Paralympic Broadcasting in Sub-Saharan Africa: Production Politics and the Reimagined Postcolonial

Abstract

The Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games was broadcast for the first time on free to air (FTA) television across 49 territories in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article charts the story of this historic development and marks the first study to explore Paralympic broadcast production beyond the cultural specificities of Global North/Western-centric media practices, infrastructure availability and disability discourses. Drawing on an integrated qualitative dataset, including interviews with key individuals from the International Paralympic Committee, TV Media Sport (the broadcast partner) and one national Sub-Saharan broadcaster (Malawi Broadcasting Corporation), this article documents the challenges, logic and politics behind the Sub-Saharan African Paralympic broadcast. In so doing, we consider the extent to which these articulated with epistemic differences, underlying neocolonial sentiments and (mis-)understandings of the geopolitical contours and disability politics of the Sub-Saharan African region. We consider the important role national Paralympic broadcasters may play in the sustainable development of the broadcasts across this region, particularly in relation to its pedagogical value for harnessing progressive localised disability politics, disability activism, and social justice.