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Minister Mushohwe

Richard Muponde Bulawayo Bureau—
The ongoing digitisation programme will create about four million jobs and earn more than $1,5 billion per year for content producers, the Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Dr Christopher Mushohwe, said yesterday. He told participants at a mobilisation meeting of creative content producers at Jahunda Community Hall in Gwanda that the Zim-Digital Migration drive would be a boon for content producers.

“You have heard that we want to set up 12 television broadcasting channels, six of which will be for public broadcasting, while the remainder goes to private players,” said Dr Mushohwe.

“These channels will broadcast 24 hours a day, which means 288 broadcasting hours per day. Per week it will be 2 016 broadcasting hours. Let’s say you are getting a paltry $2 000 for your content, multiply that by the number of channels and hours of broadcasting and there will be about $1,5 billion a year going to young Zimbabweans.”

He said the digitalisation programme would create many opportunities and spawn a multi-billion dollar industry.

“It’s too good to be true, isn’t that so? It will create about 3,8 million jobs. This is the first time for me to talk about figures. We will have lots of equipment so that you record your content,” Dr Mushohwe said.

“This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Hollywood (USA) and Nollywood ((Nigeria) make billions of dollars doing just about nothing more than entertaining people. In Matabeleland there’s a lot of talent which makes one marvel. That’s the content we are looking for.”

Speaking at the same occasion, the permanent secretary in the Ministry, Mr George Charamba, said they would push for equipment brought in for content production to be exempted from duty like they previously did with the arts sector.

“We will be doing that so that we have a lot of content,” he said. “What’s left is for a Statutory Instrument to have a comprehensive list of things that we want to be exempted.

“What does that mean? It means you should organise yourselves as districts, provinces and at national level to come up with an exhaustive list. The list will be reduced to a Statutory Instrument that will be gazetted. The list will then be placed at every border post in the country.”

Zimbabwe is racing against time to digitalise its broadcasting system, moving away from the antiquated analogue system of broadcasting.