1,000 Nigerian villages benefited by China’s effort in unveiling digital TV project

An underdeveloped rural community at the edge of Nigeria’s capital city Abuja named Kpaduma came alive on January 14 as its people turned out altogether in jubilation to welcome Chinese technicians and their local partners to launch a digital satellite television project.

The rustic community is one of the 1,000 villages carefully selected to benefit from a China-aid program that works on providing 1,000 Nigerian villages with access to digital television. The program was officially launched on January 14 in Abuja. StarTimes, a Chinese firm which offers direct-to-home pay-TV services, introduced its digital television service to Kpaduma, to flag off the enormous project across Nigeria. The project acts on one of the resolutions of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2015, in which the Chinese government pledged to provide satellite television for 10,000 African villages, as reported by Xinhua.

Under the project, each of the 1,000 chosen villages in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, will receive two sets of solar-powered projector television systems and one set of solar 32-inch digital television integrated terminal system. Altogether, 20,000 households in rural Nigeria will benefit from the project. In each village, 20 recipient families with television will be provided with 20 sets of direct broadcast satellite terminal system free of charge. A projector television system will also be provided to each of the 1,000 villages, for viewers to publicly watch at least 21 satellite channels free of charge.

For decades, residents of Kpaduma have only been familiar with analogue TV, lacking the opportunity to watch some of the exciting satellite television channels enjoyed by people in the towns and cities across Nigeria. When the innovative project came to their community Monday with Chinese and Nigerian officials in attendance, ecstatic locals in Kpaduma thronged the village square. Yusuf Dio, the prince of Kpaduma and a beneficiary of the direct broadcast satellite terminal system, described the innovative project as ‘the talk of the town.’ The satellite television provides the opportunity for locals to watch digital television programs with both local and international contents.

Every evening, up to 20 locals who had no television or lacked electricity gather at Dio's house to watch the digital television programs together with his family. Dio, who welcomed Xinhua to watch the satellite television together with his family, said he enjoyed watching football and news channels the most, while his wife and three children love channels with entertainment contents.

Speaking at the flag-off ceremony for the project in Kpaduma, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed said the implementation complements the efforts of the Nigerian government to ‘democratize access to information and entertainment through the Digital Switch Over (DSO) for television which has now been rolled out in several states and the Federal Capital Territory.’ Whereas, Managing Director of StarTimes in Nigeria, Zhang Jin opined that the implementation of the project will create more jobs, as Nigerians across the 1,000 selected villages have been trained on how to install, recharge and operate the satellite television system.