Three Men on a Boat 
The other day there was a report in one of the local newspapers on the possibility of a pay Tv being launched in Zimbabwe. The highlight of the article was the seemingly impressive list of channels that would provide a line of seemly impressive programming that the said network would provide if the deal went through. Although we in the boat wish no ill on the unnamed entrepreneurs on their endeavors we were not that impressed by this news.
Trends clearly show that nations that are technologically advanced have over time, purposefully made concerted efforts to achieve this progress . Therefore if Zimbabwe is ever going to be competitive on the global stage we need to start viewing progress not just in terms of the level of access say to certain goods and services that are seemingly considered world standard but to go beyond that and to start creating truly unique world standard products and services.
In the case of a service like information or entertainment delivery that a pay-TV provides, this may require investment in local content that meets world standards (by this we don’t mean imitating 50 Cent some such artist) but content that is reflective of unique cultural elements and expressions.
However the development of content alone is not sufficient. It has to be backed by investment in technology in order to deliver this content not just locally but internationally. At the moment the buzz word in advanced economies is STREAMING, information has gone beyond satellite beyond cable tv and some countries content is now being streamed via Wi-fi directly to a television. Therefore making investments in satellite pay TV is in our view partial progress if it can be described as such.
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