JOHANNESBURG — Southern Africa’s media is facing an “existential threat” as donor funding dries up, democratic space contracts and newsrooms struggle to navigate a rapidly changing digital information environment, MISA Regional Director, Dr Tabani Moyo, has warned.
Moyo sounded the alarm on Monday while opening the 2026 Spaces of Solidarity (SoS) Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, where media organisations and freedom of expression advocates are meeting to assess the state of the region’s information ecosystem and strengthen regional cooperation.
The gathering marks five years of Spaces of Solidarity, a forum created to develop collective responses to challenges affecting freedom of expression and access to information across the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Moyo said the region was confronting an extraordinary convergence of financial, political and technological pressures.
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“Our region has never, in its entire history, faced such a crossroads,” said the MISA regional director.
He singled out global funding cuts by the United States and changing priorities among traditional international partners that have historically financed freedom of expression and human rights initiatives.
These pressures, he said, had been compounded by international conflicts, climate change, geopolitical shifts and fragmentation among progressive forces, leaving the region’s media ecosystem facing an “existential threat”.
The warning comes at a particularly difficult time for independent media and civil society organisations that have traditionally depended on international support to finance journalism, advocacy and freedom of expression programmes.
The funding squeeze also coincides with the growing costs and complexities of operating in the digital age.
Moyo said the challenge was no longer simply about protecting traditional media freedoms, but also ensuring that rights to expression and access to information survive the transition to increasingly digital information environments.
He said Southern Africa needed to maintain a rights-based approach in the digital age while strengthening the distribution of verified information to counter misinformation, disinformation and other forms of information disorder.
However financial sustainability is only one part of the crisis, as Moyo warned that democratic standards were also deteriorating in parts of Southern Africa, putting journalists, activists and citizens expressing dissenting views under increasing pressure.
He cited recent elections in Mozambique and Tanzania, describing the 2024 and 2025 polls respectively as among the most violent elections in the region in recent years.
The media advocate also raised concerns over what he described as democratic backsliding in Zambia, where people holding dissenting views have faced consequences, including having their passports revoked.
In Lesotho, he pointed to the case of former MISA Regional Governing Council member, Kananelo Boloetse, who he said was abducted and tortured, with those responsible remaining at large.
Moyo said these developments were taking place as geopolitical and commercial interests increasingly competed for Africa’s critical minerals.
He questioned whether the pursuit of mineral resources and profits was overshadowing concerns about human rights abuses, environmental damage, labour conditions and accountability in affected communities.
The changing geopolitical environment, he said, had also complicated relationships between civil society organisations and some of their traditional international allies.
“Who our allies are is a key question that we need to continually reassess as we journey forward,” said the MISA regional director.
Issues that previously united organisations and their partners , including democratic choice, diverse views, open societies, reducing inequality and protecting vulnerable groups ,were increasingly questioned.
Despite the difficult environment, Moyo said regional solidarity has shown that coordinated action can still deliver results.
Since the previous gathering in Windhoek in September 2025, the network has engaged Zambia’s president over cyber laws and worked with the Malawi government on broadcasting regulations, including advocating for licence fees to be charged in local currency.
It also gained access to challenging operating environments such as Eswatini, enabling evidence-based advocacy, while fellowships supported by DW Akademie strengthened capacity building and continuous learning.
Moyo said the funding crisis made collaboration even more important, arguing that organisations could no longer approach solidarity without acknowledging their diminishing resources and institutional capacity.
He called for stronger research-based interventions, monitoring and regional networking to provide evidence for advocacy and policy reform.
Participants at the Spaces of Solidarity movement, now find the challenge now is therefore not simply defending individual journalists or responding to isolated attacks on media freedom but protecting an increasingly fragile ecosystem in which independent journalism, access to information and freedom of expression can survive.
The MISA regional director urged organisations across the region to increasingly “pivot on each other” as traditional sources of support weaken.
“Today, I respond by encouraging you to punch at weight and to explore mechanisms that can be applied to strengthen solidarity as a shield for expression ecosystems in Southern Africa,” he said.
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