Tuesday 25 / March / 2025
Cape Town: When the White House issued an executive order to dismantle pro-democracy media outlets Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, shockwaves replaced radio waves from Prague to Addis Ababa.
"For the past 40 years, VOA has been a major source of information on Ethiopia's key political and social issues. If the radio station stops broadcasting, there is bound to be a lot of negative pressure," said Endalkachew Haile Michael, a media researcher based in the United States.
The Trump administration's stance on media institutions undermines the United States "exemplary status on press freedom worldwide," he added.
For listeners like Alemayehu Geberheyewt, VOA was "a station where, beyond the daily news, a lot of educational stuff was broadcast. Since the beginning of the socialist regime in Ethiopia, VOA had been the voice of the people."
VOA began broadcasting in 1942 initially to counter Nazi propaganda before positioning itself against communism during the Cold War. Its programming reached Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, and in the post-Cold-War era, VOA became regarded as a reliable news source in countries with little press freedom.
In response to the US cuts, European broadcasters like DW and France Medias Monde have called for action to fill the void left by retreating US state-funded international broadcasting.
US cuts already shook Africa's media landscape
But for African media, the gutting of the VOA, which operated across 13 African nations, is just the latest blow to pro-democracy media.
Previously, funding cuts to the US Agency for International Development, USAID, and other foreign assistance programmes, which were active in most African nations and went beyond humanitarian assistance, indirectly impacted media, from training to fact-checking teams to publishers.
Overall, in 2024, the US sent $12.7 billion (€11.7 billion) of $41 billion to sub-Saharan Africa,
while African nations benefited from US-funded global programmes to fight diseases like HIV/Aids.
Nancy Booker, a professor of journalism and media and communication at the Nairobi-based Aga Khan University, told DW: "A lot of community-based or startup African media have for the longest time relied on donor funding. We are seeing or experiencing a lot of uncertainty."
Simon Allison, from the South African independent publication The Continent, which was not affected by American aid cuts, described the situation as "an extinction-level event for a number of media houses."
"Even the ones that don't rely on US aid are struggling, certainly in South Africa. I don't think there's any media house that is thriving or making a huge profit," he told DW.
Several media industry insiders spoke to DW anonymously, because funding for their programmes is still under review. Booker described the funding cuts as having a knock-on effect reaching programs beyond the US government.
"It's not only the national agencies, but also the bilateral cooperations we have because the pressure is mounting on them not to continue," she said.
Recently, The Namibian, a newspaper reported it had been contacted by the US embassy in Windhoek over continued advertising in the publication. The embassy allegedly asked The Namibian if it was associated with the Associated Press, The New York Times and Reuters, publications previously criticised by Donald Trump.
The head of one media organisation in Tanzania, speaking on condition of anonymity, said media funding was just one component of a donor-funded ecosystem that has been upended practically overnight.
"It doesn't happen in isolation," they told DW.
"When you have the biggest funder in the world saying that they are no longer interested in matters of climate or environment, inclusion, diversity, equality, it sets the agenda for other organisations."
Another key issue has been job losses for journalists, their dependents, and businesses that cropped up around donor-funded NGOs.
"In most African countries, if you're well off in your community you suddenly find that you have like 50 to 100 people depending on you. Organisations have been closed, people have been laid off from what was understood to be the most secure work," they told DW.
A strategic mistake?
The dismantling of VOA and cuts to aid programmes that supported independent media has been slammed in the US and criticized on the continent. For Ethiopian journalism, Endalekachew Haile Michael said the first casualty will be "losing fact-based reporting. The second problem is that the US has voluntarily given up soft power. Today, China, Russia and Middle Eastern countries are developing their own media channels."
While the White House justified the move by saying taxpayers were "no longer on the hook for radical propaganda", domestic critics decried the cuts as dangerous for press freedom, and a strategic mistake.
Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said "the only people cheering for this are adversaries and authoritarians around the world, where press freedoms are nonexistent."
China's state-run Global Times newspaper wrote in an editorial "the monopoly of information held by some traditional Western media is being shattered."
Trump has regularly criticised media coverage of him and has questioned the wisdom of funding VOA when it has a "firewall" ensuring its editorial independence. Nairobi-based Nancy Booker says the discarding of critical media by the US can also serve as a precedent for leaders to react similarly to coverage they do not like.
"The US has been a model for a lot of things, even from a governance point of view," she said.
"Some of our leaders may think that's the way we respond to media, how we respond to journalism."
The way forward for African media
For decades, the presence of donor funding helped build up journalistic capacity in terms of training, fact-checking and human rights reporting.
"It is a good idea in principle for all of us to wean ourselves off donor funding, but the suddenness of the US decision caught many media houses off guard," said Allison.
The need for quick adjustments does not leave too many alternatives, with local and national governments already short on funding.
"We are looking at growing local philanthropy, working harder at convincing advertisers that it is important to keep their business with independent media houses and to give them the moral case to do so," Allison said.
Some observers, including Allison and Booker, believe that despite current shocks, the cuts could kickstart a drive for African media funding that is not reliant on donor funding.
"If we can make the case to audiences that we are worth paying for, I think we could be on track for a much more sustainable future," Allison said.
