Media Minister Lambert Mende (above) has given firms 30 days to get into line. Photo Credit: AFP
Foreign media organizations are reeling under new media rules announced by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The new rules were signed by the minister for media on November 12, 2016 and will affect organizations like Radio France International (RFI), Voice of America (VOA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Per the new laws foreign companies can only operate in DR Congo provided there are higher stakes in their operations particularly in the Congolese capital.TV and Radio outlets have 30 days to comply.
Meanwhile the United Nations has said it is very concerned about the new decree. A senior UN representative, Alexis Lamek is reported by the AFP to have said that “We raised our concerns about the political process under way and discussed with Congolese authorities confidence-building measures which seem necessary to us at this time”.
He made this known after visiting Kinshasa on Saturday.
The new decree “in no way goes in the direction of the confidence-building measures we are talking about,” Lamek, France’s deputy representative at UN headquarters in New York, said in Beni, in the east of the country.
The signal of RFI, one of the most popular stations in the DRC, has been blocked at the beginning of this month after.
The DRC’s is grappling with a current political crisis after a presidential election, due before the end of the year was postponed until April 2018.
Source: Africafeeds.com
