willing to engage in unethical and unprofessional conduct to ensure their survival than they would otherwise have been willing to do if they had a more solid economic or financial base. The media therefore need to be assisted to be sustainable and viable. They also require technical assistance in various areas relating to the establishment, operation and management of media organizations, including the acquisition of suitable equipment for the operations, acquiring and using new information and communication technologies, marketing their products, etc. Media proprietors and managers also need to be assisted to develop their skills in business planning and management so that they can create successful business models in the media. The media also need to be supported by qualitative research to support their work and media decision-making. Such research would be in the areas of systematic monitoring of media coverage of a variety of issues, audience researches to determine what media audiences are interested in getting from the media; market researches to determine advertises preferences and decision-making processes, other baseline research to establish media reach in terms of readership, broadcast ratings, etc. In the area of access to capital, there is a dire need for structures to support the media. Successful models of soft loans to exclusively support the media have already been developed elsewhere. Two examples are the Media Development Loan Fund(MDLF) with offices in New York, Singapore, and Prague (Czech Republic), among other places, and the Southern Africa Media Development Fund(SAMDEF). A similar facility for the West African region was launched in Accra, Ghana, on April 13, 2010. Known as the West Africa Media Development Fund(WAMDEF), it is intended to address the severely challenging economic situation of media in the region. It is an initiative of the Media Foundation for West Africa, supported by Free Voice, the Dutch media support organization. WAMDEF is a commercial non-profit institution. It is registered in Ghana as a company limited by guarantee. WAMDEF is conceived as a loans and investments scheme and operates in the form of a micro-finance company. It offers loans to media enterprises at competitive interest rates compared to banks and non-bank financial institutions' rates. It targets small and medium­sized media organizations that are substantially owned and managed on a full­time basis by private media investors. Its services cover radio stations,