Chinese Government provides $3.8 million grant for Access to Satellite Television Project

In 2018, the Chinese Government provided a $3.8 grant to the Government of Mozambique for the Access to Satellite Television Project. The purpose of this project was to provide digital satellite television signals to 500 villages in Mozambique. StarTimes Media (Mozambique) Co., Ltd — a project company and joint venture of StarTimes and Focus 21 Mozambique — was responsible for project implementation. Its work was overseen by Mozambique’s Ministry of Science and Technology, Higher, Technical and Professional Education. This project was launched on May 13, 2018 and completed on May 26, 2020. A formal handover ceremony took place on December 11, 2020. The project reportedly provided digital satellite television signals to 1,000 villages in Mozambique and benefited 20,000 families.

Additional details

1. The project, which covered the capital Maputo and all 10 provinces of Mozambique, was co-financed by China and implemented by Chinese-owned company StarTimes Media (Mozambique) Co., Ltd. Mozambique was the first Portuguese-speaking country to benefit from the Chinese initiative “Access to Satellite TV for 10,000 African Villages”, which was launched in 2015 and will cover 25 African countries. The "Wan Cun Tong" project is one of the China-Africa cooperation measures proposed at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2015. It aims to connect 10,000 villages in African countries with satellite digital TV signals and reduce the information gap between rural and urban Mozambican people (See: "中国援建莫桑比克“万村通”项目举行交接仪式"). 2. This project is linked to Project ID#72888, a $60 million loan for Phase 1 of the Analog to Digital Migration Project; Project ID#57313, a $156 million loan for Phase 2 of the same project, and Project ID#57618, Chinese Government funding for access to Satellite TV in Ten Thousand African Villages Project with StarTimes.

Number of official sources

4

Number of total sources

15