DIGITAL MIGRATION FOOTPRINTS MISA-Zimbabwe monitoring of Zimbabwe’s digital television migration process This is the first edition of monitoring of Zimbabwe’s digital migration process. MISA-Zimbabwe’s monitoring of the process is a part of its Access to Information campaign. The Migration footprints series is an analysis of major highlights of a process set to the face of television broadcasting in the country in the public interest. Digitisation will make broadcasting more equitable, just and people centered while connecting formerly marginal communities. Zimbabwe, like other counties in Africa, is preparing to meet the obligatory International Telecommunications Union (ITU) deadline of June 17, 2015 of migration from analogue to digital broadcasting. After this date frequencies set aside for analogue television transmission will no longer be protected against cross border interference. DATE June 2006 June 2009 July 2011 UPDATE On 16 June 2006, the (ITU) Regional Radiocommunication Conference (RRC-06) in Geneva signed a treaty resolving that all countries of Europe, Africa and Middle-East should migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting by June 17 2015 SADC ICT Ministers meet in Swakopmund Namibia to set up a regional digital migration roadmap and set December 31, 2013 as their deadline. By 2014, the region had held 7 Forums to take stock of how individual member countries were fairing in digital migration, and whether the region is on course to meet the set deadline. The last forum was held in Kasane, Botswana on 10-14 June 2014. Zimbabwe has attended all regional meetings but none of the information relating to the country’s processes since 2009 was made public to the Zimbabwean citizenry. Zimbabwe has no publicly known Digital Migration policy. As of September 2014, Mauritus, Namibia, Rwanda and Tanzania had finalised the migration processes. On 25 July, Zimbabwean news agency, New Ziana reported that Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) Chief Executive Officer Obert Muganyura said that Zimbabwe was lagging far behind other countries in the region because of lack of government funding for the project. Muganyura said in the SADC region, Zimbabwe was the only country that