Data so expensive that people choose between connectivity and food. Newsrooms pressured not by censors with scissors, but by governments quietly pulling advertising. And a creator economy about to boom precisely because it travels light. In the first episode of Media in Africa, Georja Calvin-Smith talks with Lisa MacLeod, Director and Head of News Clients at FT Strategies, the Financial Times' consulting arm, about what actually separates Europe's media market from Africa's, and what doesn't.

Drawing on her work with publishers from News24 to Kenya's Nation Media Group, Lisa maps the landscape: why Android, SMS and WhatsApp shape African distribution, how "soft censorship" erodes accountability journalism, where on the continent press freedom is strongest, what the Hanifa Adan case says about legacy media working with news creators, and why ...