Page 82 - SAMENA Trends - November-December 2019

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China to Offer Satellite TV to 500 Villages in Ivory Coast

In Ivory Coast, representatives of the
Chinese government have just launched
the local part of the project to offer satellite
television to 10,000 African villages.
The Ivorian part of the initiative will see
500 villages receiving the necessary
infrastructure to receive the bouquet of
clear channels provided by the project.
As part of the project, technicians from
StarTimes, China’s technical partner for
the project, will install satellite dishes and
provide 20-home decoders in each village.
For the maintenance of the equipment, the
pay-TV operator trained young Ivorians who
will take care of the repair of all equipment
in case of breakdowns. Launched in
2015 and targeting 25 countries on the
African continent, the Chinese initiative
has already allowed many villages in the
continent, Benin, Senegal and Nigeria, for
example, to access satellite television.

Sudan Launches Its First Ever Satellite in Partnership with China

Sudan’s first ever satellite for conducting research in military,
economic and space technology has been launched by China,
the northeast African country’s ruling body said. General
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who heads Sudan’s sovereign council,
announced the launch of the satellite at a meeting of his top
security officials held in Khartoum. China’s state news agency,
Xinhua, reported that the satellite was launched on Sunday
from north China’s Shanxi Province. “The satellite aims to
develop research in space technology, acquire data as well as
discover natural resources for the country’s military needs,” a
statement issued by the council said. The spokesman of the
ruling body Mohamed al-Fakhi Sulaiman told AFP that “in a
few months the satellite would be monitored from Sudan”.
“China launched the satellite as it is a partner in this project.”
Sudan, which is battling an economic crisis, has been involved
in a national space program for decades covering activities
such as remote sensing and geoinformatics. In 2013, the then
Sudanese government of now ousted leader Omar al-Bashir
established the Institute of Space Research and Aerospace
(ISRA) as part of an overall plan to develop space technologies.
Bashir was ousted by the army in April following a nationwide
protest movement against his rule of three decades. The
protests were triggered by the economic crisis led by acute
shortage of foreign currency and high inflation.

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