"Central to the work represented in this issue is what we have called the emergence of new media entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. These actors generate a multitude of new (and often not easily definable) genres of information as well as entertainment and distraction, but also persuasion and healing (Böhme 2013). They are often categorized as cultural brokers (cf. Thalen 2011), mediating between dispersed audiences and spaces of communication, and taking advantage of their privileged access to new media technologies and/or advanced positions in the media field. Thus, we propose to refer back to quite classical notions of intermediaries, stemming especially from the realm of political and economic anthropology, such as brokers or middlemen (cf. Boissevain 1974, 148; Lewis and Mosse 2006), interpreting these figures mainly as entrepreneurs who control second order resources such as information, social relations, or channels of communication. In our articles we exemplify the relevance of such a conceptualization for contemporary African media fields, also beyond more functionalist aspects as we discuss their often ambiguous positions as well, caught as they are between contradicting loyalties to clients and colleagues or authorities, and also between professional standards and aspirations on the one hand and the need for income on the other. This category of media entrepreneurs, benefitting fromthese newopportunities and opening new social spaces and realms of creativity, may include journalists, radio producers (cf. Gunner et al. 2011), media technicians, or artists working within private as well as public structures, as well as those who are establishing institutions that offer media-related training, counselling, and marketing. Other media entrepreneurs are, for example, individuals who, thanks to their mass-mediated appearances and particular preaching style, draw large groups of supporters in their role as religious or political actors (Meyer 2003, cf. also the contribution by Sounaye). Examples of such media entrepreneurship also include the rising number of independent media production outlets, studios, or PR agencies doing public or private contract work, and who often profit from the new opportunities raised by national and transnational ventures in commerce and finance which require advertising and publicity. As already indicated, among those who are benefitting most from these new opportunities are many young people, often graduates, who have not always received formal training to prepare them for a job in media production, but who make their way through the various steps of internship, freelance, and contractualwork, often combining severalmedia activities in the press, in radio andTV, or asPRofficers. Some have even been successful at establishing themselves as leading media figures or local celebrities in this field." (Page 49)