How the Mass Media is Helping to Shape business Policy in Nigeria

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and has the potential to be one of the prime drivers of development on the continent. Nevertheless, the country's development is constrained by the weak environment for broad-based economic growth. Achieving sustainable long-term change requires a significant strengthening of policy formulation and implementation processes. At its core, this involves the supply of, and demand for, improvements in the business environment.

Mass media has the potential to support and inform advocates for business environment reform, such as business member organisations. It can also directly influence policy makers and regulators. An increasing variety of media and the growth of privately-owned media houses have significantly enhanced this potential over the past 10 years. However, this potential has not been fully realised.

The Nigerian media focuses little on business issues and the coverage that does exist is often dominated by large and international business issues. The real issues that impact Nigeria's millions of micro businesses and smallholder farmers are often neglected. The media can also be one-sided, representing only the views of government, or the elite. The result is that the poor are denied an effective voice in the policy process.

Most business development programmes tend to view the media as a tool for delivering specific messages, rather than as a principal actor in policy and regulatory reform. Business advocates are typically supported to 'use' the media, often in the form of financial support to buy media space for advocacy campaigns. In addition, donor programmes often produce their own media content directly and pay for its distribution on air and in print.

Enable has taken a radically innovative approach, recognising the media as a key driver of change. It is working to reinforce the incentives and improve the skills around small business and agricultural reporting. This involves developing the media as a major actor in the business environment policy process and working to increase the quality and quantity of sustainable, commercially viable coverage of small business and agricultural issues.

The premise for sustainability is that media coverage focused on the real issues that impact how the majority of Nigerians make their living (and which does this in a dynamic and relevant way) will gain significant audience. These popular media products will then attract advertisers and sponsorship.

Since 2008, Enable has worked with media houses to prove this principle and to increase the quality and quantity of small business and agriculture reporting. Enable worked initially with 11 media houses. From these, four emerged as 'star partners' from which greater impact and replication could be leveraged – The Daily Trust, the second largest circulating newspaper in Nigeria; Freedom Radio in Kano and Wazobia FM in Lagos, the first and second most popular radio stations; and LTV, the main state TV broadcaster in Lagos.

Products emerging from these partnerships have proven the popularity and profitability of investigative, issue-based small business content. This has resulted in replication of the concept, both within the partner media houses themselves, and by their competitors.

Furthermore, star partners are devoting considerable resources to sustaining and expanding their small business and agriculture coverage (without any direct financial inducements from Enable).

The new and improved media products launched by Enable partners (and their imitators) have investigated a wide number of advocacy issues, including:

• The Daily Trust running an ongoing series of penetrating reports on the reality of government subsidy and distribution of fertiliser.

• Exploring issues facing market traders, including highlighting the cost to traders of Lagos state government's unannounced and forced temporary closure of the huge Mile 12 market in Lagos.

• Supporting the advocacy of Okada drivers (motorcycle taxi drivers) in their drive to reduce the impact on their business of new Lagos traffic laws.
Enable's impact on the mass media has contributed to business environment policy in many ways:

• New policy of fertiliser distribution – so far improving access to fertiliser for over 600,000 smallholder farmers.

• Changes in CBN's cashless economy policy, sparing many thousands of small businesses from charges on cash withdrawals and deposits.

• Ongoing refinement of the Lagos traffic law - likely to save the livelihoods of most of the 100,000 Okada drivers in Lagos, and preserving affordable transportation options for poor Lagosians.

• Directly supporting small traders to expose multiple and illegal taxation – prompting a government review of multiple tax in Kano state, potentially impacting significantly on the 870,000 micro-businesses in Kano state.
Enable's focus on sustainability ensures that these are not one-off advocacy activities. They form the ongoing activities of a media industry now playing a more effective, sustainable role in policy and advocacy processes.

- The Guardian