Securing Interests (Business, Politics, and a Modern East African Newspaper Sector)

The growing concentration of media ownership raises concerns that well-capitalized media firms can steer political and economic policy by determining which ideas are amplified and which are marginalized. Securing Interests explores postcolonial East African media through the dynamics of newspaper ownership, examining how owners used their publications to advance their financial and political interests.

Tracing developments from the 1960s to the 1990s, Phoebe Musandu shows the clout of Kenya’s main newspapers that were largely owned by joint-stock companies, multinational corporations, overseas entities, and other large investment vehicles. Newspapers became strategic assets through which owners influenced political decision-making, advanced their business interests, and increased their profit margins. As well as advocating for economic policies that would give free rein to capital and markets, these companies and individuals used the pages of their newspapers to cultivate cooperation from the Kenyan people. Their goal, Musandu argues, was to build and protect a capitalist Kenya.

An empirically rich work, Securing Interests follows the flows of power and influence between the media sector, politics, and business and their effects on the daily lives of Kenyans in the decades after independence.