Don’t overlook South Sudan as a broadcast market. Mention the world’s newest country and most people picture famine appeals, refugee camps and civil war. But that isn’t South Sudan today, as it approaches it’s 15-year anniversary this July. Since independence (9 July 2011), it has built two regulators, passed three media laws, licensed a national broadcaster, and put a working network of FM radio on air across all ten states.
The framework
South Sudan didn’t waste time on the legal side. The Media Authority Act, the Broadcasting Corporation Act and the Right of Access to Information Act were all on the books by 2014, within three years of independence. The South Sudan Media Authority (SSMA) followed in 2016 as the independent regulator for content and licensing. Spectrum and technical licensing sit with the National Communication Authority (NCA). Two regulators, the same split you’ll find in Kenya or Uganda.
The licensing covers both TV and radio under the usual three headings (public, commercial, community), and the Act also gives the SSMA responsibility for online media. The digital side of the framework is still developing, but the regulator is actively building capacity, including a journalist code of conduct launched with UNESCO support.
External recognition is following. In Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 World Press Freedom Index, South Sudan climbed 27 places, from 136 to 109, the largest positive shift of any country that year. For the first time, it ranks ahead of both Kenya and Uganda within the East African Community. So the country most outsiders still file under “too risky” is, on the international metrics that matter, now a better place to operate than several of the markets they take for granted.
Who’s on air
Television matters in Juba, the capital. Radio matters everywhere else. The most-cited nationally representative studies, Internews’ 2013 and 2015 audience surveys, put radio as the most widely accessed and most trusted medium in the country, and that is where the real broadcast sector lives.
Three stations do most of the heavy lifting. Radio Miraya, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) station, has the widest geographic footprint of any FM broadcaster, transmitting from Juba on 101 FM through 26 satellite-linked relays. Eye Radio is the leading independent voice, broadcasting in English, Arabic and a string of local languages. The Catholic Radio Network, anchored by Radio Bakhita 91 FM in Juba, covers remote and conflict-affected areas. The state broadcaster, the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC), runs the national service plus FM stations in nine of the ten state capitals.
Television is a much smaller story. SSBC TV broadcasts around 15 hours a day from Juba in English and Arabic, and is also on satellite. Pay TV serves the wealthier urban audience, with both DStv (MultiChoice) and StarTimes operating locally. MultiChoice is now owned by French group Canal+ following its 2025 takeover.
Where the commercial opportunities are
The ad-funded model that pays the bills in Nairobi doesn’t pay them in Juba, not yet. The opportunities are different, but they are there.
Three look interesting. Donor and development-funded broadcasting is where Miraya, Eye Radio and the Catholic Radio Network already earn most of their keep, and the volume of work is not shrinking. Humanitarian agencies, health programmes, agricultural extension and civic education all need to reach audiences in languages and locations no commercial channel will serve. Diaspora and mobile-first models are a more realistic commercial proposition than a new linear TV channel, given South Sudan’s large overseas community and the youth-led growth in mobile internet. And advisory work for the regulators themselves, the SSMA is building capacity, the digital side of its framework is still developing, and the NCA needs to plan spectrum for whatever the next ten years look like.
Jukwa’s view
Two regulators. Three media laws. A functioning national broadcaster. A radio sector with real reach in every state. That’s more institutional groundwork than plenty of older African broadcast markets can show for themselves.