As Zambia continues to with its journey towards digital broadcasting, the World Bank has called on the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) to increase its coverage beyond the line of rail.
World Bank country director for Zambia Kundhavi Kadiresan said the move to digital broadcasting should enable the ZNBC to widen its coverage.
She said the Zambian government, with funds from the bank, is busy with various developmental projects around the country. This is not being picked up by the national broadcaster because its coverage is limited to line of rail.
For ZNBC to expand beyond the line of rail, however, it will need additional funds to purchase equipment and build more infrastructure, including transmitters to broadcast digital signals.
But Kadiresan said the bank is ready to partner with ZNBC to ensure that it covers the whole country and be able to cover the bank's funded projects adequately.
She was speaking yesterday when she called on ZNBC director-general Richard Mwanza at the mass media complex.
"The bank wants to move away from public perception that relates it to debt management to that of a platform of knowledge sharing. This can only be done when the bank funded projects are adequately covered," Kadiresan said.
In response, Mwanza said, "ZNBC is ready to partner with the bank to expand its coverage and to come up with content that can be broadcast in order to bridge the knowledge gap in society."
However, the expansion project is likely to take long to implement. This is because although phase one of the country's digital migration is already underway, with the capital Lusaka and some areas along the line of rail already enjoying digital broadcasting, phases two and three have yet to start.
Tenders for these phases have still not been awarded to any company.
The Zambian government has already indicated that the country may fail to beat the 2015 deadline set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
The Southern African country said it might not be able to make the deadline due to various challenges, including the importation of migration equipment.
Phase two was supposed to run up to January 2015 in preparation for the start of phase three.
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