BURKINA FASO
Pan-African humor monthly suspends publication
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, September 23, 2002
- Launched in October 2001, Marabout, the first   French-language
Pan-African monthly, has suspended publication. More than political
pressure, it was both financial difficulties as well as logistic
problems that did Marabout in, according to its editor,
Damien Glez (his portrait on the left), who is
also cartoonist at the weekly Journal du Jeudi. Besides
not having been paid by its eight different distributors (save for
the one from Gabon), other factors have made publishing the magazine
a difficult proposition. At 1.22 Euro, the price of one copy is
equal to 2 or 3 meals in an ordinary restaurant. Illiteracy rates
in Africa hover around 13 to 25% of the population. Newspapers freely
circulate in offices where they are read without being purchased.
In some countries, news stand vendors rent publications by the hour
and return them, spoiled and unsold, to the distributor. For the
moment, the publication is in hiatus. It must first solve its logistic
problems before starting anew under better conditions.
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