Colonial legacies can take many insidious forms and metastasize into new ones. RT is uniquely familiar with the risks of such long-term foreign dominance – in our case, in the media space – and seeks to tackle them with new, Africa-focused content and a bold cross-continental ad campaign.
“Neo-colonialism is the worst form of imperialism”
“The anti-colonial struggle is essentially a struggle for human dignity”
“Independence and sovereignty cannot be shared”
“African resources should belong to Africa”
These phrases grace billboards across Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Years ago they were uttered by famed African leaders: Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Uganda’s Milton Obote and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Yet their words are still remembered and are resonant more than ever today – throughout the African continent and beyond.
Pervasive western mainstream media dominance is something that RT has had to battle for nearly two decades, essentially since the day of its inception – and Russia, as a whole, for much longer. For many decades, the global media landscape has been controlled by an oligopoly of news outlets, be it in print, radio or on TV, all protecting their countries’ or alliance’s interests, geopolitical and economic.
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