STATE OF THE MEDIA IN ZAMBIA STATE OF THE MEDIA IN ZAMBIA It is therefore important that the ATI Bill is enacted into law as soon as possible. 4.1.3 Regulation of ZNBC There have been calls for the regulation of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) to transform it into an independent public broadcaster. Proposals have been made to merge the ZNBC Amendment Act 2010 and IBA Act of 2010 to bring into existence an independent public broadcaster. It has been argued that the two pieces of legislation when merged will ensure that the broadcasting industry has an independent regulatory body. The calls to merge the two Acts were pioneered by MISA Zambia in 2017 after launching a policy document on the possibilities of having the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) regulated by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA). In line with this move, government in the first quarter announced intentions to come up with a law that will enable the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) to scrutinise the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC). The debate on IBA’s regulation of ZNBC has continued and advocacy towards the same has intensified in the third quarter with various stakeholders calling for the move to bring about autonomy and independence of news and information in public broadcasting. 4.2 Economic and Technological Environment The monetisation of digital technologies has been a subject of debate world over and many governments have realised this. On 7th August 2019, the Mast Newspaper carried a head line “Kenya mulls taxation of foreign online media services.” The paper reported that: Kenya plans to begin taxing foreign online streaming media services such as YouTube and Netflix, the communication regulator said. Francis Wangusi, Director General of Communication Authority of Kenya, told journalists in Nairobi that the government is fast tracking the development of a policy that would guide the taxation of the “over the top” technologies that provide content over the internet thereby passing traditional distribution channels. The development in Kenya have been recorded in Zambia with calls for the country to tax digital content service providers so as to diversify on the revenue base for the treasury. It is argued though that this situation 11