media found it difficult to survive. This development seemed to
reify the extent to which the local news media were wedded to politics and,
 as a consequence, raised concerns as to whether these media were in fact
capable of performing their normative roles.2
In the broadest terms, this article aims to tease out some of the key
drivers that have shaped the character and development of Kenya’s news
media, both mainstream and alternative, over four constructed phases since
independence. Locating its discussion within the terrain of political econ-
omy, it seeks to show how these media are entangled in a complex power
africa TODAY 57(3)

structure, which has enabled, but also constrained, its development. It is

hoped that the study provides a critical basis upon which much narrower
and more specific studies will be conducted.
The article deals with the broad question of how political and economic
structures define the development of the news media, hence its adoption of
the political-economy approach as its theoretical basis. It is interested in
how these forces intersect—how they constrain, enable, and generally shape
78

Kenya’s media ecology. A focal question of political economy of communi-

cations is to investigate “how changes in an array of forces which exercise
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

control over cultural production and distribution limit or liberate the public
sphere,” directing attention to two critical issues: “pattern of ownership of
such institutions and the consequences of this pattern for control over their
activities and the nature of the relationship between state regulation and
communications institutions” (Golding and Murdock 2000:13).
The political-economy approach sees media ownership as being sig-
nificant for several reasons. Studies by Curran and Seaton (1997), Doyle
(2002), and others demonstrate how media owners in the United Kingdom,
for instance, have used their newspaper titles to further their political and
commercial interests. They cite examples such as the late Robert Maxwell
(The Mirror), Victor Mathews (Daily Express), and Rupert Murdoch and their
influence in the overall editorial, strategic, and political directions of their
newspapers. This influence may be exercised in various ways—for example,
through the appointment of like-minded individuals to key editorial or
managerial positions. Rupert Murdoch has been accused of exercising such
influence in his flagship titles such as the News of the World, The Sun, and
The Times. In France, such influence has been seen in the Hersant media
empire, and in the Berlusconi controlled press in Italy (see Graham and
Davies 1997; Tunstall and Palmer 1991).
Classical political economists argue that control over the production
and distribution of ideas ensures cultural and therefore ideological domina-
tion by those who own the means of production. This process in turn plays
a key role in maintaining class inequalities (Golding and Murdock 2000:76).
Political economy thus raises concerns about the increasing corporatization
of the media sector, including media concentration and conglomeration,
which have now made the media part of big business. It is a transforma-
tion regarded problematic not least because, the logic of the news media’s
operations as corporate institutions are fundamentally transformed to suit
market conditions. Because of their relationship with big business, which
may include “sister companies,” the media may become “less vigilant to
corporate bureaucracy” (McChesney 1998:25). This situation has significant
implications on the extent to which this media can perform its normative
functions.
The classical political-economy approach is sometimes criticized for
overemphasizing economic determinism—a criticism especially levelled
at the structuralist school, dominated by Herman, Chomsky, and others.

africa TODAY 57(3)

Herman and Chomsky seem to validate the dominance paradigm, which
critiques the role of the media in liberal Western democracies, particularly
the United States, from a largely Marxist and neo-Marxist perspective.
Using a framework that they call the “propaganda model,” they argue that
the news media have become part of the “national security state,” wherein
corporate business, the state, and the media all work in pursuit of their own
constructed notion of public interest (1988).3 This is done not necessarily

79
through coercion, but through “manufacturing consent.”
It is true that the state and big business do influence the news media,

George Ogola
both directly and indirectly, but we must “beware of the contradictions in
the system” (Golding and Murdock 1996:15), for it is also true that “owners,
advertisers and key political personnel cannot always do as they would
wish. They operate within structures which constrain as well as facilitate,
imposing limits as well as offering opportunities” (ibid.). Stuart Hall shares
this view, noting that economic determination can only be seen in the first
instance (1983: 84). While economic dynamics, for instance, play a central
role in “defining the key features of the general environment which com-
municative activity takes place, they cannot offer a complete explanation
of the nature of that activity” (Golding and Murdock 1996:15). Any discus-
sion that underplays the influence of these forces becomes rather reductive.
Only by looking at the interlocking relationships between these factors can
one see how the media are in fact implicated in the broader structures of
power.
Since the political-economy approach is itself diverse, this article
adopts a specific strand: the critical-political-economy approach, usually
considered more holistic. It is concerned with “macro-questions of media
ownership and controlling, interlocking directorships, and other factors that
bring together media industries with other media and with other industries
and with political, economic and social elites” (Boyd-Barrett 1995:186).
There is a broad corpus of work on critical political economy, but Golding
and Murdock’s framework is arguably the most nuanced. They differenti-
ate it from the classical political-economy approach by focusing on four
main areas: It is holistic, historical, centrally concerned with the balance
between private and public intervention, and it goes beyond technical issues
of efficiency to engage with basic moral questions of justice, equity, and the
public good (Golding and Murdock 1996: 14). This framework allows us in
both broad and specific terms to interrogate the forces that continue to shape
Kenya’s media ecology.
 Development Journalism and the Nation-Building Project

The Kenyan news media commonly invite mixed opinion: some consider it
deeply compromised (Nyamjoh 2005), but others point to its vibrancy. In a
BBC policy briefing, these media are described as “one of the most respected,
thriving, sophisticated and innovative in Africa” (2008: 3).4 Others argue that
the Kenyan news media enjoy much higher public trust than institutions
africa TODAY 57(3)

such as parliament and the law courts (Maina 2006). Such platitudes may
not necessarily be unqualified, particularly if these media are disaggregated.5
It is, however, important to historicize the development of these media to
establish the basis for such judgment.
The development of Kenya’s news-media system is closely tied to the
country’s political history. The formative years of Jomo Kenyatta’s presi-
dency were briefly but broadly attended by national political goodwill, but
80

this spirit waned following the regime’s alienation of potential adversaries.

The fallout between the president and his former deputy, Jaramogi Oginga
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

Odinga,6 was particularly significant in marking the beginnings of a presi-

dency that was soon to be defined by its penchant to resort to “repressive
state apparatuses rather than representative institutions as instruments of
legitimising its rule” (Ajulu 2000:133). Kenyatta routinely employed state
machinery, including the police and the judiciary, to frustrate opponents;
others were coopted through threats or given access to state resources. Also,
he invented a new political goal: the nation-building project, made possible
through a set of political machinations, what Atieno-Odhiambo called the
“ideology of order” (1987).7 It was legitimized on the idea that competing
interests—religious, ethnic, and regional—unless checked, would impede the
country’s development. Politicians, the media, and the public were expected
to privilege a narrative of national unity, with support gathered through
coercion and cooption.
Through this ideology, Kenyatta created a coercive state, where oppo-
sition was systematically crushed, often violently (see Hyden 2006; Oyugi
2006). By using state institutions and other instruments within the public
and private sphere, such as the media, the administration ensured that oppo-
sition to Kenyatta’s rule was contained and delegitimized on the grounds
that such disunity was inconsistent with the needs of the state. In the early
postindependence period, therefore, the media were seen by the state as a
partner in the nation-building political project.
Ideologically, many of Africa’s news media in the 1960s through the
1970s were modelled on a developmental paradigm, concretized in what
came to be known as development journalism.8 National unity was fiercely
promoted as being unequivocal and necessary for development, in pursuit of
which the news media officially and unofficially were expected to play a role
(Barton 1979). In Kenya, the state found development journalism particularly
consistent with its nation-building project, which had become a convenient
euphemism for Kenyatta’s regime building. This project gradually led to the
cooption of the mainstream news media by the state.
 At independence, much of Kenya’s alternative print media had col-
lapsed, leaving only two mainstream newspapers The Daily Nation (here-
after referred to as The Nation) and the East African Standard (hereafter
referred to as The Standard), both foreign owned. The Nation was not
particularly averse to the country’s independence, though its support was
a shrewd attempt by the newspaper’s owner, the Aga Khan, to protect his
business interests, as well as those of the Ismaili community in Kenya

africa TODAY 57(3)

(Winsbury 2000:252). The Standard, in contrast, was hostile to Kenya’s self-
determination. Originally started by an Indian businessman, A. M. Jevanjee,
in Mombasa as the African Standard, the newspaper relocated to Nairobi
under new owners, who renamed it the East African Standard. It became a
voice of the white settler community and was fiercely against internal self-
rule. The newspaper began to support the state only to curry favor with the
new government9 (Bougalt 1995). This support grew stronger when Roland

81
Rowland’s Lonrho Plc acquired the newspaper in 1967.
Monopolizing the print market, the government considered it vital to

George Ogola
take control of these newspapers. This was done, both directly and indirectly,
particularly through its control of advertising revenue, the government being
the single largest advertiser for these media at the time. Thus, a government
may act as a censor of the media, not as a government per se, but as a big-
business player (McChesney 1998: 25). The government indirectly supported
the mainstream print media by frustrating the alternative news media.
Though at independence most regional titles and local-language newspapers
folded, a few survived, becoming increasingly vocal, disillusioned with the
pace of change and the political rifts among the political elite. The expul-
sion, for instance, of Odinga from the ruling party, KANU, after his falling
out with Kenyatta in 1966 saw a crackdown on the emergent alternative
English-language media, such as the Christian publication Target. Several
underground publications, including Pambana, Mwananchi, and Mzalendo,
had no known official offices. The government viewed alternative media as a
threat to its nation-building project, as Kenyatta’s aim was to establish “the
nation rather than the ethnic group as the pre-eminent political community”
(Ndegwa 1997:606).
The Nation and The Standard directly and indirectly participated in
promoting the government’s political project of nation building. Apart from
being deliberately mild in their criticism of the government, they contributed
to Kenyatta’s regime-building strategies by appropriating and popularizing
the state’s invented mythologies. Thus, for instance, they adopted the use of
references to the president as Father of the Nation and to Kenya as a family.
These references were not politically innocuous: they were part of a range of
practices that helped Kenyatta perform his power. As Father of the Nation, he
appropriated the Kiswahili title Mzee, which was then invested with political
agency. In Kenya, this title establishes a broadly agreed-upon hierarchy of rela-
tions, one that is culturally legitimate and thus may serve to enhance politi-
cal legitimacy.10 It is invested with markers that ensure that its referents are
highly regarded. Significantly, stories about the president or the vice president
 were not directly reported by the private news media: instead, they relied on
the Presidential Press Unit (PPU), the Vice-Presidential Press Unit (VPPU), and
the Kenya News Agency (KNA). The Nation and The Standard thus became,
almost by default, an informal publicity arm of the state.

Following in Kenyatta’s Footsteps:

africa TODAY 57(3)

Media in the “Nyayo Republic”

Daniel arap Moi became president in 1978 in a constitutional succession

following Kenyatta’s death. Moi promised to follow in his predecessor’s
nyayo11 (‘footsteps’)—which meant continuing with Kenyatta’s policies. Yet
when he assumed office, Moi was faced with a deeply fractured nation and
a divided political elite, following the political fallout over the presidential
82

succession.12 He therefore had to reconstruct the faltering nation-building

project; however, to do so, he had to consolidate his political position. To this
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

end, he immediately set out to cripple Kikuyu capital and political might by
breaking up the Gikuyu Meru Embu Association, a powerful socioeconomic
and political grouping, which had received the state’s backing to protect
elite Kikuyu privilege. In its place, he patronized an alternative ethnic
grouping, comprising the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, and Samburu, to give
him political and economic leverage (Oyugi 2006). In June 1982, he forced
through parliament the constitutional amendment that saw Kenya become
a one-party state by law.
Meanwhile, the government continued to use state machinery to
intimidate political opposition, detaining politicians, journalists, and uni-
versity lecturers. Even as he encouraged the unity of the Kalenjin, Maasai,
Turkana, and Samburu communities, Moi clamped down on other ethnic
alliances and the alternative and local-language media seen to represent
such groups and their interests. Intimidation and detention of newspaper
editors was commonplace. Before 2009, Kenya did not have a press law,
making both media workers and organizations particularly vulnerable to
state intimidation. Media freedom was provided for in section 79a of the con-
stitution, but it remained subject to the provisions of the penal code, which
gave the government power to clamp down on the media in the interest of
public morality, public order, and national security. The interpretation of
these provisions was often notoriously ambiguous. Between 1988 and 1990,
nearly twenty publications were banned, including Beyond Magazine (1988),
Financial Review (1989), Nairobi Law Monthly (1990), and Development
Agenda (1989).13 Moi attributed power to the media, and thus tried to take
control of The Nation and the The Standard. Through proxies and KANU
party apparatchiks, he bought controlling shares in The Standard. He failed
to gain direct control of The Nation, but asserted his influence through his
business relations with the group’s principal shareholder, the Aga Khan.
Roland Rowland of Lonrho and the Aga Khan became two of the biggest
investors in Kenya during Moi’s presidency. The relationship between the
state and big business in Kenya has always been largely convivial and sym-
biotic. Both The Standard and The Nation were listed in the Nairobi bourse
with significant shareholding held by members of Kenya’s ruling class and
other corporate organizations. This interdependence facilitated the growth of
both newspapers, with only the occasional instances of state intimidation. It
is precisely because of this relationship that an Africa Media Watch Report
noted in 1991 that the editorial policies of The Nation and The Standard

africa TODAY 57(3)

were strongly tied to safeguarding their business interests.
The lack of total control of these newspapers forced Moi to set up a
national party newspaper to act as another government mouthpiece along-
side the state broadcaster, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. The ruling
party, KANU, bought Hillary Ng’weno’s Nairobi Times and renamed it the
Kenya Times—a name that gestured at the party’s intentions, particularly its
nation-building project. The Moi administration was aware of the increased

83
“mediatization” of the political process, which made control of the media
ever more important. Political leaders and parties know that the news media

George Ogola
control how they are depicted to the voting public; hence the need for some
form of influence or control (Bagdikian 2004:28–29). In sum, the first phase
of Moi’s presidency was marked by more government involvement in the
media sector.

A Reluctant Transition: Media and Political Pluralism in Kenya

In the latter part of the 1980s through the early 1990s, Moi presided over a
state in political and economic decline. The regime’s precarious existence
saw the increased informalization of the state, with executive power almost
exclusively vested in the president and his party, KANU. As a consequence,
the government’s legitimacy was severely eroded, providing conditions for
the emergence of various forms of opposition. This period witnessed “the
shattering of previously held silences as an opposition culture stormed the
public domain” (Haugerud 1995:15). Oppositional discourses mobilized
around political, religious, and cultural groups and were given voice in the
existing media and other spaces of public expression. Alternative sites for
popular expression emerged, even within the mainstream newspapers. It is
against this background that newspaper columns such as Whispers14 and
several fictionalized-reality columns and newspaper serials emerged.15 These
columns kept the mainstream newspapers politically porous. They were
shaped by an oppositional cultural and political aesthetic, critical of the Moi
administration. This period saw the emergence of what came to be known as
the gutter press, notoriously abrasive guerrilla news media, largely funded by
politicians to discredit Moi’s government. Though uncoordinated, even cha-
otic, these developments led to the expansion of the bounds of the expressible
as news organizations and cultural producers gradually became emboldened
in their criticism of the government. Working alongside political pressure
groups, opposition politicians, civil society, sections of the church, and the
 international community, the government was forced to repeal section 2A
of the constitution—which saw the readoption of multipartism.
The reintroduction of political pluralism allowed for the liberaliza-
tion of the media, enabling the emergence of several new media outlets.
A fundamental change in the news media, however, was their adoption of
the market model as they shifted away from their developmental focus.
The mainstream news media, more particularly the Nation Media Group,
africa TODAY 57(3)

became notably adversarial in their relationship with the state. This relation-
ship was a function of several factors, not least that fundamental political
reform was going to create a more business-friendly environment—which
was in the media’s interest.
Even with liberalization, these media organizations still faced critical
challenges. Three major constraints faced them with the advent of political
pluralism: crisis of power, crisis of ownership, and crisis of resources (Ansah
84

1991). Political pluralism made most governments particularly anxious

about vigorous private media. Various governments thus devised new ways
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

of frustrating these media by, for instance, strengthening privacy and libel
laws, most of which worked to undermine executive probity. Meanwhile,
the ailing economies within this period meant that media organizations still
relied substantially on the state for “ad spend,” compromising the media’s
independence. While advertising may have freed the press from direct politi-
cal control, it introduced its own form of constraints (Negrine 1994:70–85).
In effect, then, the ancien régime of the communication infrastructure was
not radically changed, even with the new political dispensation.
These challenges notwithstanding, there was a notable attempt by
the private news media to capture the state’s nation-building discourse as
transnational narratives began to filter into and define the political agenda in
the country. New private investments into the media sector gave news orga-
nizations some nominal freedom by offering alternative revenue streams.
The economy, newly liberalized, continued to deteriorate, but it allowed
for the injection of more private capital into the media sector. The Nation
Media Group saw massive growth in its portfolio because of new private
capital, allowing it to make major acquisitions of media groups in Uganda
and Tanzania. It is currently the biggest media group in the region. Its new
financial clout gradually made it less reliant on state patronage, relative
to its competitors, partly allowing it to become particularly abrasive in its
political reporting in the 1990s.
It is imperative to note, however, that the NMG’s flagship titles, The
Daily Nation and The Sunday Nation, though oppositional, still exercised
their criticism within certain bounds. In fact, they remained largely politi-
cally conservative. This was partly because of a legal regime that still made
the media susceptible to state intimidation. The close relationship between
the group’s new corporate shareholders and the state affected the newspaper’s
independence. Because of his relationship with the Moi administration, the
Aga Khan benefitted from business opportunities (some of which he now co-
owned with members of the administration) ranging from hospitals to schools.
 The Standard Group, in contrast, struggled. The government’s attempt
to control it was less sophisticated. Senior KANU members had acquired sig-
nificant shareholding in it after the death of Lonrho’s Rowland; hence, they
openly interfered with the newspaper’s editorial position. The newspaper’s
reliance on government advertisements made it susceptible to state control.
To survive, it began to experiment with the red-top tabloid format, focusing
largely on apolitical stories, sexual scandals, gossip, and the occult, but with

africa TODAY 57(3)

limited success. Politically, it was deeply compromised. The government’s
involvement in its editorial decisions saw it impertinently campaign for Moi
in the 1997 presidential elections. In an infamous headline on the eve of the
elections, it asked readers to vote for the incumbent. This endorsement was
unprecedented in Kenya’s political and media traditions.16
Political pluralism saw the rise, but also the decline, of party-owned
newspapers, such as KANU’s Kenya Times and Kenneth Matiba’s The

85
People. The latter newspaper started out as an investigative weekly in 1998,
exposing corruption deals involving members of the Moi government, but it

George Ogola
was intended to promote the political ambitions of its proprietor, Matiba. It
was successful in its first year of operation, particularly as a fiercely oppo-
sitional newspaper tapping into the public’s disillusionment with the Moi
regime, but it lost readers as it began to focus more on Matiba’s presidential
ambitions. Compounding its problems was the KANU government’s inten-
tions to limit its influence. Government officials and KANU politicians
implicated in corruption deals by the newspaper took it to court several
times. It lost many such cases. In one ruling, a powerful KANU politician,
Nicholas Biwott, was awarded Ksh. 60 million in damages—a ruling which,
if enforced, would have effectively put the newspaper out of business. Faced
with numerous fines and court suits, and with its journalists constantly
hounded by the police, The People toned down its criticism of the regime,
declined in quality, and hemorrhaged readers. As a consequence, the Nation-
Standard domination prevailed, despite the liberalization of the media
sector.
The broadcast sector, however, witnessed immense change. The latter
part of the 1990s saw the beginnings of the private broadcast media with
the establishment of the first FM radio station, Capital FM, in 1996 and
Kenya’s first private TV station, the Kenya Television Network, both owned
by the Standard Group through a subsidiary, Baraza Limited. Other new
entrants included Royal Media Group, owned by Samuel Kamau Macharia,
a prominent Nairobi businessman with strong government connections.
The group’s media portfolio includes Citizen Radio, Citizen TV, and more
than ten FM stations, most of them local-language radio stations broadcast-
ing across the country. Macharia’s entry into the media industry revealed
another problematic face of media liberalization in Kenya. Broadcast license
acquisition was based mainly on political connections and state patronage.
Macharia was awarded broadcast licenses at a time when established media
groups with the necessary infrastructure, such as the Nation Media Group,
were being denied the same. When Macharia began to associate with then
 opposition leader Mwai Kibaki, his licenses were temporarily withdrawn:
when he renounced his ties with Kibaki and formed a “development group”
in Central Kenya with senior KANU functionaries, he got his licenses back.
Intense lobbying and criticism of the government’s position on media
liberalization saw it reluctantly license new players. Still, these were poli-
ticians or their proxies. Curiously, these new stations were allowed to
broadcast only in specific geographical areas and mainly in English and
africa TODAY 57(3)

Kiswahili. This tightly managed process of media liberalization had several

implications. First, the geographical conditionalities imposed on the license
holders meant that these stations did not have national appeal. Second, to
avoid confrontation with the state, these new stations operated principally as
entertainment stations—which alienated them from various publics. Third,
most of these stations broadcast only in English and Kiswahili—which
severely limited their listenership.
86
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

Rise of Local-Language FM Radio

The widespread disillusionment with the mainstream news media, the

depoliticization of the new urban FM radio, and other factors provided an
environment conducive to the rise of local-language FM radio. For the state,
the first-generation FM radio stations were easy to monitor, considering
that most were based in Nairobi and broadcast in the national and official
languages of Kiswahili and English. In the broader script of nation-building,
they were part of a wider ideological network, which helped invalidate
alternative political identities. They were broadly apolitical: most focused
almost entirely on entertainment programming. Accordingly, the state did
not consider them a political threat to the status quo, for in fact they con-
veniently provided the “necessary illusion” of media diversity. At a time
when the discourse of democratic reform dominated public discussions, it
seemed improper that urban FM radio refused to engage with issues related
to both civic and political citizenship. Meanwhile, by broadcasting mainly
in English and Kiswahili, these stations were using languages that were con-
sistent with the state’s narratives of unity. The Kenyan nation has always
been imagined by the state in the national language, Kiswahili.17 There is an
implied assumption that, since the language is widely spoken across various
ethnic groups, it can be used to promote a narrative of political unity. This
is despite the fact that millions of Kenyans cannot effectively communicate
in the language. Therefore, the advent of urban English and Kiswahili FM
radio continued to alienate a large section of the population.
It would appear that the Kiswahili-English urban FM radio and the
state either deliberately ignored or failed to acknowledge the complex
social formations in Kenya’s conurbations, particularly Nairobi. For many
Kenyans, Nairobi still remains a migratory space, associated not with the
idea of home, but with labor. As such, like other African cities, it sees
the village constantly recreated within it, while ethnic or familial ties are
simultaneously ruptured and reified. Many urban dwellers straddle two or
more political identities, irreducible to a single identity. Thus, a viable com-
mercial and political space was available for exploitation by a new form of
FM radio: local-language FM radio.
In the year 2000, recognizing a vacuum in the media sector, Jane
Kimotho started the Kikuyu-language station Kameme FM, which quickly
established itself as one of the most popular FM radio stations in Nairobi

africa TODAY 57(3)

and its catchment area. Targeted at the Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu in Nairobi
and around Mt. Kenya and parts of the Rift Valley and Eastern provinces,
the station had a readymade audience, willed together, in part, by a common
language, but equally by disaffection with mainstream news media and the
new urban Kiswahili- and English-language FM radio. The station was pri-
marily a commercial enterprise, but it had the backing of the government,
which had hoped it could eventually be used as a new gateway to reaching

87
an important political constituency, the Gikuyu Meru Embu Association
community, then broadly at odds with the Moi regime. This constituency

George Ogola
could not be ignored, particularly with an election looming in 2002. The
station was allowed to broadcast only cultural and social programs, but as
it grew, it began to experiment with new formats, particularly talk shows
and phone-in sessions, formats already popular commercially in Uganda.18
These programs helped the station draw massive audiences, high ratings, and
therefore advertisements. The talk-show format was especially successful
because listeners found an accessible platform to discuss issues that affected
them, ignored by the mainstream media, and in a language the state “did
not understand.”
Kameme FM’s success, though eliciting heated debate over its potential
risks in light of prevailing ethnic political tensions, prompted the emergence
of other vernacular stations, including Ramogi FM (Luo), Kass FM (Kalenjin),
Musyi FM (Kamba), Mulembe FM (Luhya), Eggesa (Kisii), and many others.
These stations were targeted at specific ethnopolitical constituencies, with
morning talk shows especially attracting big audiences.19 The state’s seeming
reluctance, even brief encouragement, of these stations was strategic. These
stations were initially encouraged because, for the Moi administration, they
were to help destroy the transethnic alliance that oppositional forces had
formed under the umbrella political outfit NARC. The intention, in part,
was to reawaken ethnic consciousness and suspicions to weaken the alli-
ance. If this succeeded, it was going to make it easier for KANU to sell its
political message to the electorate.20

The Kibaki Presidency and the 2007 Elections:

Mediating the Crisis

Disillusionment with the Moi government and the exclusion of sections

of the political class from government had galvanized opposition parties
and candidates to agree to a political coalition to unseat KANU from power
 in 2002. Two main political blocs, the National Alliance Party of Kenya,
led by Mwai Kibaki, and the Rainbow Coalition, led by Raila Odinga,
came together to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), which
successfully campaigned and won a landslide victory over KANU.
The NARC government promised several reforms, including the enact-
ment of a new constitution to usher in a new political dispensation. The
administration did not, however, make good on its promises. No laws
africa TODAY 57(3)

infringing on media freedom were repealed: instead, the state’s control over
the media seemed to have been strengthened by a new rule, which required
publishers to post a bond of Sh. 1 million with the government before the
publication of any newspapers or magazine. Meanwhile, state patronage on
broadcast license acquisitions continued.
NARC’s political honeymoon was short-lived, as cracks soon began to
emerge within the coalition. These divisions were accelerated by Kibaki’s
88

reneging on a secret memorandum of understanding, which had been signed

between the National Alliance Party of Kenya and the Rainbow Coalition to
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

allow for the amendment of the constitution to create the position of prime
minister for Raila Odinga. A constitutional draft intended at devolving power
from the presidency to a newly created prime minister’s office was watered
down by members of Kibaki’s National Alliance Party of Kenya, leading
to a major political falling out between the parties. The draft constitution
was rejected at a national referendum, heightening tensions between rival
political blocs.
Toward the end of Kibaki’s first term, the elite consensus struck to
unseat KANU from power in 2002 had severely fragmented.21 This fragmen-
tation was acutely reflected in the media sector, which participated in two
main ways: first, by giving voice to the collapse of this consensus; second,
by participating in the fragmentation. The Kenyan news media effectively
became an institution in crisis, embedded in the same political and social
tensions that had informed the 2007–2008 political conflict, yet expected
to stand apart from it. The media thus found themselves serving the two
dominant political forces that had emerged following the falling out in
NARC: Kibaki’s Party of National Unity and Odinga’s Orange Democratic
Movement. These parties suddenly found surrogate voices in the country’s
media—a development especially reflected in the local-language media’s
coverage of the 2007 election and postelection violence.22
The local-language media demonstrated most acutely the emergent
political schism that in many ways revolved around ethnopolitical interests.
Media coverage of the 2007–2008 political crisis must, however, be anchored
in a much broader and more complex paradigm. Cheeseman, for instance,
calls for the need to understand the crisis within the context of the coun-
try’s historical political practices of inclusion and exclusion—issues that
seemed to play themselves out in the media (2008). The ownership of state
power in Kenya is often widely seen to determine inclusion or exclusion of
whole ethnopolitical constituencies from the state and its resources, hence
the reason presidential elections are so fiercely, even violently, contested.
Election outcomes necessarily raise both fear and hope (Githinji and Hol-
mquist 2008). However, “shrewd rulers will seek to ally the class interests
of potential ethnic mobilizers to their own by granting them access to the
state, thus decapitating and demobilizing potential ethnic trouble spots”
(Sklar 1979, cited in Schatzberg 1988:23). Ethnicity can therefore serve to
bulwark class and factional privilege, rather than comprehensive ethnic goals
(Markakis 1974, cited in Schatzberg 1988:23).

africa TODAY 57(3)

For a while, there had been no open platform for the coverage of these
fears, nor had the debate been framed as such by the media. It is precisely for
this reason that a BBC policy briefing on the local media coverage of the crisis
notes that the talk shows on the local-language FM stations “suddenly and
largely accidentally became an outlet for public debate and an expression of a
voice that had been suppressed for many decades. Many of these voices were
angry, disaffected and determined on change” (2008:4). These voices reflected

89
a number of things, including the rejection of the state’s unitary narratives;
they revealed the multiple readings of Kenya as a nation, including attach-

George Ogola
ment to, but also the ambivalence with which people related to, the nation-
state. By narrowcasting the polity through their legitimization of multiple
readings of belonging and competing claims to Kenyan citizenship, these
radio stations became useful tools for ethnic mobilization by politicians.
Broadcasts on some of these stations sometimes bordered on hate
speech, but no evidence that this practice was orchestrated aforethought
has come to light. Indeed, as the BBC’s Adam Mynott later observed, though
these media were overtly partisan, there was no evidence of “sophisticated
planned hate campaigning.”23 Various institutional failures allowed for
irresponsible broadcasting in these stations. The expansion of the media
sector following the liberalization of the airwaves was not attended by
appropriate policy frameworks to guard against rogue enterprises; therefore,
some of these stations were easily turned into partisan political platforms,
advocating specific ethnic interests. The lack of training opportunities for
media practitioners meant that presenters working for most of the FM radio
stations lacked the necessary journalistic skills and largely got their jobs
on the basis of being widely known or having competency in the local lan-
guages. The lack of training was especially evident in the talk shows where
hosts failed to moderate debates, leaving callers to vent their frustrations
sometimes by suggesting and encouraging violence against opponents.24

Local News Media and the Struggle for a New Postelection

National Consensus

An editorial titled “Save Our Beloved Country,” published jointly on 3 Janu-

ary 2008 by the leading newspapers and featured on the main TV stations,
seems to have signalled a curious shift in Kenyan news media. Written at the
height of the postelection violence, it attempted to restore faltering faith in
the nation.25 It called for an end to the violence to ensure political stability.
 It raised concerns about the loss of life and property, the negative impact of
the crisis on the economy, and the futility of debating who won the elections.
But there were some curious omissions. Not once did it mention ethnicity
as a factor in the conflict. This was a deliberate omission, which, as I have
argued in a separate article (Ogola 2009), merely reified the framing of the
conflict as unambiguously ethnic.
This editorial was framed as a narrative of peace, against the backdrop
africa TODAY 57(3)

of an artificial reinvention of a nationalistic agenda to temper the ethnic

dimensions of the conflict. It did not acknowledge the legitimacy of ethnic
political identities and addressed the public as a homogeneous group, with
shared affinity to a larger construct, the nation-state. But it set the param-
eters of inclusion. Patriotism was qualified on the delegitimization of ethnic
political affinities. This patriotic pitch underlined several key issues. First,
it gestured toward the reintroduction of an “ideology of order” similar to
90

those constructed by the Moi and Kenyatta administrations. Second, it dem-

onstrated the shared cosmology of power between the news media and the
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

state: it was in the interest of both the state and the media that the nation
should survive.
Emphasizing chaos, anarchy, destruction, and a collapsing economy
and not attempting to examine their causes—indeed, suggesting this was
not the right time for such analysis—was a narrative that seems to have
been legitimizing an emerging broader political script: the reinvention of the
nation and the nation-building project, with the state and the media enjoined
as partners. The local-language media, previously divided along ethnic lines,
began to pitch for national reconciliation, but on terms set up by the state
and the mainstream news media. Parliament enacted legislation to curb hate
speech—legislation that could also be used to criminalize or delegitimize
alternative readings of the nation that were being popularized by the local-
language news media. The National Cohesion and Integration Act of 2008
was enacted especially in light of fears raised by the local-language media.26
In July 2009, the widely respected research firm Synovate (formerly
Steadman) released its findings on media audience shares in the country.27
Kiswahili radio stations were reported to command 48 percent of the audience
share, dwarfing the English and vernacular channels. This was a significant
development, considering that, while there are now fifteen Kiswahili radio
stations, the country has forty operational English radio stations and twenty-
five operational vernacular ones. The emerging popularity of Kiswahili lan-
guage stations is not accidental. It can be explained by the rebuilding of a
discourse of national consensus following the 2007 postelection crisis. It is
consistent with the seeming reification of the nation-state as the preeminent
political community—a process the language is being used to help construct.
Toward the end of Kibaki’s first term, the local-language FM stations
were appropriated to become part of a political strategy: they were used
by politicians to mobilize and legitimize ethnopolitical interests as a way
of negotiating for space within the political center. When that failed and
financial support waned, these stations had to reinvent themselves.
 The negotiation of a post-2007 discourse of political consensus and the
seeming ideological leading back to the nation-building project have made the
local-language news media politically unattractive. In the short term, there-
fore, these stations do not provide political capital to their former financers,
nor is their discourse of a fractured polity as popular. For advertisers, associa-
tion with the brand makes these stations unattractive. The shift of focus by
the commercial English and Kiswahili radio stations from being primarily

africa TODAY 57(3)

entertainment stations to news media seriously engaging with issues related
to civic and political citizenship has severely eroded the audience base the
local-language stations had gained just before the elections.

Prospects

91
Kenya’s news media remain implicated in a complex power structure that
continues to shape their development. The private media are vibrant, but

George Ogola
they are by no means independent. Despite their weaknesses, they have been
fairly responsive to the needs of their audiences and have played a critical
role in influencing the democratic process in Kenya. However, the continued
domination of the sector by The NMG and The Standard Group remains
problematic. With already well-developed publishing, distribution networks,
public profiles, and a powerful relationship with the political class, the
media liberalization process may be short-circuited. A more competitive
media environment must be created, one disengaged from political patron-
age. Diversity in media ownership is important because media ownership
can translate into media power (Meir and Trappel 1998:39). Monopolizing
media ownership can narrow the parameters of public discourse, particu-
larly if owners begin interfering with editorial policies. Overall, media
concentration does not work in the interest of political pluralism.
The current struggles of the local-language media point to the need to
rethink current models. The sector must address two fundamental questions:
How can the local-language media approach Kenya’s social formations?
Clearly, these formations are not reducible to the ethnic. Second, how do
they develop a model that allows them to be sustainable but protects them
against direct and indirect forms of patronage?
Kenya’s media are implicated in political, social, and economic dynam-
ics from which it cannot be disaggregated. Its development will therefore rest
largely on sound media policies and a supportive legislative media regime.
The state is still sending mixed signals in this regard. While the country now
has a media law enshrined in the constitution (a significant development),
provisions within the Communications Amendment Act of 2008 remain
inconsistent with the intentions of the act. The state retains significant
control over the media through the provisions of the penal code, which,
incidentally, remain supreme to constitutional guarantees on various media
freedoms. Such ambiguities are likely to stall the liberalization process and
the media’s ability to drive the democratic process forward.
 NOTES

1. Jomo Kenyatta’s immediate and extended family remains among the richest and most power-
ful political families in Kenya. Kenyatta’s son Uhuru Kenyatta is currently the KANU chairman
and is expected to run for president in 2012. The family’s purchase of Regional Reach and
the newspaper The People Daily (previously owned by Kenneth Matiba) is widely seen as
africa TODAY 57(3)

an attempt to have a media stable capable of playing an influential role in Uhuru’s quest to
become the country’s next president. See Expression Today 2009.
2. The media’s normative roles are often variously defined, but these definitions all broadly
emphasize the media’s role as the “fourth estate,” its role as an information provider, educator,
and provider of a public space for free and fair debate (see Baker 2002; Curran 2000); however,
while the traditional understanding of the media’s watchdog role has always been limited to
its ability to hold government accountable, this role now requires a critical rethink. Curran,
for instance, argues that holding the government as the sole object of press vigilance is time-
92

worn because the position was conceived at a time when the government was thought to be
the only seat of power. Power is now dispersed among various institutions, including those
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

outside government (2000:122).

3. According to Herman and Chomsky, the media’s ideological and profit motives now far out-
weigh their normative values. They argue that the media have in fact become part of a larger
cultural and political apparatus, which helps normalize relations of domination and subordina-
tion. They argue that “the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what
the general populace is allowed to see, hear and think about, and to ‘manage’ public opinion
by regular propaganda campaigns” (Herman and Chomsky 1988 xi).
4. This is a report on the Kenyan media’s coverage of the 2007–2008 postelection violence
published by the BBC World Service Trust.
5. The platitudes are typically reserved for the mainstream English and Kiswahili media, while
the local-language media have in many ways been depicted almost like an aberration and
examined from a paradigm of difference.
6. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was Kenya’s first vice president. He resigned from the government
in 1966 and founded a new political party, Kenya People’s Union (KPU). This was banned in
1969, and Kenya became de facto a one-party state, with executive power exclusively vested
in the presidency and Kenyatta’s inner circle, most of them Kikuyus.
7. For a detailed discussion on Kenyatta’s various “instruments for political survival,” see Atieno-
Odhiambo (1987).
8. See Bougalt 1995 and Nyamjoh 2005 on “development journalism” in Africa.
9. For a history of the Nation Media Group, see Loughran 2010.
10. For a critical reading of power and gerontocracy, see Shatzberg’s (1988) discussion of Mobutu
in Zaire.
11. Nyayo is a Kiswahili word meaning ‘footsteps’. At his ascension to power following Kenyatta’s
death in 1978, Moi promised to follow in Kenyatta’s nyayo, but the term morphed to become a
byword for Moi and his regime-building strategies. Critics broadly used the term as a metaphor
depicting failure.
12. Moi was appointed vice president by Kenyatta largely because he was seen as a safe bet, who
would merely give the government a semblance of ethnic diversity, hence legitimacy, at a time
when Kenyatta’s cabinet was mainly drawn from the Kikuyu community and a circle of close
friends. He was not expected to succeed the president.
13. The titles of these publications reveal the extent to which state intimidation affected the
alternative media to the extent that publishers deliberately used names that appeared as
politically innocuous as possible.
14. Whispers was a popular fiction column, written by renowned Kenyan writer Wahome Mutahi
from 1983 to 2003. At a time when the state had all but monopolized public sites of expression
in the country, Whispers kept the Kenyan newspaper porous, providing space for the discus-
sion of social and political issues that could only be “whispered.” Though initially conceived as

africa TODAY 57(3)

an instructional column mainly targeted at urban migrants grappling with the effects of living
in the city and broadly with African modernity, it became a political space, defined largely by
an oppositional discourse. Through this column, Mutahi created a “space of freedom” where
the state and its apparatuses were routinely lampooned. It is a space where the ruthlessness
of Kenya’s postcolonial political order was critically interrogated, “laughingly.”
15. These included Sam Kahiga’s “Kibao,” Gakiha Weru’s “Urbanite,” and others; however, though
this genre became increasingly political in the late 1980s through the 1990s, similar columns

93
dealing mainly with mundane daily experiences of recently arrived migrants in Nairobi were
already featuring in the mainstream newspapers. These included Brian Tetley’s “Mambo” and

George Ogola
Hillary Ng’weno’s “My Friend Joe.”
16. Though common in other democracies, and while instances of bias had been present in the
coverage of politicians in the Kenyan press, this was the first time a newspaper had openly
asked the public to vote for a presidential candidate.
17. Kenya has had a controversial language policy since independence. The use of vernacular
languages is officially discouraged. Successive governments have argued that the promotion
of these languages is inconsistent with the promotion of national unity. It is a policy vigor-
ously pursued in the schooling system, where students are normally punished for speaking
in their mother tongues.
18. Uganda already had a highly successful FM radio sector, attracting both private capital and
state investment. President Yoweri Museveni, for instance, would famously participate in these
talk shows and phone-in sessions, not only to discuss policy and answer critics, but also to
advance his political agenda.
19. Kameme featured “Arahuka” (Wake Up), Inooro FM “Hagaria” (Sharpen), and Ramogi “Baraza”
(Informal Debate), while Lake Victoria FM had “Just Say It.”
20. According to a BBC policy briefing (2008), by 2007, local-language radio stations commanded
27 percent of the radio market, compared with 33 percent by mainstream radios. It was a
market share that made it impossible to ignore this fledgling sector. Kameme’s popularity
soon became politically translatable, making the state particularly anxious of its success. When
attempts at more state control failed, the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation started
a new Kikuyu-language station, Coro FM, as a direct competitor. Other Kikuyu-language sta-
tions, such as Inooro FM, were licensed to neuter Kameme’s perceived influence. The state’s
decisions, however, merely confirmed these local-language stations as new players in the
country’s political process. Toward the end of the Moi presidency and Kibaki’s ascension to
power in 2002, the local-language broadcast media had become singularly important to the
political class, leading to a rapid expansion of this sector.
21. Daniel Branch and Nic Cheeseman (2009) provide a compelling reading of this elite
fragmentation.
22. See, for instance, BBC Policy Briefing 1 (2008).
23. See BBC Policy Briefing 1 (2008).
 24. Stations such as Kass FM gained notoriety for letting callers incite listeners to violence. For a
reading of this coverage, see BBC Policy Briefing 1 (2008).
25. The editorial, however, received mixed reactions; see, for instance, Ogola 2009 and Wrong
2008.
26. Article 13 (1) of the act defines hate speech as constituting the use of threatening, abusive,
or insulting words or behavior; or exhibiting performance, program, visual image, or printed
matter aimed at stirring up ethnic hatred or harm. In principle, the provisions of this act seek
africa TODAY 57(3)

to curb instances of hate speech, but they may be amenable to varied interpretations.
27. Synovate (formerly Steadman in Kenya) is a research company with interests ranging from
media analysis to opinion polling. Steadman made polling an important instrument in gaug-
ing political support in Kenya. The doubts raised over the legitimacy of the 2007 presidential
election results were in part because Steadman’s polls had consistently predicted an Odinga
win. The company’s polling results became a legitimate source of political reference for
political parties, news organizations, and the public.
94
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA IN KENYA

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