Cameroon grants licences to private broadcasters

Culled from Reuters

Cameroon grants licences to private broadcasters

Thu 30 Aug 2007, 16:55 GMT

By Tansa Musa

YAOUNDE, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Cameroon granted its first private broadcasting licences on Thursday to three television channels and a radio station, ending the monopoly of state-run media in the central African country.

"Today is a big day for the media in Cameroon," said Communication Minister Ebenezer Njoh Mouelle after signing the documents. "I hope the beneficiaries will work within the legal framework put in place by the government."

President Paul Biya has been in power in Cameroon for quarter of a century and his Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM) won 140 of 180 seats in parliamentary polls in July, denounced as a sham by the opposition.

The state-run radio and television corporation (CRTV) is notoriously pro-government, but international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in its 2007 annual report on Cameroon that journalists' conditions were improving.

"Cameroon is no longer the tense and brutal place it was in the first few years after 2000, when journalists were imprisoned even for poking fun," RSF said in the report. "But it is still dangerous to be a journalist in a country in which the army, secessionist impulses on the part of the English-speaking region and corruption are still sensitive subjects," it said.

RSF said on Thursday the editor of a private newspaper in Cameroon's English-speaking northwest was sentenced in absentia on Aug. 13 to a year in jail for defaming local authorities and other offences in a trial "marked by abuse of authority".

The four operators granted licences on Thursday were Sweet FM, a Douala-based radio station, Spectrum Television (STV), Canal 2 International television and TV+ cable television.
The decision comes after a long delay.

Cameroon's parliament adopted a law liberalising audiovisual media in 1990 but the government did not sign the enabling act fixing conditions for private broadcasters until 2000.
The communication ministry was then flooded with over 100 applications for private broadcasting but government officials said the licences could not be granted immediately because the sector was "too sensitive" and the government needed more time.

Mouelle said around 50 other licence applications from private radio stations and 20 television requests were being considered and should be granted over the next few months. The main sticking point was their inability to pay broadcasting fees of around 100 million CFA ($210,000) for the licences, which are valid for five years for radio and 10 years for television and are renewable.