Southern Africa: The state of Media in Lesotho

press release

Lesotho is landlocked and completely encircled by South Africa, with approximately 2.14 million people of which 99.7 percent speak Sesotho, with English used as the business language. The kingdom is a fragile democracy--a hereditary constitutional monarchy having a king as head of state without executive or legislative powers. Executive power is vested in the cabinet headed by a prime minister. Predominantly mountainous with a literacy rate of 83 percent, the kingdom's population is concentrated wherever arable land is found, primarily in the lower veld, along rivers and the capital of Maseru.

The press's growth and size are inhibited by Lesotho's weakened infrastructure, dependence on South Africa (35 percent of male wage-earners work as miners), and a mostly rural population (agriculture caters for 57 percent of the domestic labor force, with 86 percent of the population as subsistence farmers) with a low per-capita income--factors relegating the purchase of newspapers, radios, television and the Internet as unaffordable luxuries. The HIV/AIDS prevalence of 23 percent threatens life expectancy, population size and socioeconomic productivity, including media patronage.

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