Africa’s shifting media landscapes: Digital media use grows, but so do demographic divides

Digital media and radio bear closer attention, however – the former because of its explosive growth in recent years and the latter because of its widespread utilisation and relative stability in the midst of broader technological changes. [...] For example, we see a 27-percentage-point gap in regular Internet usage for news between the youngest (18-35 years) and the oldest (56 years and above), a 35-point gap in Internet and social media use between urban and rural residents, and a 38-point gap in social media use between those with the highest and lowest levels of lived poverty. [...] In one dramatic example of a public role in defending media, thousands of listeners of Radio Fresh in Ibadan, Nigeria, gathered at the station to protest the bulldozing of its building ordered by the local governor, allegedly to punish the station for critical reporting in 2018 (Atoyebi & Dada, 2018). [...] Regional coordination of national partners in about 35 countries is provided by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) in South Africa, and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. [...] the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Open Society Foundations - Africa, Luminate, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the European Union Commission, the World Bank Group, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Uganda, the Embassy of Sweden i.