Gabon
Gabon, one of West Africa’s wealthiest countries, ranked 94 in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) and climbed up 11 spots compared to its ranking in 2022.
WPFI is an index constructed by an NGO called Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that ranks media freedom in 180 countries. It has information on what type of press each country has, and how safe are the journalists working for the press, along with some additional details about each country’s economic and political status.
Gabon lies in the middle of the list by ranking 94 out of 180. RSF claims that there are a few reasons why Gabon isn’t ranked higher including its current economic situation, the way its government operates, and its very strict media regulators.
Gabon has over 60 media outlets, most of them are tied to the government, but some of them are private. A BBC article published in April 2023, states that although Gabon has private media outlets, the state TV channels such as Gabon Première and Gabon 24 are still very influential.
This article continues by saying that television, radio, and newspapers are the most popular, but online media is quickly rising in popularity as well, with 60% of the population being online.
The High Authority for Communication (HAC), serves as a media regulator in Gabon, often censoring most journalists by telling them what they can and cannot say. Being critical of the government will often lead to penalization, according to the private online publication Gabonactu.com.
RSF also mentioned that the biggest issue with HAC is that seven out of its nine members are appointed by Gabon’s government, and with that, control the media of the entire country.
This is particularly bad because Gabon’s government has come out with a new law, updated in June 2023, that allows the president of HAC, who is usually in coalition with the government, to penalize a media outlet without the presence of the other members.
Even though this law also states that HAC can’t arrest any journalists for expressing their thoughts, the police still question most journalists who are critical of the government.
According to Nations Online, Gabon has an autocratic government. It has had only two leaders since its independence from France in 1960, El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, who ruled up until his death in 2009, and its current leader, his son, Ali Bongo Ondimba, who continued his father’s reign.
With such complicated leadership, Gabon’s private media struggles to keep up with the government-owned news sources. RSF mentioned that the government is known to organize private events for the public press to which the private news outlets rarely get an invitation. These events often introduce new laws and decisions of the government. This means that the public press’s only source of information about those events, ultimately is the censored articles from the public press.
The private press, while struggling to publish the truth with all the censoring, also struggles economically, states the World Bank. Gabon might be one of the wealthiest countries in Africa per capita, but its journalists rarely get paid a livable wage.
In their report, RSF also stated that a lot of public media outlets have either closed or declared bankruptcy. The World Bank stated that the biggest reason for this recession has been the raw material crisis in 2014 and the pandemic in 2020.
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Teodora Lazarevska is a Journalism and Mass Communication student studying at the American University of Bulgaria. Teodora is passionate about writing and researching.
