Two measurements, one same direction

Between 2019 and 2024, the percentage of Angolans who consider the media "completely free" fell 13 percentage points, according to the Afrobarometer time series. In the same period, Angola dropped nine places in the RSF index — from 100th to 109th out of 180 countries assessed. The two indicators are methodologically independent: one measures citizen perceptions through a random survey of 1,200 people; the other evaluates the media ecosystem based on five dimensions (political, legal, economic, sociocultural, security) filled in by journalists, lawyers and researchers.

When two such different sources point in the same direction, the most prudent reading is the simplest one: something changed. And it changed for the worse.

What specifically changed

Angola's fall in RSF 2026 is particularly worrying because it is synchronised across all five dimensions. It is not only the legal framework that deteriorated — it is also the economic environment (with pressure on institutional advertising), the political environment (interviews censored during the 2022 campaign), and the personal safety of journalists. Afrobarometer Round 10, on the perception side, shows that 50.3% of Angolans say today that journalists "rarely" or "never" can report without censorship — it was 37.1% in Round 8 (2019).