Kate Senye, the newly appointed Chief Executive of the Southern African Media Development Fund (SAMDEF) confesses that when she came to work here she knew nothing much about the media industry.
That was eight years ago, and in that period, she not only rose to head the institution that has become the lifeblood of many media houses in the region, but got to understand the intricacies of media business as well.
She can justifiably lay claim to have grown with the organisation because when she joined, SAMDEF was hardly a year in operation. In 2001, two years into her job as Investment Officer. The organization, led by the swashbuckling founding CEO, Methaetsile Leepile, underwent a major restructuring exercise.
The process made a number of employees uncomfortable and uncertain about their future.
They chose to leave because they did not see a future for themselves at the organisation.
Senye stayed.
“For me, it was different,” she explains the decision not to jump ship. “I had developed a passion for the industry, and I could see myself fitting very well within the future of SAMDEF.”
She has had to serve under another CEO, Charles Mundale, who retired at the end of March after five years at the helm.
By then it was time for the board to entrust her with stewardship.
It seems she was always destined for a development-oriented career.
She began her professional life as a development economist at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, before going on to study for a Masters degree.
While in the civil service, she was seconded to various ministries where she worked with their planning units and overlooked government development projects.
Those early experiences fueled her passion for development issues.
She has been in the thick of things from day one.
The independent media in the region has a history of financial instability due to various factors. The most important one is that many financiers view the media as a high-risk industry.
Financiers are, therefore, very reluctant to finance media-related projects.
The other factor has to do with the approach to business and worldview of the people who founded some of the early private media organisations, especially newspapers.
They were founded by journalists who had the right editorial outlook, but lacked financial and business management acumen. The brainchild of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), SAMDEF was founded to breathe life into the floundering media projects in the region – some tottering on the brink of collapse under the weight of uncontrollable overheads.
The early officers at SAMDEF were firefighters, crisscrossing the 11 SADC countries in which the fund operates to save the important alternative voices.
(SAMDEF offers financing to media entrepreneurs in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe).
Senye explains that one of the common features about such organizations was that they were family-run operations, or owned by entrepreneurs who were reluctant to bring in new shareholders and fresh minds.
One of the success stories that she has been closely associated with is Zambia’s widely respected newspaper, The Post.
She first came in contact with it when it was still a small newspaper, part of the emerging media in the industry parlance.
The readers who enjoyed the newspaper couldn’t imagine what went into putting out each edition. For instance, the printing press was operated by a motor vehicle engine, and that led to a lot of newsprint wastage. The press broke quite often, and management spent a lot of valuable time trying to make it work.
In 2003, SAMDEF approached its cooperating partners to finance a new press for The Post. The new press, coupled with restructuring business models that SAMDEF developed turned around the newspaper. The major force behind the organisation, Fred Mwembe, created space for young and brighter minds to carry forward the restructuring. New business opportunities were identified. The distribution department, for instance, was turned into a self-sustaining courier company – thus opening another revenue stream previously unimaginable.
There are many other such success stories in the region, such as the successful delivery and commissioning of a printing press for the publishers of Mmegi and Monitor. The press has changed the media landscape in Botswana in more ways than one. It allowed Mmegi to go daily, delivering Botswana’s first privately-owned daily newspaper. It also diluted the monopoly in the printing industry, and offered an alternative to the country’s robust independent press. Besides its titles, the Mmegi printing press prints The Sunday Standard, Botswana Guardian, Midweek Sun, and The Voice.
Elsewhere, such as Namibia and Mozambique, SAMDEF helped entrepreneurs to set up free-to-air television stations, which offer a vital alternative source of information and entertainment to the state-owned networks.
How did these successes come about?
It’s about management of costs and finding the right technology, Senye explains. It’s about developing workable business models that allow for best use of resources.
One of the major objectives of SAMDEF is to create appetite for other financial institutions to fund the media. The fund guaranteed the Tanzanian company Sahara Communications loan from a commercial bank.
The idea is to grow small media houses to a level where they can get funding from commercial banks. SAMDEF is a small fund. We have to fund media in over 10 countries, and we have limited funding, she says.
In a way, the big financial institutions are coming to the party. A number of financiers have shown preference to come in when the project has matured to somewhere between a medium and large enterprise.
She mentions some of her plans as retention of SAMDEF’s current funders – (OSISA and Free Voice), further growth into a fully-fledged revolving fund, and further improvement of operational efficiency and effectiveness.
She is actively looking at weaning SAMDEF away from donor funding. With a lot of funding coming into Africa for media development, Senye talks of accessing the money to further develop SAMDEF and make it attractive, as well as turning it into a centre of excellence for regional finance. Part of her dream, to see the SAMDEF model replicated in other regions, is close to fruition because there are plans to set up a similar organisation in West Africa.
The fund’s early strategy was to invest in media houses that provided a wider audience. That explains why much funding went into publishing outfits. The other explanation has to do with the regulatory framework within the region. Newspapers, unlike TV and radio, are not limited by legislation.
The picture in broadcasting is interesting. In Botswana, the regulatory authority has only recently issues nationwide licences to private radio stations. Tanzania is on the other side of the spectrum with a much more liberalized broadcasting market.
Swaziland and Zimbabwe are still to license private radio stations. In Zambia, private radio stations are limited to only certain provinces.
This is where Senye gives MISA a lot of credit.
MISA has worked hard to provide a conducive environment for media to grow. The risks that were embedded have been dealt with by advocacy issues covered by MISA, she says.
