Ghana / Africa

Hopes were high in July that Ivory Coast’s political crisis would end after a judge in the capital, Abidjan, confirmed that former prime minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara, the leader of the opposition Rally for Republicans (RDR), is an Ivory Coast citizen.

Your Excellency: CPJ is alarmed that your government has imposed controls on reporting about recent interclan clashes in the northern Dagbon area of Ghana.

Silence reigned supreme in Eritrea, where the entire independent press was under a government ban and 11 journalists languished in jail at year’s end. Clamorous, deadly power struggles raged in Zimbabwe over land and access to information, and in Burundi over ethnicity and control of state resources. South Africa, Senegal, and Benin remained relatively liberal…

After John Agyekum Kufuor was sworn in as Ghana’s new president in January, he promised to make defamation a civil and not a criminal offense. On July 27, Ghana’s parliament unanimously repealed the country’s criminal libel and sedition laws, including clauses governing sedition and defamation of the president. Also scrapped were laws granting the president…

ON SEPTEMBER 27, GHANA’S VIBRANT INDEPENDENT MEDIA hosted Africa’s first-ever live presidential debate in advance of the December 7 national elections. The debates included six out of seven candidates for the presidency, reached an audience of several million Ghanaian voters, and helped boost the international popularity of outgoing president Jerry Rawlings, who stepped aside peacefully…

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is appalled at the October 2 attack on the Accra offices of The Crusading Guide, a private bi-weekly newspaper which has taken a critical stand toward your government.

Local leaders join global condemnation of Liberia for jailing Channel Four team

By Claudia McElroyAll over Africa, conflict continued to be the single biggest threat to journalists and to press freedom itself. Both civil and cross-border wars were effectively used as an excuse by governments (and rebel forces) to harass, intimidate, and censor the press–often in the name of “national security”–and in some cases to kill journalists…

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wishes to protest in the strongest terms the ongoing harassment of Kabral Blay-Amihere, president of the West African Journalists’ Association and editor of The Independent newspaper.

Dangerous Assignments