In a speech outlining his vision for Nation Media Group, Tanzanian billionaire Rostam Azizi, who has just acquired a controlling stake in the Nairobi-based company, said something many journalists would love to hear.
“We are not going to compromise on the independence of our media company because of advertising,” he said on March 11 at Serena Hotel in Nairobi.
The comment was a reply to a question from a reporter who wanted to know—given NMG’s profitability problems—whether the company would put its commercial interests before editorial independence.
Mr Azizi’s reply was emphatic. Earlier in the speech, before the question-and-answer session, he had been categorical about NMG’s readiness to remain independent.
The company owns newspapers, radio and TV stations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Its regional newspaper, the EastAfrican, also publishes a weekly insert about Rwanda called Rwanda Today.
While journalists were excited about Mr Azizi’s remarks and reported them with alacrity, the truth remains that businessmen buying media companies rarely say directly that they will interfere with editorial independence.
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Mr Azizi, like any businessman, is keen to make money. It is his top priority. Yet NMG is not making money, and in Uganda—worryingly for him—it is on a collision course with the government. NMG outlets, such as Daily Monitor and NTV, are blacklisted by the government, which has barred them from covering Parliament and events organised by President Museveni due to their perceived critical stance.
Mr Azizi, 65, knows the government is the biggest advertiser in Uganda, and if he gets a chance to meet Mr Museveni, he will try to explore ways of doing business in a less confrontational way. If Mr Museveni says that his government has no problem working with NMG as long as it tones down its critical coverage, Mr Azizi will, in all likelihood, advise senior executives in Kampala to ensure the Daily Monitor and NTV do exactly what the president wants.
From a business perspective, it would be a win-win situation. For NMG Uganda, it is pointless to run businesses that are not making money yet at the end of every month they have a wage bill and taxes to pay besides other recurrent expenditures.
We are not going to compromise on the independence of our media company because of advertising—Rostam Azizi
Some may dismiss this scenario as speculation. But NMG has a history of interfering with editorial independence. It has not always been as fiercely independent as it claims. In March 2018, eight NMG columnists resigned, citing editorial interference.
“We refuse to be silenced,” the eight columnists proclaimed in a joint statement, explaining their decision to stop writing. NMG denied interference and said: “We have honoured our obligation to respect their views and did not tamper with their positions except to correct basic errors.”
Weeks after the columnists’ resignation, NMG refused to renew the contract of a cartoonist whose work often targeted former President Uhuru Kenyatta. The cartoonist, Godfrey Mwampembwa, known by the pen name Gado, had worked for the company for 20 years.
The political environment in the countries where NMG is operating may make it hard for the company to let its news outlets report independently. Tanzania, the country Mr Azizi calls home, held a bitterly disputed election last October in whose aftermath hundreds of opposition supporters were reportedly killed in protests over the election results.
In Uganda, opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, has been in hiding for more than a month after denouncing the January 15 presidential election results, which he called “fake”.
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Rwanda is deeply involved in the Democratic Republic of Congo conflict. If its journalists tried fearless reporting, Mr Kagame—who is intolerant of criticism—would not think twice about asking NMG to pack its bags.
Kenya was rocked by deadly protests in 2024 over economic hardships that Kenyans blame on their political leaders. Reporters Without Borders says William Ruto’s election as president in August 2022 marked the start of a difficult period for the media, with the heads of major press groups, including NMG, being fired as a result of political pressure.
At the March 11 event, reporters raised the issue of Mr Ruto being Mr Azizi’s friend, but the businessman played it down. He said he has many politician friends and that even the late Raila Odinga, who was Mr Ruto’s key opponent, was his friend and that he attended the wedding of his daughter in Tanzania.
Mr Azizi may well keep his promise, but it is too soon to tell how things will pan out. If he fails, he will not be the first. His US counterpart, Jeff Bezos, promised “a new golden era for the Washington Post” when he bought the paper in 2013. More than a decade later, the debate about editorial independence at the paper has hardly disappeared.
CORRECTION | Updated March 14, 2026, 09:35: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Mr Azizi addressed journalists at Nation Centre. The correct venue was Serena Hotel.
DISCLOSURE: The author writes a column for NMG’s Weekend Monitor in Kampala as an independent contractor.
🔴 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.
