In a country where public broadcasting has long struggled beneath the weight of underfunding and neglect, Thursday afternoon marks a rare and significant moment. At 4:00 PM, Africell Chief Executive Officer Shadi Gerjawi will formally hand over a newly built and fully branded studio to the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation, a gesture that signals far more than corporate goodwill.
The handover, expected to take place at the SLBC premises in Freetown, is the latest chapter in what has become the most expansive private-sector media support initiative in Sierra Leone’s recorded history. Africell now supports over 110 radio stations nationwide a figure that would have seemed improbable just a few years ago, and one that dwarfs anything previously attempted by any single organisation, public or private, in this country.
The SLBC is Sierra Leone’s foremost public broadcaster, carrying the weight of informing millions of citizens across a country where radio remains the dominant medium for news, education, and civic life. For decades, its infrastructure has reflected the broader story of underdevelopment that has defined much of Sierra Leone’s post-war institutional landscape. A new, fully branded studio delivered at no cost to the state offers the corporation a meaningful upgrade at a time when public trust in media institutions is itself a resource worth protecting.
Gerjawi, who also serves as Africell’s Chief Media Officer, has steered a media engagement strategy that has moved beyond token sponsorships into something more structural. In 2025, under his direction, the company branded and redesigned eight community radio stations across the country. That initiative alone would have been noteworthy. But it formed part of a wider pattern one that included the launch of Africell’s Free Call Service, designed to reduce the cost barrier between citizens and the information they need.
Community radio in Sierra Leone has historically operated on the margins serving rural populations, local languages, and stories that national broadcasters frequently overlook. That Africell has invested in strengthening this layer of the media ecosystem speaks to an understanding that connectivity is not only about mobile data and voice calls. Information infrastructure, in its broadest sense, includes the studios, transmitters, and editorial capacity that allow communities to speak to and about themselves.
Africell has been the market leader in Sierra Leone since 2009, with approximately 4.2 million active subscribers and a network coverage that reaches the vast majority of the country’s population. That commercial dominance has increasingly been accompanied by a social footprint one that now extends directly into the newsrooms and broadcast booths that shape public discourse.
The question, as with all such partnerships between private capital and public media, is one of editorial independence. A broadcaster that relies on a single corporate partner for its infrastructure must navigate carefully the line between gratitude and accountability. SLBC, as a public institution, will be expected by Sierra Leoneans to remain a space where power including corporate power is held to scrutiny.
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But for now, the handover at 4:00 PM offers something more immediate: a functioning studio for a broadcaster that serves the nation. In a media landscape where resources are scarce and the demand for credible public information has never been greater, that is no small thing.
