The Franco-Tunisian journalist Béchir Ben Yahmed, founder of Tunis Afrique Action, renamed the following year Jeune Afrique, passed from life to death on Monday at the age of 93. The information was published by AFP.

Béchir Ben Yahmed died in Paris, where he had been hospitalized since the end of March after being infected with the coronavirus, the monthly said in a press release. Born in April 1928 in Tunisia, then a French protectorate, this merchant's son, a graduate of HEC, had worked for independence and was part of the government of Habib Bourguiba as Secretary of State for Information in 1956-57. After creating his first magazine, L'action, in 1956, he launched Tunis Afrique Action in 1960, renamed Jeune Afrique the following year.
Franco-Tunisian journalist Béchir Ben Yahmed, who founded Jeune Afrique some sixty years ago, died Monday at the age of 93, the magazine told AFP on Monday. “After pursuing his ministerial and journalistic careers at the same time, he had finally opted for the second and, to give himself the means for his independence, had decided in 1962 to leave Tunis for Rome”, then two years later, “for Paris where the group is still based", recalls Jeune Afrique. It is therefore from the French capital that he developed the magazine, which over the years has become a reference media on French-speaking Africa, sometimes nicknamed the “55th State of Africa”.

"Founded to support the movement for the emancipation of peoples who, at the dawn of the 1960s, gained independence, Jeune Afrique took an active part in all the battles that have since punctuated the history of the continent", recalls the medium he had long run.

Remember that the Jeune Afrique group is undergoing a digital transformation, accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis. The magazine, which for a long time was weekly, became monthly and the group launched a restructuring plan at the end of 2020 providing for the elimination of 21 positions out of a total of 134, while hoping to restore its workforce by 2022 by expanding its digital teams. .