Communication in Sierra Leone: An Analysis of Media and Mobile Audiences

"Sierra Leone has seen notable changes to the mobile and media landscape, but accurate, up-to-date, nationally representative data about how people use and access media and mobile phones has not been publicly available for some years."

This publication reports on the results of a national survey conducted by BBC Media Action in Sierra Leone to better understand the media and mobile audience landscape in the country. The report looks at the extent to which people are using emerging and traditional communication platforms, the ways in which different demographics use these communication platforms, and provides insights into information needs and audience profiles in Sierra Leone.

As stated in the report, “since the end of the war in 2002, the media and communication sector in Sierra Leone has significantly diversified and decentralised. This period has seen the growth of emerging communication platforms such as mobile phones and the internet, and a proliferation of radio and TV stations.” In order to obtain up-to-date, accurate information, BBC Media Action conducted a survey in late 2015. The survey used a nationally representative sample of 2,499 adults aged 15 and above, drawn from all 14 districts in Sierra Leone, with face-to-face interviews conducted in September and October 2015.

Based on the findings of the survey, the report makes the following conclusions:

• "Radio continues to be the most effective platform for reaching a wide audience  – with a greater level of access than either TV or the internet.
• The number of radio stations has increased, particularly the number of local stations. As a result, radio listenership has become much more fractured  – and no single station has the capability to reach a national audience on its own. Reaching a national audience by radio, therefore, requires working with a large number of stations.
• Gender, location, education and income level continue to be determinants of access to media in Sierra Leone, with urban, male, well-educated and better-off audiences able to access more media platforms and do so more frequently. Radio and mobile phones, however, are the two media where access is most even across demographic groups and are the platforms through which it is easiest to reach women and rural audiences. In contrast, newspapers and the internet remain primarily urban media and are more heavily accessed by men.
• There has been rapid growth in access to mobile phones in recent years, and they are now widespread across Sierra Leone. Mobile phones provide a new opportunity for reaching audiences, and potentially a way of communicating with people directly and individually.  There are caveats, however, both to distributing and receiving content by mobile phone. A notable factor is the comparatively low use of any phone features other than making calls. This is compounded by low literacy – particularly in rural and older audiences. Mass distribution of written content to mobile phones, therefore, would be a limited means of taking advantage of the access they offer.
• Social messaging services is a small but growing phenomenon that is most observable among younger audiences in Freetown. Usage is also linked to smartphone ownership, and less than a quarter of all phones owned in Sierra Leone have this capability. BBC Media Action observations in other countries suggest that young audiences in major cities are often early adopters of trends, and so use by this group may be a sign that social messaging services access could be expected to expand. At the time of writing, however, social messaging services’ offers access to only a limited proportion of the population.”

Click here to download the executive summary of this report in PDF format.