Tanzania: the Problems of Mass Media Development
Abstract
Tanzania: the Problems of Mass Media Development SAGE Publications, Inc.1968DOI: 10.1177/001654926801400204 Graham L.Mytton BY The modern mass media to-day in East Africa play a growing role in the development of the three nations. From the beginning however, their patterns of growth have reflected closely their different political histories, the nature and distribution of their populations, their languages, and their communications networks. And this has resulted in striking contrasts between the mass media of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. While this article is primarily concerned with a consideration of the development of the media in Tanzania, the three countries have been linked closely in many ways, and some comparison is instructive. Kenya with its substantial and permanent European settler community was the first to have a daily paper, when the East ,African 5'tandard changed from a weekly in 19 1 o. Kenya was also the first country, indeed the first British colony in Africa, to have its own radio station, in 1927. Both were started to cater for the settler community. The African population were largely illiterate and there was very little produced in vernacular languages either by the missions or by Africans before the Second World War. This makes