Kenya: Chinese Firm to Control Media Signal

By staff writer

NAIROBI---A Chinese company has been given a contract to distribute media content in Kenya in a decision that could invite controversy. This comes in the wake of the awaited switch to digital broadcast later this month.

To facilitate the digital switchover, Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) decided to split the television broadcast market into two segments: signal distributors and content providers. The company has got the licence to distribute digital broadcast signal, giving it control of key strategic infrastructure and role in Kenya’s transition to digital broadcasting.

With digital, incumbent broadcasters are then required to apply afresh to CCK for the licences that they want. The mandate of the Chinese company will be to build, own and manage television signal networks.

Kenya’s Nation Media Group and Royal Media Services are already signal distributors built up over 10 years and invested billions of shillings in, except that the technology they use is analogue. Given the new sector regulations, they are compelled to apply afresh to the CCK to become digital signal distributors. If CCK locks them out of the sector, they stand to lose billions of shillings.

All television companies in Kenya today are content providers. They will all have to surrender their frequencies to the CCK, who will re-issue them to the signal distributors. They will then focus on providing content.

The Chinese company, the Pan Africa Media, a part of Star Times of China, has no experience in Kenya, having been registered in the country hardly a week before the tender was opened.
It became the automatic winner after the Procurement Appeals Tribunal on 19 July 2011 dismissed an application by a consortium of local companies that challenged the award of the tender of the licence by the Communications Commission of Kenya.

The local consortium was made up of local broadcasters, the Nation Media Group and Royal Media — the owners of NTV and Citizen TV — respectively.

The July 19 ruling that was read by a member of the Appeal Tribunal, Mr Akich Okolla, was greeted with uproar within the broadcasting industry, with key players questioning the wisdom of granting control of such a national strategic infrastructure to a Chinese company, especially in view of China’s record on press freedom.

China does not have a free press and is notorious for censoring the media, including over the Internet, and restricting civil liberties.

In view of the laws of Kenya that tender regulations required that a bidder had to have a tax compliance certificate, it is a mystery how the Chinese managed to pass this hurdle in view of the fact that Pan Africa Media was registered two days before the tender was opened. And, contrary to practice in international tenders, the tender for the second signal distributor was not advertised internationally.

Critics have also questioned why local broadcasters have been locked out of the deal despite the fact that the national information and communications technology (ICT) policy published in January 2006, commits the government to promote participation of local investors in companies that own critical telecommunications infrastructure.

The transmission networks comprise frequencies, satellite capacity, masts, towers, transmitters, antennae and other technology that make it possible to send television programmes from the television studios over the airwaves to television sets across the country.

There has been a significant rise of Chinese companies in Kenya, with Chinese contractors winning large contracts in road construction, building of new pipelines, airports, ports, telecommunication and energy sector jobs.