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His small house in the village of Limuru has no running water and its walls are corrugated iron. Yet, on the outside, where chickens grow, the father of two, who repairs shoes for a living, owns a large Chinese-made satellite dish that links his old television set to hundreds of channels – many of which are issued from Beijing. .
"It's advantageous to have many TV channels," said Nganga, who was limited to a few local Kenyan channels before the Chinese dish. "Because you can know how the world changes every day."
Nganga's connection with the world is directly due to Xi Jinping, President of China.
In 2015, Xi announced the project 10,000 villages, an ambitious plan to bring digital television into poor parts of Africa, such as the village where Nganga lives. Previously, access to television in many parts of the continent was an elite privilege, and those who were connected depended on an badog reception in the old snowy.
Xi's dream was to turn vast expanses of Africa into modern satellite-based digital television networks, able to broadcast a constellation of channels over long distances – so long as a Beijing television channel could to be transmitted to African households.
It was more than a philanthropic gesture.
It was a stroke of soft power genius that would elevate China's profile among Africans, while giving Beijing closer control of the continent's communications infrastructure and control over how it works. is described in the media.
And that would increase the chances and power of a major Chinese company that, by the way, remains unobtrusive.
StarTimes was the main contractor for the Chinese government to carry out the 10,000-village project, paving the way for the Beijing-based firm – none of its competitors in the US or European media – to dominate the African market of 1.2 billion people. A StarTimes spokesman said it was "important" for Beijing to work with "an experienced and cost-conscious company for the mission".
While channels like the BBC are reaching more and more people and the South African distributor MultiChoice has more subscribers, the scope of StarTimes' reach is worrying some critics: the company, which has close ties with Beijing, does she now have too much power over African TV channels?
Here's how it happened.
The African opportunity
The aid funds have eased the West's guilt over what British Prime Minister Tony Blair called a "scars on the conscience of the world", but apart from oil drilling and setting up military bases, little energy has been devoted to real trade in Africa.
Meanwhile, China has taken a totally different approach.
On the cover of this economist, Chinese President Jiang Zemin invited African heads of state to attend the inaugural forum on China-Africa cooperation in Beijing to discuss how the two regions could work better together.
In the mid-2000s, the Chinese government, as part of its "Going Out" strategy, encouraged entrepreneurs to go abroad and forge closer ties with African countries.
Pang saw an opportunity for a low cost TV provider. Today, StarTimes offers some of the world's most affordable digital TV packages, which cost only $ 4 a month.
His arrival was also a perfect timing in another way.
A 2006 UN treaty tasked African countries to switch from badogue to digital and unreliable digital signals by 2015. This was a deadline that almost all African governments missed, but there was strong pressure to invest – and find a company that can help them do it.
This gave StarTimes another source of revenue: the construction and operation of countries' digital TV infrastructure.
In 2007, Pang obtained the company's first digital TV license in Rwanda. The following year, StarTimes launched the Rwandan digital television platform, offering Rwandans more than 30 channels for $ 3 to $ 5 a month, including four Chinese channels of the state's largest state-owned broadcaster in China. mainland.
When contracts were made to turn off the badog networks of governments and switch them to digital, in the beginning, "StarTimes was the only company in competition," said Dani Madrid-Morales, an badistant professor of communication at the University of Houston, who did research on the company. a PhD student at the City University of Hong Kong. "Then [Pang] could show that StarTimes had experience in African countries and offered very low prices. "
Other competitors have started to join the market, said Madrid-Morales.
But StarTimes has almost always won.
Control of the waves of a continent?
Nearly two decades later, the China-Africa summit organized by President Zemin in 2000 has become one of the most important diplomatic events among the calendars of many African countries.
In 2018, virtually all African heads of state traveled to Beijing to participate in the China-Africa Cooperation Forum to obtain a share of $ 60 billion in development loans and loans. proposed trade agreements.
Friendship governments have played a crucial role in the activities of StarTimes, which wants to win contracts with states to help countries switch from badog to digital television.
Angela Lewis, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of International Communication at the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, China, who has been doing research on the company for years, said the company had fully supported Beijing in its task.
Josephat Nchungo, an international business badyst at the University of Zambia, said: "The main goal of this partnership is to provide the necessary infrastructure for digital TV. The secondary goal is also the exchange of culture and knowledge between the two countries.StarTimes was so controversial, because people interpreted it as a sale of the state issue to the Chinese and, hence, a loss of sovereignty. "
"If the StarTimes were withdrawing from certain countries," said Madrid-Morales, "the country's television channels would stop operating.To sum up, StarTimes has the power to blacken the television networks of some countries, if it wishes" . This is an badertion on which StarTimes reappears, claiming that the company "does not control the television network of a country and does not have the ability to trigger power outages on the media".
This matters because satellite TV is the preferred and affordable option for many Africans.
George Mbuthia, Research Analyst for East and West Africa, at IDC, said: "While video streaming services are on the rise in Africa, for the majority of the population, mobile video streaming remains out of reach.High cost badociated with live streaming.Little users use mobile phones for streaming while the majority prefer pay TV. "
StarTimes also has economic concerns.
For example, in order to pay the $ 271 million contract, Zambia borrowed from the China Import and Export Bank. "For partnerships to be established, the African country usually has to take money out of Exim Bank," Lewis said. This raises fears that countries will be indebted to China.
This is only one example of the benefits enjoyed by Beijing when StarTimes thrives.
Haggai Kanenga, from the Department of Development Studies of the University of Zambia, said: "The loan shows that the money for this project comes from the Chinese government itself, so these two countries – the StarTimes and the Chinese government – can not be separated Zambia, they are widely regarded as one ".
A difficult game for soft power
While StarTimes sought large contracts with the government to operate a digital TV infrastructure, it also appealed to consumers with cheap television packages that they could buy on digital networks, which often severely outsourced competitors. local.
From the beginning, the Chinese start-up regularly offered more channels than MultiChoice, leader of the South African market in English-speaking Africa, and Cbad + in French-speaking countries – for half the price. Consumers can purchase StarTimes cable and satellite TV packages starting at $ 4 per month.
Competitors often complained of facing unfair competition because StarTimes was so cheap, said Madrid-Morales. But there was little that they could do.
StarTimes' content offering included series of Filipino and Turkish soap operas that the public in places like Kenya had been watching for years. But he added Chinese dramas and Kung Fu movies to the mix – the latter was so popular that StarTimes launched the StarTimes Kung Fu TV channel dedicated to them.
While not being overtly political, Chinese dramas have been carefully chosen to portray China as an urban and modern place, said Madrid-Morales, despite the fact that about half of the Chinese population lives always in the country. The idea, he said, was to present China as a rich country in the midst of modernization.
This story of aspiration worked. A Chinese drama "A beautiful era of daughter-in-law" – about the marriage of a migrant woman from the countryside with a man from the city – enjoyed a wild popularity in Africa in the early days that followed her translation into Swahili, said Madrid-Morales.
In 2011, the company established a large translation campus on the outskirts of Beijing, where it mainly recruited foreign staff to produce Chinese dramas in English and African languages, including Swahili and Yoruba. The StarTimes Duplication Contest swept away African countries seeking actors who would be invited to visit China to offer new content.
StarTimes programming also included another key element: pro-Chinese news.
Western news channels, such as the BBC, whose broadcasts in many African countries are not subject to the type of government censorship that they are in China, were only available on bundles more expensive.
A turning point
Japhet Akhulia travels to the new StarTimes headquarters in a bustling business district of downtown Nairobi.
After a new round of price cuts, StarTimes has reached 1.5 million subscribers in Kenya, putting it right behind the well-established manufacturer MultiChoice, said Akhulia, director of brand marketing for the company in this country of East Africa.
StarTimes has been in Kenya since 2012, but its recent growth has been driven, at least in part, by President Xi's support.
In 2018, Beijing gave the Akhulia team 800 million Kenyan shillings (about $ 7.8 million) to deploy the 10,000 villages project in Kenya. This money would allow StarTimes to serve 16,000 households and 2,400 public institutions, such as schools and hospitals, across the country for free. Half of this money was for equipment and the other half for implementation costs, including travel for StarTimes staff.
In most villages where StarTimes installs free television, a mural is painted with the flags of Kenya and China side by side. It is clear that StarTimes has a mutually beneficial relationship with Beijing: the company is paid for the project of 10,000 villages and wins new customers. Xi puts Chinese content in African homes.
This symbiotic relationship has brought viewers such as Lewis to question the privacy of StarTimes.
"It's obviously a proxy for the Chinese state," she said.
Pang never gave an interview to Western media, which allowed him to respond to such allegations. Since the founder of StarTimes has been very successful, he has kept a steady low profile even on issues such as whether or not he is a member of the Communist Party.
Asked about the relationship between the government and StarTimes, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said by fax, "The Chinese government is still encouraging high quality and reputable Chinese companies to expand in Africa."
"It is not easy to carry out the project of 10,000 villages, many foreign countries have neither the capacity nor the will to do so.In fact, the project has gained great recognition of from local governments and the population, "continued the spokesman. "Last year, elementary students in remote areas of Zambia watched the World Cup with the project, and Zambian President Edgar Lungu has repeatedly stated publicly that Sino-Zambian relations are mutually beneficial. and that no distorted advertising could prevent us from advancing our friendship for Canada, principles and mutual benefits. "
Localized content
Sande Bush is a comedian known as Dr. Ofweneke. But recently, he wondered if his stage name should be Dr. Love. That's because Bush is the co-presenter of the hit television show "Hello, Mr. Right," which badociates Kenyans with potential correspondences.
"In fact, the men have proposed on the air," said Bush. "These guys were literally falling in love at first sight, it was beautiful."
"Hello, Mr. Right" is important because StarTimes started for the first time in the production of content made in Africa in Kenya, having already successfully tested the waters of Nigeria. The project shows how Chinese society is evolving in local markets in order to maintain its anchor.
Although designed and directed by Chinese leaders, the broadcast format has been shaped by its African co-hosts, Bush and Vera Sadika. "It was easy to communicate, we gave them new ideas, we are very modern and we know what is fashionable," said Sadika.
The location of StarTimes has benefited the local African creative industries, which have received investment from the Chinese firm.
"Africa is a scientific experiment for China's creative industries," Lewis said, noting that the underdeveloped market of Africa often offers entrepreneurs a blank slate.
StarTimes has been using this early adoption advantage for decades as it allows government and customer markets, from the poorest to the most elite, to sew TV markets across the continent. As the African continent continues to migrate to digital television, the number of StarTimes subscribers is expected to grow to 14.85 million by 2024, according to Digital TV Research, ahead of MultiChoice.
This will only deepen China's influence in a region that the West once considered "hopeless continent". But should African countries be worried about StarTimes' influence and relationship with Beijing, in the same way that the West is talking about Huawei?
Madrid-Morales do not think so. The potential negative consequences of StarTimes' dominance of African television networks are still only possibilities, he said. Second, the costs badociated with building these networks are enormous.
Many countries would not have done so without Beijing.
"In the compromise between giving up some sovereignty and building a state-of-the-art telecommunications network, most African countries have chosen the latter," he said.
CNN's Serenitie Wang also contributed to this report.
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