Cameroon’s Ministry of Communication and the country’s television distributors have signed an agreement requiring operators to carry public broadcaster CRTV and its news channel, CRTV News, permanently and free of charge. The protocol was signed in Yaoundé on 4 November and requires the channels to remain accessible even to households whose pay-TV subscriptions have expired.
The agreement involves Canal+ Cameroun, StarTimes Cameroun, SWECOM, Creolink Communications and TVCAM. The distributors have a maximum of two months from the date of signature to implement the requirement, placing the deadline in early January 2027. A monitoring committee is also expected to be established to oversee compliance.
The signature formalises an initiative previously reported by the ministry in late October, when it indicated that it was preparing a protocol with television distributors. The latest development establishes the implementation deadline and provides for a monitoring mechanism.
The measure is being framed around the must-carry principle under Cameroon’s 2015 law governing audiovisual activity. However, available reporting does not establish that the protocol itself explicitly cites the legislation. The agreement’s full text has also not been published. Local outlet 237online has highlighted that the memorandum of understanding does not itself constitute legislation, making the precise terms and enforcement arrangements important to understanding its legal effect.
Cameroon Tribune has linked the initiative to the electoral calendar and the need to maintain continuity of public-service information. By requiring free access to CRTV and CRTV News beyond the period of an active subscription, the government is seeking to ensure that households do not lose access to the public broadcaster through changes in their pay-TV status.
The development also follows a similar intervention in Burkina Faso, where the regulator secured the inclusion of public broadcaster RTB’s channels on the Canal+ bouquet in clear from 27 August. That outcome followed financial penalties against Canal+ International: CFA50 million in June and CFA200 million in July.
The two cases illustrate different regulatory approaches to must-carry obligations in Francophone West and Central Africa. Burkina Faso relied on sanctions before securing carriage, while Cameroon has used a signed protocol with a defined implementation period and monitoring committee. Whether the Cameroonian arrangement achieves effective compliance will become clearer as the early-January deadline approaches.
The agreement also comes amid a separate dispute involving Canal+ and Cameroon’s audiovisual regulator, the Conseil National de la Communication (CNC). The CNC’s 6 October order requiring Canal+ to remove Vision 4 from its bouquet remains unresolved, placing the distributor under two distinct forms of regulatory pressure: a new obligation to carry public channels and an outstanding instruction concerning a private broadcaster.
For pay-TV operators, the key issue is now implementation: whether CRTV and CRTV News are made consistently available across the named bouquets, including to non-paying households, and how the monitoring committee will address any failure to comply.
