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

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