Communiqué 84: Why Mediamax, the Kenyatta family’s media jewel, is fighting for its life
Once a rising challenger in Kenya’s media landscape, Mediamax—backed by the powerful Kenyatta family—now faces a steep decline marked by layoffs, unpaid salaries, and shifting audiences.
Why this matters
Even well-funded, politically connected media houses aren’t immune to ad declines and digital disruption.
Capital alone doesn’t guarantee survival—execution and adaptability matter.
Mediamax’s decline is a cautionary tale on scaling without sustainable, audience-first models.
In an internal memo sent to staff members on July 14, Nairobi-based Mediamax Network announced a planned restructuring exercise that would result in an undisclosed number of redundancies within the company.
It was Mediamax’s sixth round of layoffs in just four years. The network’s most prominent shareholder is the family of Kenya’s former President Uhuru Kenyatta. It operates several media brands, including K24 and Kameme, two of the country’s largest TV and radio stations, respectively.
In the July 14 memo, the group CEO Ken Ngaruiya blamed the layoffs on declining ad spend, digital disruption and unfavourable government policies. It’s not hard to imagine. Nation Media Group, Standard, Radio Africa Group, and Capital FM—some of the country’s largest media companies—have all undertaken multiple layoffs in recent years and pointed to similar factors.
“Media houses relied heavily on advertisements, but with poor economic performance, fewer firms are advertising with mainstream media as it’s more expensive than social media,” Kevin Rotich, an editor at Nairobi-based Capital FM, explained to Communiqué. He also observed that younger audiences had moved away from traditional news sources with the rise of social media and influencers.
But, depending on who you ask, Mediamax’s slow decline has been exacerbated by many of its own decisions.
1. The takeover
Rose Kimotho is one of Kenya’s most legendary media figures. She started off her career as a print journalist in 1978, before moving into public relations, where she ran multiple agencies. But it was in the broadcasting business that she made her mark. In the late 90s, Kimotho spotted an opportunity as Kenya’s government liberalised broadcasting airwaves after decades of state monopoly.
The emerging radio stations, such as the iconic Capital FM, catered to upmarket audiences and broadcast in English. The market leader at the time, state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, did so in English and Swahili, the country’s two official languages. Kenya, however, has 42 unique ethnic communities, each with its own language. Kimotho launched Kameme FM, a pioneering vernacular language radio station targeting the populous Kikuyu community by broadcasting in their language. It quickly gained popularity among Kikuyu speakers and set the stage for the explosion of vernacular radio in Kenya, as each community sought to have its own station.
As of 2024, Kameme FM was Kenya’s second most popular vernacular radio station and the country’s seventh most popular radio station, according to the Media Council of Kenya. Although Mediamax does not publicly disclose its reports, Kameme remains the most valuable asset in the network’s portfolio, as confirmed by current and former employees who spoke to Communiqué.
In 2007, having succeeded in radio, the ever enterprising Kimotho saw a new gap in television and moved to establish K24, styled as Kenya’s first all-news 24-hour channel à la CNN. She hired big names, including Jeff Koinange, the Kenyan presenter who had left CNN a few years earlier under a cloud of allegations. But at the end of 2007, disaster struck as Kenya witnessed one of its darkest moments ever.
Alleged rigging of that year’s general election sparked ethnic violence around the country. Ironically, vernacular radio stations were among those blamed for the violence. Radio and TV ad revenues plummeted. Kimotho’s company could no longer service a ballooning bank overdraft. The loan was taken from CBA (now NCBA), a bank associated with the Kenyatta family, which would eventually take over the media business Kimotho had built. As of 2024, K24 was the country’s third most popular TV station with 28% of TV viewers tuning in weekly, according to a survey by the Media Council of Kenya.
“The saddest thing in the history of the country and the history of K24 is the Post Election Víolence (PEV). Because after that, we had no advertisers. We didn’t have the deep pockets that Nation had,” Kimotho said on a podcast in 2022.
2. More money, more problems
Now under the stewardship of the Kenyattas, Mediamax rebounded in the 2010s. Kameme’s performance remained healthy. And on TV, K24 was gaining a foothold as shows such as Jeff Koinange’s talk show, The Bench, proved popular. Mediamax was now truly competing with media giants such as Nation Media Group, Standard and Royal Media Services. And with their new wealthy and politically connected owners, no one was ruling them out.
The network grew quickly in the 2010s, hiring hundreds of staff and opening bureaus around the country. It launched several more vernacular stations targeting different communities – Meru, Maasai, and Mijikenda. It also launched Kameme TV. In 2014, it unveiled its free newspaper, People Daily, which was distributed to motorists and newspaper stands for free. Uhuru Kenyatta was elected president for the first time just a year earlier, and some critics viewed the paper as a government mouthpiece.
But as the 2010s neared their end, the cracks in Mediamax started to show. Salaries were often delayed, and some staff members complained of a general lack of professionalism and wrongful dismissals. “You would expect every month to get your salary around 15 days late, it even feels like an advance instead of your salary,” said one employee who left the company in 2020 and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Ken Ngaruiya, now CEO, was the CFO at the time. According to current and former employees, people could also be let go on a whim if they got on the wrong side of senior executives.
In October 2019, the company also began a practice that would become somewhat of a tradition – mass layoffs. It axed 160 employees, including senior editors and reporters, as part of a restructuring effort ostensibly to reduce operational costs. The company cited a challenging economic environment. But this was only the start of its woes.
3. The Text
Joseph, a seasoned K24 studio operator, was among the employees who received an ultimatum in 2020, soon after the pandemic began in March. It came from the CFO turned CEO, Ken Ngaruiya. Accept a lower salary, or lose your job. Considering the economic impact of the pandemic, some employees accepted the offer. But others, like Joseph, who were already concerned about the delayed payments, chose not to accept lower salaries. They were soon issued with redundancy notices in yet another restructuring effort.
On July 21, Joseph, whose name has been changed to preserve anonymity, and numerous other employees received a text from HR. “I am contacting you with regards to the redundancy notice issued on 21st May 2020. The notice period has expired. Unfortunately, your position has been affected by way of redundancy. I would like to invite you to Emory Hotel in Kileleshwa tomorrow, Monday, 22nd at 9:30 am to discuss what this means to your employment,” it read. After nearly 10 years at the company, Joseph and around 100 of his colleagues were let go by Mediamax.
The firing through text caused a storm with organisations, including the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ), calling out the company. Affected employees, many of whom were still owed their salaries, moved to court as the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) filed a petition for unfair dismissal. “The company eventually came up with a bad plan where, regardless of what they owed you, they would pay you a little bit every month, but some people had huge deficits and they were getting just Kes10,000 per month,” he told Communiqué.
Within a year, at least 260 employees had exited the company. The macroeconomic environment at the height of the pandemic didn’t help matters either, and also affected their competition, like Nation and Standard, which undertook layoffs in 2020. The expectation among some observers that then-President Kenyatta and his family would bankroll Mediamax through harsh economic times was quickly shattered. Another similar restructuring effort would take place in 2021, and yet again in December 2022, when it fired an undisclosed number of employees, including news presenters and anchors.
4. Power play
The high turnover made it difficult for Mediamax to maintain a strong growth trajectory, with strategies disrupted and the people running them constantly changing. But in 2022, something else happened. William Ruto, the deputy president who had fallen out with Uhuru in his second term, was elected president. His winning campaign message? “Hustlers versus Dynasties,” which was meant to pit the masses against Kenya’s legacy political families, such as the Kenyattas. Ruto claimed to be a “hustler” who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and understood the pain of regular Kenyans. He won by just over 200,000 votes, defeating veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, who had Uhuru Kenyatta’s backing.
Several moves made by the new Ruto administration would push Mediamax further into the doldrums, as was evidenced by Ngaruiya’s internal memo in July. Among them was a decision to take away government advertising contracts from the likes of Nation, Standard and Mediamax’s People Daily. In his memo, Ngaruiya pointed to factors including “delays in the settlement of pending bills from both the national and county governments.”
In March last year, it emerged that some Mediamax journalists were owed salary arrears of up to a year, highlighting the increasingly dire situation at the company. “Kameme is the only thing that’s making money,” said one executive. K24 is losing money, he said, and so was its print publication, People Daily, which it stopped printing in November 2024.
People Daily, which had been distributed free for 10 years, in November 2024 announced that it would cease printing physical copies and move entirely online. Ngaruiya framed it as a move to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and adapt to evolving media consumption habits. But really, things were changing all around Mediamax. Long-feared shifts in media consumption habits were crystallising, and companies such as theirs were losing ground. Amid its constant downsizing and office politics, Mediamax was slow in following its audience online and adapting its offering to them. Some of the numerous talented journalists and producers who passed through the company never got a chance to see their ideas flourish, as they were affected by layoffs.
5. And now
The latest round of layoffs in July only accentuated the challenges that have become a big part of Mediamax’s story in the 2020s. But the company now remains in limbo, and its employees are uncertain about their futures and the company’s. Interestingly, the company has continued to advertise several roles, including key editorial positions.
Kameme remains the golden goose. K24 is Kenya’s fourth most popular TV station, but media revenues are declining across the industry. The station is tailoring new shows for young audiences, hoping to win them over with political conversations on issues that matter to them. It’s also making a streaming push with its K24 Plus service, which includes pay-per-view options for local content as well as live Mediamax channels.
Some, including former employees, say that the layoffs are a calculated effort to phase out more experienced and higher-earning employees, including editors, producers and presenters, in favour of younger and more affordable workers.
Mediamax, which was once seen as a potentially successful challenger of Kenya’s media companies, is no longer vying to take over. It’s fighting to survive. The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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