Kenya: Mogul Who Would Have Changed Nation’s Media

Opinion: Murithi Mutiga

Nairobi — A year after launching the Nation in 1959, His Highness the Aga Khan was finding the new venture a little more financially demanding than he had imagined it would be.

The young paper, pitched at the emerging audience of Africans entering the job market, was yet to attract a readership that could help it settle the bills.

The demands for more money from the editors in Nairobi were unremitting and self-sufficiency was perhaps a decade or more away.

The young proprietor needed an investor to share the financial burden. The Aga Khan also felt, Nation veteran Gerry Loughran writes in his history of the paper, that a new investor would add gravitas to the paper especially if he came from an established global media house.

Not too many investors in establishments such as the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post and the Observer were interested.

But one thrusting, ambitious 29-year-old media baron in the making was enthusiastic.

via allAfrica.com: Kenya: Mogul Who Would Have Changed Nation’s Media.