By Our Reporter
By this time last year, Bukedde Newspaper was being heralded as a Newspaper that had finally figured out the Uganda Newspaper industry. It was described by many figures as the fastest growing Newspaper in Africa.
Once again, that same month in 2015, the Newspaper was selling an average of 40,000 copies per day, a feat that many considered extraordinary. To the optimists, the numbers were growing and many forecast that Bukedde would finally hit the 50,000 mark in copy sales.
Finally Vision Group had found its strength and it was bound to leverage it by all means. As a Christmas Chicken that survives from January to November only to be slaughtered in December, Bukedde sales out of nowhere dropped to an average of 28,000 copies. This followed the increment of the price of the newspaper from UGX 1000 to UGX 1500. For the first time, the once loyal Bukedde buyers were not about to stick to the paper with an increment in price.
In 2014, fewer Ugandans were reading newspapers according to IPSOS with just 23 percent of Ugandans accessing information from print compared to 33 percent the previous year.
Bukedde is now facing a stronger competitor in the names of Kamunye that follows the same model and is sold at a cheaper price.
While Vision Group was still nursing wounds of falling sales at Bukedde, disaster was already happening at Kampala Sun. And that forms the gist of our story.
We have learned that come April, Kampala Sun will cease to be print and will completely go Digital. For the past months, Kampala Sun has not registered any substantial profits and the market has proved to be terrible with no hope that it will get better.
To add salt to injury, this week saw the entry of Matooke Republic, a free Newspaper that provides content almost similar to Kampala Sun. Kampala Sun was selling over 10,000 copies at its best and was the darling of the youth.
Its controversial tabloid but light-hearted style got it many loyal readers. However, not anymore. Today, the paper is struggling to make an average of 5000 sales. For a weekly paper, these are figures that would scare the hell out of an analyst. The paper has thus taken a bold decision to close.
“We shall now go online. We are entering the jungle. That jungle is the future. We would rather die out struggling to be part of the future than waste energies clinging to what will soon be the past,” a source at Kampala Sun told us.
The managers at the paper are thus in the process of preparing the ground for the online newspaper. All the writers at Kampala Sun have been informed about the move and have been told to pull up their socks as the company will also downsize in the process.
Question is, will the sun continue to shine in an already saturated online market? Only time can tell.