African Media Barometer Ivory Coast

Côte d’Ivoire has a law which looks at the legal status of the press and supports the principles of freedom of expression by protecting the freedom of the press. But due to the political upheaval the freedom of expression has been heavily impacted. During the pre- and post-electoral crisis citizens were left with the fear of not expressing themselves freely as many media entities have seen their equipment destroyed which crippled their operations. On the contrary Côte d’Ivoire has ratified most of the regional and international instruments relating to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

Generally, the Ivorian media landscape is diversified; the media and civil society organisations are involved in the drafting of documents regulating the media. However, currently most of the media houses are concentrated in the urban areas with no effort of being spread to the rural areas. Press benefits from civil society’s support but there are still many challenges to overcome in order to develop a real synergy between the two parties. The printing and broadcasting media are being dominated by the government as most of the media houses are owned or funded by politicians and this had led to excessively self-censorship, whilst radio licence fees are made extremely higher. Even so, Ivorian media industry promote equal employment opportunity for various social groups, but then due to challenging working hours woman are few in numbers.