The government of Zambia has announced to near completion of construction of US $280m communication towers across the country ahead of schedule.
Transport and Communications Minister Brian Mushimba said the project which was supposed to be completed in three years will be completed before schedule as government expected to build over 1000 communication towers at the end of the year out of a total of 1,009 that were expected to be completed in three years.
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Communication towers
“400 hundred communication towers will be erected this year in addition to over 600 that were erected last year. This would translate to about 96% of bringing the universal coverage of both internet and communication facilities to Zambians,” said Minister Brian Mushimba.
The communication towers project which is funded by the Chinese government through a concessional loan, is aimed at transforming Zambia’s network coverage. It will facilitate electronic collection of revenue by the Government through mobile money transfers.
The project will also significantly increase the delivery and access of various services in rural areas by both the public and private sectors to support socio-economic activities and also help raise the mobile network coverage across the country to about 92%.
The government is in the process of introducing regulations in the deployment of ICT infrastructure in order to bring order in the sector. Moreover the minister said that some funds would be sourced from the universal access funds to complete the last mile of the project.
