Statement by President of SLAJ, Ahmed Sahid Nasralla, at the first ever National Media Viability and Investment Conference

Date: 21-22 April 2022

Venue: Freetown International Conference Center (Bintumani), Aberdeen, Freetown, Sierra Leone

Time: 9:30am

 

Opening Courtesies...

 

Today we are making another history as the first-ever National Media Viability and Investment Conference kicks off, marking the first conscious and determined step taken by media stakeholders with support from the Government of SL and the BBC Media Action’s PRIMED Project to begin to address the economic and other systemic challenges facing the media in Sierra Leone.

 

There is no better time this media investment summit could have come other than now, almost two years after the historic repeal of the criminal and seditious libel law. And one of the strongest arguments we put forward for the repeal was that that law was preventing private sector investment into the media in the country because no sensible investor would want to invest in a sector that could easily escort them to police cells or the Pademba Road Prisons (now the SLCS). We pointed to the John Love and Atlantic Printers as typical examples of how the criminal libel law scared away private investment in the media. Those were legally registered private businesses providing printing services to majority of the newspapers operating in Sierra Leone in the 1990s and early 2000 or so. The owners got roped in a criminal libel law suit against certain newspapers at different points; they were remanded for a while and later acquitted. When they were released they wasted no time to close their businesses and vowed never again to go near the media.

 

That obnoxious law was finally repealed after 50 long and arduous years in 2020. Following the repeal, the expectation of the public was to see a media industry with heightened professional and ethical practice but to SLAJ, and other media stakeholders, the major concern was poverty of the media. How do we lift the media out of poverty?

 

His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio must have followed our campaign for the repeal, and so when he was appending his signature to the Public Order Amendment Act on 28th October 2020, he made a commitment that his government would support an investment conference to enhance private sector investment in the media in Sierra Leone.

 

Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, that is why we are here this morning. A warm welcome to the National Media Viability and Investment Summit!

 

However, let me caution at this stage that for those of you from outside the industry who have come with cash to buy or invest, we are not selling anything yet at this stage.

 

And for those of us from within the industry who have come expecting to receive investment packages for your individual media houses, nobody has come to invest yet.

 

What we are doing now is to continue to critically look at our content, the service of news journalism we offer the society, and what recipe can we use to enhance their quality, and come up with innovative ideas on how we can design and package them well to attract buyers.

 

The State of the Media

Your Excellency, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, nationwide consultations leading to this summit have been very engaging and holistic. The industry players and non-industry players highlighted the systemic challenges facing the media, we suggested practicable solutions, and then we identified potential investors.

 

During one of the regional consultations the Mayor of Bonthe Municipality, *Rev. Joe Laymin*, described the state of the media in Sierra Leone in this way, and I quote:

 

"The media in Sierra Leone is in a coma. All efforts to resuscitate it have failed.”

 

That is an outsider’s perspective of our media landscape. While we, media people, may not entirely agree with him, the Mayor’s description should make us pause, reflect and accept responsibility for the state we are in. Now, we all need to work together as we have begun this journey to find that doctor, that cure that will wake us from our coma.

 

According to the IMC records, this is the picture of media pluralism in Sierra Leone: there are 174 active radio stations (38 not active); 123 active newspapers (107 not active); 10 magazines active (14 not active); and 17 active Television and digital satellite service (7 not active). So during the consultations we talked about media pluralism within the context of media ownership and the overall size of the national economy, which is largely informal. Has media pluralism served the interest of the industry well or not? That is a question we will try to answer in the two days we will be here.

 

We also talked about the Legal framework, especially lack of advertising laws and a national information and media policy; and how unfairly government advertising is being distributed among the media, and the non-payment for adverts by government agencies.

 

We lamented the lack of tools and systems for credible audience measurement/research and potential return on investment; high taxation and the need to develop and implement the Digital Migration Policy, the need to invest in our national broadcaster SLBC and SLENA.

 

Furthermore, we highlighted the technical deficiency in the media:

In the print media, one layout and design professional handles an average of 15 to 20 newspapers.

 

For those media houses that have struggled to acquire printing presses, every time the machines breakdown they have to import technicians from Nigeria and Ghana to come and fix them. 

 

For the electronics media, one studio engineer attends to 20 to 30 radio stations.

 

Investment in the media:

In terms of investment in the media this is the situation:

Awe

AFRICELL SL

Africell is spending close to One Billion Leones on the media every month on collocation- that is providing power supply and towers to about 30 partner radio stations across the country, plus direct advertising to the print and electronic media.

 

ORANGE SL

Orange SL is spending 300 Million Leones every month on direct advertisement to the media (press releases, promotional articles). That excludes other support to the media sector.

 

MERCURY INTERBATIONAL

Mercury International is spending Le330 Million on the print media every month.

Le36 million on Radio Stations every month.

Le194.5 Million on TV Stations and video producing companies every month.

So per month Mercury is spending a total of Le560.5 Million.

 

We don’t know how much government agencies are spending because they don’t usually honour their payments.

 

The money sounds huge, but when you share that among the number of media houses that are active the advertining revenue is very small but you can imagine the state of the media if those adverts were not forthcoming.

 

So we are looking at investment from two angles: private and public/Government.

For the private investment the benefit is profit maximization.

For the public it is building the capacity of the media and its professionals to perform their public interest role efficiently and independently.

 

Quite recently, SLAJ launched the Golden Jubilee Journalism Welfare Fund to support independent and public interest journalism, as well as to cater for the welfare of journalists during emergency situations. To ensure sustainability, the fund will be invested in bearer bonds and in shares in clean businesses. This is another form of investment we will be looking at in this conference.

 

In fact, Your Excellency, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, some of the suggestions in terms of solutions that came out of the nationwide consultations include:

 

i) The need for a national basket fund for the media.

ii) Government should allocate 3% of the national budget as subsidy to the media, especially to support the operations of community radio stations which are playing a very vital role in providing information to people in remote communities.

iii) Others called for tax incentives for raw materials used by the media that are imported into the country.

 

The Political will and the need to take advantage of it

Your Excellency, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, never in the history of our country has there been such a political will to transform the media in Sierra Leone, and as President of SLAJ I am taking full advantage of it.

 

Some have described me as the luckiest President of SLAJ because positive things are just happening for the media every year since I was elected three years ago. We achieved the repeal of the criminal libel law; simultaneously, the IMC Act 2020 was passed as one big step in addressing conditions of service of journalists and other media workers; the Government has increased annual subvention to the media from Le250 million to Le500 million; we are discussing with the Government the possibility of SLAJ acquiring the defunct Daily Mail Building to serve as our national media headquarters; in addition to the Ministry of Lands allocating land to all regional offices of SLAJ for the construction of our regional headquarters. For the first time in the 22 years history of the IMC, His Excellency the President approved all 7 persons nominated by SLAJ, including the Chairman to serve in the new IMC Board.

And now we having this media viability and investment conference.

 

SLAJ is focused on ensuring an independent media. Investment in media, lest anyone think otherwise, does not mean buying out journalism. SLAJ believes in free and fair journalism, which is important for the survival of democracy.

 

Conclusion

Finally, as we begin the conference this morning, let us remind ourselves that we all have a role to play to actualize all these efforts we are putting into this exercise.

 

The Government has a role to play. The private sector has a role to play. The public has a role to play. The international community has a role to play. But above all, we the media stakeholders have the biggest role to play. We must take ownership of this whole project and ensure that it works. This is for the good of our industry and our nation.

 I thank you all.

©: SLAJ PRESIDENT✍️