East Africa stagnates near bottom of the index, Ethiopia 137th

In Somalia
(175th, -11) 18 journalists were killed, caught up in bomb attacks or the
direct targets of murder, making 2012 the deadliest in history for the
country’s media. The Horn of Africa state was the second most dangerous country
in the world for those working in news and information, behind Syria. In Eritrea
(in last place in the index for the sixth successive year), no journalists were
killed but some were left to die, which amounts to the same thing. With at
least 30 behind bars, it is Africa’s biggest prison for journalists. Of 11
incarcerated since 2001, seven have died as a result of prison conditions or
have killed themselves. Since the independent media
were abolished more than 10 years ago, there are no independent Eritrean news
outlets, other than outside the country, and terror prevails.

East Africa
is also a region of censorship and crackdowns. Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan,
where more newspapers were seized and the arrests of journalists continued
during the summer, is stuck firmly in 170th place, in the bottom 10 of the
index. Djibouti (167th, -8), which also has no independent media,
detained a correspondent of the foreign-based news site La Voix de Djibouti. Despite the release of two Swedish
journalists arrested in 2011, Ethiopia(137th)
fell ten places because of its repressive application of the 2009
anti-terrorist law and the continued detention of several local journalists.

Political
unrest in Mali and the Central African Republic

Mali (99th, -74), which was long presented
as the continent’s star performer in democracy and press freedom, was prey to
the political events that overtook it during the year. The military coup in
Bamako on 22 March and the seizure of the north of the country by Touareg separatists and Islamic fundamentalists exposed
news organizations to censorship and abuses. Many northern radio stations
stopped broadcasting, while in the capital several Malian
and foreign journalists were assaulted. All these occurred before the external
military intervention in January 2013.

The Central
African Republic was ranked 65th in 2012. Events after the outbreak of the Seleka rebellion at the very end of the year (radio
stations ransacked, one journalist killed) were not taken into consideration in
this index, thus preventing the country from falling more than 50 places. These
will be included in the 2014 version. In Guinea-Bissau (92nd, -17) a
media blackout and military censorship that followed the coup on 12 April
explain that country’s drop.

Africa’s
predatory censors

Yahya Jammeh,
King Mswati III, Paul Kagame,
and Teodoro Obiang Nguema, together with other heads of state such as Issaias Afeworki (Eritrea) and
Ismael Omar Guelleh (Djibouti) are members of an
exclusive club of authoritarian African leaders, some eccentric others stern,
who hold their countries in an iron grasp and keep a firm grip on news and
information. Their countries, respectively Gambia (152nd), Swaziland
(155th), Rwanda (161st) and Equatorial Guinea (166th), are all
among the bottom 30 in the index. Media pluralism has been whittled away and
criticism of the head of state discouraged.

The
biggest losses

Chad, which fell 18 places to 121st, saw journalists
harassed and roughed up, the publication of the newspaper N’Djamena Bi-Hebdo temporarily halted and its publisher sentenced to
a suspended prison term, and a highly repressive bill kept under wraps. The
slow but sure progress that followed the formation of a national unity
government in Zimbabwe (133rd, -16) in 2009 and the granting of
publication licences to several independent
newspapers appeared to have stalled. Violence and arrests of journalists still
niggle and if elections go ahead as planned in 2013, the atmosphere for the
media promises to be tense. Relatively high placed in 2011-2012, South Sudan
(124th) fell 12 places after the murder of a columnist – the first killing of
its kind in the new country – as news organizations and journalists awaited the
approval of three new laws on the media.

Despite the
holding of a national media conference in Cameroon (120th, -23), the
future of the sector remains both uncertain and worrying. In the upper reaches
of the index, Niger (43rd) nonetheless fell 14 places as a result of the
irresponsibility of a few journalists who succumbed to the temptation to abuse
the freedom that they enjoyed. Within the space of four months in Tanzania(70th, -36), one journalist was killed while
he was covering a demonstration and another was found dead, a clear victim of
murder.

Burundi (132nd) fell only two places but
remains a low position. Summonses of journalists declined but the case of
Hassan Ruvakuki, given a life sentence reduced to
three years on appeal, has created an atmosphere of fear among the media.

Return to
normality

After a
dreadful year in 2011, marked by the dictatorial behaviour
of the late President Bingu Wa
Mutharika, a violent crackdown on demonstrations and
the murder of the blogger Robert Chasowa, Malawi
(75th) recorded the biggest jump in the entire index, up 71 places, close to
the position it held in 2010. Similarly, Cote d’Ivoire rose 63 places to 96th despite persistent problems. It had
plummeted in the previous index because of a post-election crisis and the
murders of a journalist and another media worker, as well as the civil conflict
that broke out in Abidjan in April. Uganda (104th) was up 35 places
thanks to a better year, but things were far from satisfactory as far as the
media were concerned. The year ended with President Yoweri
Museveni making open threats to several radio
stations.

Promising
gains

For Senegal
(59th, +16), 2012 was a year of hope. The presidential election took place in a
peaceful atmosphere for the media, despite a few regrettable assaults on
journalists, and President Macky Sall,
who had declared himself willing to decriminalize press offences, took office.
Much remains to be proved in 2013, as was illustrated by the prison sentence
handed down on a journalist in December.

In Liberia
(97th, +13), the presidential election in November 2011 had been tainted by the
closure of several media outlets and attacks on journalists. In 2012, the
atmosphere improved greatly. In the summer, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the second African head of state, after Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, to
sign the Declaration of Table Mountain, thereby undertaking to promote media
freedom.

Namibia (19th), Cape Verde (25th) and Ghana
(30th) maintained their record as the highest ranked African countries.