RTP Africa has honoured Ambassador Edward Akwasi Boateng with the Media Visionary Award at the 15th Radio and Television Personality (RTP) Awards, recognising his visionary leadership and transformative contributions to media development in Ghana and across Africa.
The award celebrates Ambassador Boateng’s pioneering role in shaping modern broadcasting, amplifying African voices, and building media platforms that have influenced culture, journalism, and public discourse for over three decades.
Ambassador Boateng was instrumental in initiating and providing seed funding for Ghana’s first breakfast television show on GBC in the 1990s, a bold intervention that redefined morning news and current affairs programming and laid the foundation for the diverse breakfast shows audiences enjoy today.
As Founder of Global Media Alliance (GMA), established in 1998, he went on to build some of Ghana’s most influential media platforms, including YFM, Happy FM, etv, and Silverbird Cinemas. Through YFM in particular, he redefined access to the airwaves, legitimising youth expression, music, and creative culture, while setting new standards for audience engagement and cultural relevance.
Beyond Ghana, Ambassador Boateng’s impact has been profoundly continental and global. During his leadership with CNN Africa, he initiated landmark initiatives such as Inside Africa and the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award, platforms that reshaped global narratives about Africa, celebrated journalistic excellence, and strengthened Africa’s voice in international media.
He also played a key role in supporting and establishing major African broadcast channels, including SABC Africa, eNCA and etv in South Africa, and K24 in Kenya, contributing to the growth of pan-African television and free-to-air commercial broadcasting across the continent.
In the 1990s, Ambassador Boateng worked closely with development partners to advance media deregulation across Africa, helping to foster innovation, plurality, and freedom of expression; an era-defining contribution that opened space for private broadcasting and independent media.
Receiving the award, Ambassador Boateng expressed deep gratitude to his family, colleagues, collaborators and the RTP Awards organisers. He used the moment to challenge today’s media to match freedom with responsibility, noting that “the media is free today because of the struggles of the 1990s. That freedom must now be used to drive national development; so no child goes to bed hungry and progress reaches every home.”
He also paid tribute to colleagues who played pivotal roles during the formative years of the GBC Breakfast Show, acknowledging the late Dr Kofi Frimpong, Prof. Mark Duoduo, and the late Wallace Bampoe Addo, as well as the young talents who formed the nucleus of the programme at the time: Gayheart Mensah, Mawuko Afadzino, Oheneyere Gifty Anti, Akushika Acquaye, Kate Addo, and Earl Ankrah.
The Media Visionary Award adds to a distinguished list of recognitions for Ambassador Boateng and affirms his enduring legacy as a founder, institution builder, and one of the most influential figures in Africa’s media history.
As the RTP citation concluded, the award honours “a man who put Africa in charge of its own story.”
