Africa, Sub-Saharan

Of Africa’s 54 countries, the 46 countries south of the Sahara, geographically labeled sub-Saharan Africa, are situated within a diverse cultural, ethnic, and lingual milieu of an estimated 1.07 billion people in 2018. Among these 46 countries, the liberalization of the media has been at the center of debate since a wave of democratic reform swept through the region in the 1990s. Within this wave of democratization, authoritarian one-party regimes yielded to multiparty systems in most African states. At the onset of democratization, a wide range of media reforms surfaced with countries opening up and deregulating their media sector. This entry offers a brief overview of colonial-era press and anti-colonial activism. The entry also discusses the development of the sub-Saharan media landscape, the dual-media structure ...