There is a bitter irony at the centre of events in Victoria, Seychelles.
In the very months that Seychelles’ National Assembly debated and ultimately approved a bill promising the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation “greater independence”, the corporation’s chief executive says he endured the worst threats, insults, and pressure of his nearly nine years in post during the past several months of the new administration.
So, when the head of a national broadcaster describes the board, the management and his staff as having been dragged through the mud during the passage of a law ostensibly written to protect them, the industry across our Continent should pay attention.
To be fair, the SBC Bill 2026 contains provisions that any serious public broadcaster would welcome. The SBC Board itself acknowledged as much. Modernisation of the 2011 legislative framework is not in dispute. The question is whether this bill delivers independence, or merely the language of it.
However, on the two structural tests that matter most for any public broadcaster- who appoints the board, and who controls the money- the bill gives uncomfortable answers.
It removes the Constitutional Appointments Authority from the appointment process, replacing it with a Select Committee whose members are chosen by the President, with provision for direct presidential appointment should that process stall.
It offers no guarantee that the corporation will actually manage funds approved by the National Assembly. And it strips out the explicit reference to SBC’s constitutional mandate.
Whatever the drafters’ intentions, the architecture points towards the executive, not away from it.
None of this is unique to the Seychelles, and this is precisely the point of this BMA editorial.
Across our Continent, public-owned broadcasters have repeatedly watched governance “reforms” become vehicles for reasserting political control: boards reshaped, funding leveraged, mandates quietly rewritten.
What is happening and will happen in the Seychelles – which has long counted among the Continent’s stronger performers on press freedom – will now offer a mirror in which every African administration contemplating broadcasting legislation should examine itself.
An independent public-oriented broadcaster will, if it is doing its job, discomfort every government in turn. And that is not a flaw to be legislated away. It is actually the institution’s entire purpose.
Now, the remedy is neither complicated nor radical. The Board of the SBC has asked for independent, transparent and merit-based appointments; a statutory guarantee that Assembly-approved funds are transferred to the corporation; restoration of operational autonomy; and reinstatement of the constitutional mandate.
The government of Seychelles can still demonstrate that its stated intentions are genuine, not through the language of the bill, but through the safeguards it is willing to write into it.
A public broadcaster belongs to the people it serves.
The SBC Bill 2026 will be judged, in Seychelles and across Africa, by whether it honours that principle or hollows it out.
— BMA Editorial View
