2012

Will China’s quickly expanding media presence in Africa result in a fresh, alternative, and balanced perspective on the continent–much as Al-Jazeera altered the broadcast landscape with the launch of its English service in 2006–or will it be essentially an exercise in propaganda?

Last week in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, while Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was making a speech about Africa’s growth potential at an African Union forum, a journalist who his administration has locked away since September on bogus terrorism charges was presenting his defense before a judge. Eskinder Nega has been one of the most…

It would be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than Eskinder Nega. The veteran Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven times by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government over the past two decades, and was put back in jail on September 14, 2011, after he published…