admin
Pamela Shumba Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe is poised for a radio and television revolution as the government has made great strides to go digital and provide full coverage to the whole nation, President Mugabe said yesterday. In his state of the nation address delivered to the National Assembly and the Senate, President Mugabe said the country will for the first time in history achieve universal television and radio coverage.
“Government has embarked on a $125 million ICT project for the migration from analogue to digital television broadcasting,” said President Mugabe. “Once the 48 television transmitters are established on designated sites and 25 radio transmitters have been installed, Zimbabwe is going to achieve universal coverage of radio and television services for the first time in the history of broadcasting in this country.”
He said the government, with assistance from China, had also successfully established a state-of-the art High Performance Computing (HPC) system that is meant to advance socio-economic planning in the country.
“To further strengthen the implementation of the e-governance programme, my government working together with the government of the People’s Republic of China established a high performance computing HPC centre at the University of Zimbabwe in February 2015,” President Mugabe added.
He said Zimbabwe’s HPC was the third largest super computer on the African continent.
The high performance computing system is expected to facilitate the implementation of quick-wins in a number of economic endeavours, such as mining exploration, meteorological forecasting and monitoring of climatic changes, land surveying, drought monitoring and crop assessment and other strategic uses to assist in informed decision making by policy makers.
Recently, the Secretary for Information, Media and Broadcasting Services George Charamba said the country’s ongoing digitisation process will result in the creation of thousands of jobs in line with the objectives of Zim-Asset.
He said three top class international standard studios would be established in Bulawayo, Harare and Victoria Falls with satelite studios in every province to ensure continuous high quality local productions.
Charamba said once completed, the process would ensure more local programming while there will also be some platforms for foreign productions.
He added that 34 engineers were being trained so that there is continuity after the process is completed.
Online Reporter