Burkina Faso's media

Burkina Faso today has a relatively colorful media landscape and press products that are also noticed beyond national borders, even if the medium quality of the Burkinabe media is still poor due to the relatively high production costs and the lack of training opportunities for journalists.

Since the constitutional revision of 1991, private media have (again) been allowed in Burkina Faso, and freedom of the press and media has also been enshrined in law since 1997 .

Media and press freedom

Freedom of the media is usually respected by the authorities. Nevertheless, there have been several problematic arrests of journalists in recent years. The organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Burkina Faso 68th in the upper midfield with its Worldwide Press Freedom Index . The dissemination of false news can still be the subject of criminal proceedings under the Information Act of 1993.

Print media

In addition to the state daily newspaper Sidwaya , numerous private print media appear today in Burkina Faso (in alphabetical order):

• Bendré , weekly critical journal, platform of the MBDHP .
• L'Evénement , monthly magazine.
• L'Hebdomadaire du Burkina , appears weekly.
• L'Indépendant , published weekly, founded in 1993.
• Journal du Jeudi , weekly satirical magazine, founded in 1991.
• L'Observateur paalga , appears daily, once a week with a supplement. L'Observateur paalga was founded in 1973, but had to cease publication in 1984 after the Sankarist revolution. Since 1991 the traditional paper has been back in the Burkinabe press landscape.
• L'Opinion , appears weekly.
• Le Pays , published daily, founded in 1991.
• San Finna , has been published weekly since 1999.

Due to the economic situation in Burkina Faso, all press products only appear in small editions of a few thousand copies, because there are only a few people who can regularly afford newspapers. A copy of a newspaper is usually read by dozens of people.

Newspapers are usually bought from young street vendors in Ouagadougou , Bobo-Dioulasso and Koudougou , and sometimes in the markets in smaller towns, but there they are usually only available one or two days after delivery in the larger cities.

Despite the small number of copies and limited circulation, press products play an important role in providing information to the public because they serve as an information base for many radio journalists.

watch TV

Burkina Faso has a television station, the state Télévision Nationale du Burkina (TNB). This is operated by the RTB and is under the control of the Ministry of Information. TNB started in 1963 under the name Volta-vision .

radio

Radio Burkina headquarters and studios in Ouagadougou

To this day, the radio is the most important source of information for a large part of the Burkinabe population, especially in rural areas.

In addition to the Radio Nationale du Burkina (RNB) of the state operating company RTB, which began operating as Radio Haute-Volta before Burkina Faso's independence in 1959 , there are increasingly small private regional broadcasters in Burkina as well as four large independent private broadcasters with supra-regional importance, Horizon FM , Savane FM , Pulsar FM and Ouaga FM .

Practically all radio stations in Burkina Faso broadcast programs in French and in local languages.

News agency

Burkina Faso has a state news agency, the Agence d'Information du Burkina (founded in 1964 as Agence Voltaïque de Presse ).

Electronic media

offer

Electronic media are still being developed in Burkina Faso. Most newspapers today have websites on which a selection of current articles and archive editions are usually available. Press portals such as that of the private organization Center National de Presse Norbert Zongo or the commercial project lefaso.net are also important for a wider audience .

demand

In general, electronic media have so far due to the weak infrastructure in Burkina Faso only to a limited extent and mainly in urban areas by members upscale formation layers used.

In Burkina Faso - as in other economically weaker countries - communication via e-mail plays a key role in the spread of Internet services. E-mail costs much less than sending a letter and so there are Internet cafes in all corners of cities today, which are used by increasingly larger groups of the population.

history

The first public access to the Internet was made available by the state telephone company ONATEL in the mid-1990s. The first internet café in Ouagadougou, the Cybercafé Evasion , started offering its services in 1996. At the beginning it had an analog modem connection and handled all e-mail traffic via a single POP account, to which all e-mails had to be sent.

Two years later, private Internet service providers were given the opportunity to offer Internet services. The high-speed ADSL connections, which are important for the distribution of electronic media , have only been available throughout Burkina Faso since 2006.

Journalists in Burkina Faso

Most newspaper editorial offices only employ a dozen permanent journalists, plus a few freelancers and administrative assistants. Only the state media have more human resources. Many small radio stations also work with volunteers, be it in the editorial area or as moderators.

To date, most of Burkina Faso's journalists do not have professional training. In the past five years, however, the United Nations Development Program has made some efforts to improve the level of training among Burkinabe journalists and, together with the Burkinabe authorities, has launched various training programs for journalists, particularly in the use of new information technologies.

Footnotes and sources

1. ^ Wittmann, Frank, 2005. Media pluralism in a semi-authoritarian system . In: medienheft , March 29, 2005
2. ↑ See Constitution of Burkina Faso ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Art. 101 (Loi N ° 002/97 / ADP of January 27, 1997) 
3. ↑ Worldwide Press Freedom Index - Ranking List 2007 ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( engl. ) 
4. ↑ Code de l'information , Loi N ° 56/93 / ADP of December 30, 1993
5. ↑ See the list of all press products appearing in Burkina Faso with details of the size and circulation ( Memento of May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Burkina Faso Ministry of Information
6. ↑ mediaburkina.org
7. ↑ lefaso.net
8. ↑ Jeune Afrique , No. 2391, November 2006
9. ↑ See for example "Le PNUD renforce les capacités de 80 journalists en technologie de l'information et de la communication" ( Memento of the original dated November 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Notice on the United Nations Development Program website