His Highness the Aga Khan. (Photo: Courtesy)
The biggest and most successful media house in East and Central Africa was the brainchild of a university student barely out of his teenage. His Highness the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, who founded in 1959, what later became the Nation Media Group, was then a 20-year-old student at the prestigious Harvard University.
The 88-year-old Aga Khan, who died in Lisbon – the seat of the Ismaili Imamat – on Tuesday (February 4, 2025), and was buried on Sunday, February 9 in the Egyptian city of Aswan, later became the iconic patron, major promoter and key developer of journalism in East Africa.
Before he started the media company, Prince Karim Aga IV had just been crowned the 49th hereditary leader of the Ismail Muslims at a ceremony in Dar es Salaam, succeeding his grandfather.
His British aide, Michael Curtis, was assigned to move to Nairobi and establish a new media house to champion the Africans’ independence struggle. The Aga Khan bought a Kiswahili weekly, Taifa, from a former colonial administrator, Charles Hayes, in 1959.
In just about a year, the Sunday Nation was born and steadily took off and the Daily Nation followed a little later. The three newspapers would from the beginning articulate the interests of the African people.
Curtis hired editors and reporters from the famous Fleet Street in the United Kingdom to work on the two English language newspapers in Nairobi.
The Aga Khan’s new media house began to give tough competition to the Standard, which had been set up as a white settlers’ mouthpiece in 1902. While the Standard allocated copious amounts of space to cover horse racing and dog shows, and other “mzungu” forms of trivial entertainment, the Nation gave a vital forum to freedom fighters and emerging African leaders such as Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and trade unionist Thomas Joseph Mboya to articulate their issues highlighting the plight of the majority Africans in the British colony.
The paper covered the activities and concerns of ordinary Africans. Africans had been hired as translators on Taifa and stayed on while more were recruited.
The English language papers under the Aga Khan stable were dominated by the white journalists brought in from Britain, but Africans also began to feature and gain prominence in this industry in which they had been sidelined.
At only 25, Hillary Ng’weno, who like the Aga Khan, was also a graduate of Harvard University, where he had studied physics, became the first African Editor-in-Chief of the Nation Newspapers. He served for just over a year before opting to start his own media ventures. He later founded the Weekly Review magazine which mainly covered politics but also gave room to softer issues.
By 1975, the Nation Newspapers Limited, now a vibrant business and professional entity, had overtaken the Standard in circulation, becoming the most solid media house in East and Central Africa.
It was then based at Nation House on today’s Tom Mboya Street in Nairobi’s central business district, which was formerly a bakery.
As it continued to grow, the media house became so successful as an enterprise that it later introduced its broadcast section, comprising radio and TV stations. It thus became the Nation Media Group (NMG) and kept the Aga Khan’s flag as a business leader and entrepreneur flying, with an impressive performance on the then Nairobi Stock Exchange.
The NMG then extended its tentacles to Dar es Salaam 20 years ago, setting up Mwananchi Communications Ltd at Tabata on the Mandela Expressway. This grew quickly to become Tanzania’s biggest media house, publishing the popular, Mwananchi, the Kiswahili paper with the highest circulation in the neighbouring and fellow East African Community member state. Its sister English language paper, the Citizen, would also become an influential publication, overshadowing the Daily News, which had been on the market longer.
To further solidify its presence in East Africa, NMG also bought the Monitor, the Ugandan newspapers, which had been set up by journalists as an independent media house.
Based at Namuwongo on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Kampala, Monitor Publications became a solid and profitable media house in Uganda.
To help realise his dream of a regional media presence to forge unity, the Aga Khan established The EastAfrican, a weekly newspaper born out of his long-held vision to create a cross-border publication serving Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The spiritual leader was closely involved in the paper’s design and development, to the quality of its content.
To finally crown his several decades of commitment to building East Africa’s vibrant and valuable media space, the Aga Khan set up a media university in Nairobi. The establishment of the Aga Khan Graduate School of Media and Communications is a legacy the Aga Khan has left to continue his support to nurture this key resource in media.
This dream project was driven by the desire for the development of human expertise and knowledge to help in shaping public awareness and providing information that sharpens attitudes and public opinion. As a watchdog, the media’s key role is to enhance and safeguard transparency of democratic processes.
The Aga Khan always believed in having truly free media and throughout the years resisted attempts by the political class to hijack the gathering and processing of information as he cherished media independence, transparency and accountability.
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