Over the border in neighbouring Kenya, a similar situation was playing out.
Between 1 June and 12 July, many Kenyans, especially young people, took to the streets to protest against an IMF-backed proposal to hike taxes and worsen the cost of living in the country. The protests were exhaustively covered by Africa Uncensored, a Kenyan investigative journalism outlet that shared shocking videos of police brutality as it happened. Officers allegedly killed at least 60 protesters and injured hundreds. Many people remain missing.
Africa Uncensored is a grantee of the Ford Foundation, a US philanthropic organisation. (openDemocracy has also previously received grants from the Ford Foundation.) On 15 July, Kenyan President William Ruto accusedthe Ford Foundation of "sponsoring violence" in Kenya.
Three days later, the principal secretary at Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abraham Korir Sing'Oei, wrote to the president of the Ford Foundation to accuse Africa Uncensored and other Kenyan recipients of the foundation's grants of being part of "anarchic mobilisations that have sought to upend the peace and security of the state".
Korir Sing'Oei demanded the Ford Foundation provide the government with extensive details about the grantees – including full budgets, the activities carried out, their beneficiaries, and a timeline for funds to be dispersed – and "any sanctions you will impose for breaches of the law or your internal policies".
In both countries, foreign funding is not exclusive to the media – even their governments receive money from overseas. More than half of Uganda's 2024/2025 budget is funded by external borrowing and aid from entities such as the World Bank, the European Union and the US, as is more than 34% of Kenya's 2024/2025 budget.
openDemocracy sat down with Ugandan journalist Agather Atuhaire, the team leader at Agora Center for Research, and John-Allan Namu, a co-founder of Kenya's Africa Uncensored, to discuss the impact the accusations have had on their staff, who have faced threats of espionage charges and believe they are being physically and digitally monitored. A death threat has also been made against the founder of ACR.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
openDemocracy: What do you think is the rationale and aim behind the 'foreign agent' label directed against media outlets like Africa Uncensored and Agora Center for Research?
Atuhaire: We started dealing with the foreign agent label even before we ever actually received funding from USAID. Back then, critics and government supporters claimed that we were motivated by visas and prospective funding for the organisation – as if one can't simply want better for their country.
Namu: I think the foreign agent label is lazy. But at the same time, it's meant to tap into a very deep-seated hatred for any sort of foreign influence, control or impact on local affairs. This goes back to colonialism, especially with Kenya having had such a traumatic colonial period and taking such pride in the freedom struggle. Anybody who then challenges the label can be seen as allying themselves with foreign interests.
This tactic has previously worked well. In the first years of the Uhuru Kenyatta regime [2013-2022], when the International Criminal Court (ICC) was investigating the 2007-08 election violence, there was this propaganda labelling any human rights organisation that was working on ICC issues as being "evil society" and being in league with foreigners who wanted to destroy our democracy. And it worked very well. So that's the sentiment that the government was trying to tap into – only this time, it didn't realise just how much damage it had done to its own reputation.
What has been the immediate impact of accusations and foreign agent labels on your reporting?
Atuhaire: The main objective of these labels is to derail, destroy, divert. I think they achieved a bit of that objective because they exhaust you with having to put out all these fires. Even if you decide not to put them out, it's still going to take its toll on you and affect your productivity. Also, your audience gets diverted away from the critical issues that those in power are uncomfortable with.
Namu: Initially, there was quite a bit of chatter: back channel information about what the government intends to do. At one point, the Kenyan Department of Criminal Investigations (DCI) asked us to present certain information that they weren't clear about, and we asked them to be specific. They said they'd send us a letter but that coincided with the Ford Foundation's response to the Kenya government, saying its "grantmaking is transparent and readily available" and directing the government to its website. Then the DCI backed off and they haven't contacted us since, and some of the negative rhetoric around our work just evaporated.
How has the safety of journalists and human rights defenders been affected by the government framing of your media platforms as foreign interests seeking to overthrow your government?
Atuhaire: Many people at Agora feel threatened. If my life is threatened, every other staff member's life is threatened. Recently, when the anti-corruption youth protests in Uganda were about to start, three colleagues had to leave home because one realised that they were being trailed. We knew that all eyes were on us to see our role in this protest. Many journalists in this country don't feel safe.
Namu: Fortunately, there have been no physical threats on my life, other staff members, or my family. So far, [the threats have] been through surveillance on our phones. [It has not yet been confirmed who was behind this surveillance.] There was an attempt early in the year to follow one of our team members who was involved in an investigation we were doing, but beyond that, nothing else.
Namu: This was pure propaganda deployed to solve a short-term problem. As you pointed out, there are laws that the government has attempted to change, [such as the proposed 2024 Assembly and Demonstration bill] – laws that seek to dictate who can apply to protest and how protests should happen, as well as the law around fundraising. This is an attempt at solving a short-term problem but unfortunately, those kinds of changes are more set in stone and will have much wider impacts and unintended consequences.
How do you navigate issues of editorial independence while also pleasing and satisfying your funders? What are the markers of success that may be different from those of your funders but might make you more accountable to your audience?
Atuhaire: These would be valid concerns if I were dealing with issues the funders had a direct interest in. For example, if my focus was on the war between Russia and Ukraine maybe they would try to influence how I go about that. I do not see an intersection between the work I pursue here and the interests of our funders. But if the interests are there, it means our interests are aligning.
The markers of success and objectives for Agora include raising Ugandans' consciousness and engagement, bringing to light human rights violations and documenting them, and showing Ugandans what's happening with the hope that they will join us in demanding observance of human rights and accountability.
When it comes to accountability, funders have a very big interest in us demanding for it because some of that [public] money is theirs. But it doesn't affect the funders' interests in a way that they want to influence what we do.
Namu: Editorial independence for us at Africa Uncensored begins by partnering with people who don't set editorial objectives for us. All of the work we do has no editorial objective tied to it in terms of funding. We are the ones who propose what work we want to do. So, that's not really a problem for us at the moment and hasn't been in the past – I'm hoping it won't become one in the future.
Success means different things for the newsroom generally, but one of the metrics we use to measure it is online engagement with the work that we do. So, for instance, during the Finance Bill protests, quite a bit of our work around debt that we had done the year before was being used by citizens to educate themselves on what position we are in as a country.
Accountability to our audience lies in doing what we promised: producing certain kinds of work and sticking to our editorial policy, which was set with the public in mind in terms of abuse of public trust. When we make mistakes – and there's been one or two occasions when this has happened – we've had to come out and communicate clearly. As a leader of the organisation, it's painful, it's embarrassing, but it's necessary. Given the age we are in, it's no longer an exception. It's the rule. You have to be accountable.
Does your government's accusation affect the trust of your audience in your respective countries, especially as anti-media sentiments spread across the world?
Atuhaire: The effect it has had on the audience is hard to tell, but the accusations can plant that seed of doubt. There's always going to be some suspecting section of the public that will believe these falsehoods and the disinformation. People who don't know you personally might believe them too, and that makes them start to question your intention or if you have the moral authority to demand accountability or question excesses, maybe. But I do not think it's a significant number of people. I think the majority see it for what it is, which is really to divert and discredit.
Namu: These foreign agent labels obviously have a negative impact and could affect our relationship with our audience in future. But I also think there is one other very strong mitigating factor: the fact that our audience and the public in general do not trust what has been coming out of the regime. They were already taking lots of the stuff that the regime was saying with a pinch of salt. Unfortunately, the impact of years of misinformation has led to an erosion of trust in government, where its word is no longer held with the kind of seriousness that it ought to be for a government.
Is there a generational or class difference in who believes the government on this?
Atuhaire: In terms of what section of society believes the government's accusations, it spans across all groups depending really on their level of analysis and understanding of the issues. We continue to focus on the work but I've seen that some social media users will troll you, saying, "you have come back after finishing the money from imperialists" or something of the sort. But it's also a money-making venture for those who make a living as government bots and regime propagandists.
Namu: A good chunk of the population is a lot more savvy than the government gives them credit for.
In August 2024, the Ugandan government, in collaboration with the Kenyan police, arrested 36 members of the Ugandan opposition party Forum for Democratic Change on suspicion of terrorism-related offences. Since we are seeing collaboration between these two governments, do you think there is a need for media across the two countries to do the same? What would that sort of collaboration look like, and what could it achieve?
Namu: Definitely. For both practical journalistic reasons as well as for solidarity, it's important that organisations in Kenya and Uganda and in the region band together. The practical reasons are that this could only improve the work that we do – increasing the amount of impact we can have and stopping journalists from being too insular and just focusing on internal affairs. Rather, it would allow us to step back and focus on the more systemic things that affect our region. There's also opportunities to build one another's business revenue by exchanges and work.
Finally, the question of solidarity is an important one. Collaboration would mean we would stand in solidarity with one another whenever these kinds of attacks take place; we would act as places of sanctuary and refuge for one another. I am a big believer in collaborative journalism as a way forward for us.
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