Last week, journalist Alan Kasujja, who joined the BBC in 2012 from Uganda’s Capital FM, announced he was leaving the BBC after 13 years as a presenter.
The news was not entirely surprising given the ongoing changes at the corporation, which is renewing its editorial vision.
Mr Kasujja co-presented the breakfast show Newsday, which replaced Network Africa, alongside Lawrence Pollard, Nkemi Ifejika and Bola Mosuro.
At the time of his departure, he was the host of the Africa Daily podcast. But the BBC announced this past March that the podcast had come to an end. It asked listeners to tune in to Focus on Africa “for all the big stories and for the African perspective on major global news.”
Mr Kasujja is three years shy of 50, and it is not clear whether he left voluntarily or was forced out—but many BBC journalists who are over 50 have been made redundant in the ongoing editorial reset.
In 2023, the corporation overhauled Focus on Africa, pushing out the voices that defined its radio heyday in the 1990s and 2000s, leaving only an echo of that era.
When the editorial reset started, Mehvish Hussain, Executive Editor, BBC News, said: “The way audiences are seeking news is evolving and so are we.”
This evolution is leaving real victims in its wake. And it is not only older African journalists. Stephen Sackur, one of the BBC’s best-known presenters, announced in October 2024 that HARDtalk, the show he hosted, would be axed.
Take me off HARDtalk? I totally get it. Every old horse at some point has to be taken off to the glue factory. But don’t kill off the programme—Stephen Sackur
Many read the news in disbelief but thought the BBC would at least keep Mr Sackur, 61, around given his vast journalism experience. After all, he had been a correspondent for many years before he took over from Tim Sebastian, who was the first host of HARDtalk.
Unfortunately for Mr Sackur, HARDtalk disappeared with him. According to the Guardian, he had been asked to take voluntary redundancy, but he said there was nothing voluntary about it.
“Take me off HARDtalk? I totally get it. Every old horse at some point has to be taken off to the glue factory. But don’t kill off the programme,” he said, according to the Guardian.
Simon Hattenstone, who interviewed Sackur twice this year, wrote that their first conversation was about efforts to save the show. But weeks later, when they met again in March, Mr Sackur had just received his redundancy letter and three months’ notice.
Mr Sackur said HARDtalk represented around 5% of the total sum of money—£24m—BBC News declared it was trying to save in cuts.
Did age lead to Mr Sackur’s departure? I contacted the BBC’s press office for comment but got no reply. However, the Sun reported in June that four senior BBC journalists aged over 50 had complained about ageism.
The paper said the four feared compulsory redundancy, following earlier ageism complaints brought by BBC presenters at an employment tribunal.
Siobhan Daniels worked for the BBC for 30 years and said, according to the Telegraph: “I was made to feel worthless at the BBC, all because of my age.”
She went on: “At 60, after five years of being undermined because of my age, deprived of opportunities and training and being made to feel like I was completely worthless, I was broken and couldn’t take it any longer.”
I was made to feel worthless at the BBC, all because of my age—Siobhan Daniels
To be fair, the BBC still employs over-50 journalists such as Jeremy Bowen, its international editor, and Lyse Doucet, presenter and chief international correspondent. Yet the editorial reset unmistakably prioritises younger faces.
Younger African anchors such as Catherine Byaruhanga, Nancy Kacungira and Waihiga Mwaura now front the BBC’s coverage, embodying the new, youthful look the corporation is chasing. But if experience is being traded for freshness, Mr Sackur’s fate is a reminder of what can be lost in the process.
One of Mr Sackur’s last memorable interviews was with Marty Baron, the former Washington Post editor. He pressed Mr Baron on whether old, top-down media—and by extension older, privileged men—had simply outlived their relevance. “I could have been talking to myself,” Mr Sackur admitted.
That irony now hangs over the BBC itself: in chasing youth, it risks silencing the very seasoned voices that once defined its authority.
🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Sunday Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.
Email: musaazinamiti@ojuganda.com
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