By Kwese TV has confirmed partnering Dr Dish in a content distribution deal that will see the Econet media owned company beam in the country. This follows reports that Dr Dish inked a partnership deal with Kwese recently with another claiming a license was already in its hands.
But it turned out to be a content distribution pact between the two which in an exclusive interview with an impeccable source who requested anonymity, the deal had to be struck to penetrate into Zimbabwe.
“Yes we have signed deal with Dr Dish as our local content distributor. We felt this was an easy way to get into Zimbabwe since they already have an operating licence,” said the source.
In a statement announcing the not so triumphal entry of Kwese TV, Dr Dish said they received a license in 2012 which will expire five years from now.
The company’s executive chairperson Mr Nyasha Muzavazi expressed his joy for getting Kwese onboard.
We notified our regulator that we were partnering with Kwese, and gave them the full details of the channels we were going to bring to the nation, together with a whole host of other technical information,” he said.
Dr Dish hoped to bring the Kwese service to Zimbabwe in January of 2017, but had to wait for Zimbabwe to get its slot in the ongoing pan- African rollout which Kwese is currently involved with.
In terms of readiness and investment in preparing to launch Mr Muzavazi also said they have been working round the clock to see this into fruition.
“The parties have been working tirelessly since then and making all necessary preparations for the launch of Kwese in Zimbabwe. A lot of work has gone into building a powerful distribution infrastructure, recruitment, training and development of Kwese’s installation teams, the high-tech Kwese Technites, customer service training, advertising and other work,” he added.
Dr Dish also successfully secured the participation of Econet Kwese Television Zimbabwe (Private) Limited as part of its establishment, in compliance with the regulations.
Announcing the choice of Econet Media as a partner, Mr Muzavazi said “We are very excited about our partnership because Econet Media is a next generation African media player whose multiplatform offering includes direct to home satellite services (DTH), a mobile app – Kwese App which includes the popular sports all Kwese Free Sports (KFS) App, broadband television service Kwese Play, digital sports service KweseESPN amongst others. With a presence in 23 countries and over 75m eye balls across Africa, we could not miss the opportunity to bring Kwese TV to Zimbabwe. The final piece in ensuring we achieve this was to make sure that our license fees were all up to date, and that was done this week. We are now ready to launch Kwese. The wait is now over!”
This development represents one of the biggest investments in the media space the country has witnessed for some time now resulting in hundreds of direct jobs and downstream employment.
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