Kenya and China have partnered to launch a digital project that will see 800 villages across the East African nation get access to satellite television services.

The Cabinet Secretary for Information and Communication Technologies, Joe Mucheru declared, “The two governments are fully committed towards the project and have put in place elaborate structures to ensure the plan is implemented as envisaged in order to extend the scope of digital TV coverage within the country, while applying ICT for national development.”

The digital project that will be implemented by Chinese firm StarTimes has seen over 130 engineers trained for the venture. Mucheru further said that over 16,000 households in 800 villages across the country will be connected with satellite television service while 2,400 public institutions will be connected through a satellite projector TV system and 32-inch television sets.

On the other hand, Chinese Ambassador in Kenya, Sun Baohong expressed his delight, “I’m glad to see that preliminary works has been carried out successfully with close cooperation between our two sides. The national training of technicians and service staff for 300 villages is completed, paving way for the upcoming technical training at regional level.”

Zhang Junqi, StarTimes Kenya CEO, noted that the village project in Kenya will create over 1,600 job opportunities directly as they intend to train at least two maintenance engineers in each of the 800 villages.

“This will be key in ensuring sustainability of the project beyond the implementation period while hundreds of other engineers will be enrolled to undertake installation for the beneficiaries across the country ahead of October 2018 completion date. I give my assurance that we are up to task,” concluded Zhang.