TV channels Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso's television grew from a state monopoly into one of West Africa's more open media fields: after decades of a single public channel, liberalisation brought private stations, and today groups like Savane Média carry both radio and television.

How television came to Burkina Faso

Television in the country is older than in most of its neighbours. Volta Vision - a fifty-watt station covering little more than Ouagadougou - was inaugurated on 5 August 1963, and its regular broadcasts, begun in October 1964, made it the first television service in francophone West Africa. The austerity that followed the January 1966 uprising silenced the station, and programmes only resumed in 1969, a few hours a week. The following decades carried the signal beyond the capital: Bobo-Dioulasso received a transmitter in 1982, Dédougou and Koudougou in 1986, and the service took the name Télévision Nationale du Burkina when the country took its present name in 1984.

The medium's political weight showed early: on the night of the 1983 coup, Thomas Sankara addressed the nation on television, and in 1999 the national radio and television services were merged into the Radiodiffusion-Télévision du Burkina, the RTB. Its central place in national life has been visible ever since - protesters stormed its building during the 2014 uprising, and soldiers announced both of the country's 2022 coups on its airwaves.

The opening of the audiovisual space brought private channels in the early 2000s - Canal 3, BF1 and Impact TV among them - under the oversight of the Conseil supérieur de la communication, and digital terrestrial television, launched in December 2017, widened the national offer again.

The private voice of Savane Média

Savane TV is the television channel of the Savane Média group, a private general-interest station based in Ouagadougou and carried on the national digital terrestrial network and in the Canal+ satellite bouquet: national news, public debate and the life of the country's regions, grown out of the group's radio work.

Broadcasting here has always been multilingual - the public radio began in 1959 with programmes in French and thirteen national languages. From national days to the festivals of the regions, Burkina Faso's screen now speaks with more than the public voice alone.