Tanzania tycoon plans to ‘shake up’ top African media conglomerate
Aga Khan sells Nation Media Group to politically connected Rostam Azizi in a move critics say threatens press freedom
The Nairobi headquarters of Nation Media Group, a celebrated bastion of press freedom in east Africa © Arthur Buliva/Wikipedia
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William Wallis in Nairobi
PublishedMAR 13 2026
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One of Tanzania’s richest men said he planned to “shake up” the east African media landscape after his acquisition of one of the continent’s largest and oldest press conglomerates, a move that has alarmed journalists across the region.
Rostam Azizi’s Taarifa Group this week agreed to buy a 54 per cent stake in Nation Media Group, which owns leading titles in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and is a celebrated bastion of press freedom, from the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development.
Azizi, a billionaire with interests in energy, mining, telecoms and real estate and close ties to Tanzania’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, said he would pump investment into NMG for the digital era. He said his aim was to draw in younger audiences in a region whose median age is under 20, and which faces explosive demographic growth in coming years.
“It needs a bit of a shake-up,” he told the FT. “We’re going to have to invest and we’re going to have to transform it into something that caters for all.”
The takeover, which was unexpected and is still subject to regulatory approval, has sparked concern among some of the group’s senior journalists. They fear Azizi does not share the values of Prince Karim al-Hussaini, the late spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims whose Aga Khan group launched NMG in a different guise in 1959 in the conviction that “a free, independent press was indispensable to democracy”.
The tycoon was an MP for years and served formerly as national treasurer of the CCM, the long-dominant ruling party of Tanzania, where human rights groups say more than 1,000 people were killed by security forces in election protests last year.
The press in east Africa is under growing pressure from governments and is now largely under the control of political interest groups. The NMG has continued to stand out for its independent reporting.
Rostam Azizi says he will invest in NMG for the digital era with the aim of attracting a younger audience © Taarifa Ltd
Azizi said he wanted the group to promote stability, foreign investment and contribute to fostering strong institutions across east Africa, including in the media. He would set broad parameters at quarterly board meetings but would not interfere in the group’s day-to-day journalism, he insisted.
He said he would set himself apart from other business moguls across the world who have acquired big media titles, suggesting parts of the British press had become tools of “disruption and disinformation”.
“These days you can lose a country by having false information spread around . . . This is exactly what we want to avoid here,” he said. Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch “was sitting wherever he was sitting. He doesn’t really care much about what happens to England, I suppose. He cares about his bottom line.”
“We live here,” Azizi added. “Our businesses are here. So, it’s in our interest that these countries are stable, sustainable, attractive for foreign investment.”
A fifth-generation Tanzanian with family origins in Iran, Azizi said he had a long friendship born of a past joint venture in media with Karim, the late Aga Khan.
Azizi said the Nation group under Karim, who died just over a year ago, had “stood firm” in the face of pressure from all manner of governments and insisted that he would “do the same”.
The region needed “serious media that communicates to its people in a credible fashion”, and that is “trusted and has integrity”, he said.
The mood was sombre, however, among Kenyan journalists, several of whom said they were apprehensive about the consequences of the takeover both for the group and for the wider future of the free press in the region.
“Nobody believes him,” a senior journalist said of the mood among Nation staff, asking not to be named. “The feeling here is that we have been abandoned,” the journalist said of Aga Khan’s divestment.
People familiar with the Aga Khan group, which transferred NMG from its charitable foundation to its impact investment arm in September, said ownership of the media group was becoming increasingly problematic.
They said the sale could help protect its other interests, including hospitals, schools and universities in the charitable sector and hospitality, infrastructure and agriculture under its investment arm, from political pressures.
A spokesperson for the Aga Khan development fund denied this.
“The sale was not politically driven . . . NMG was simply no longer an asset that was aligned with the wider business strategy moving forwards,” he said.
