AudiencScapes

With help from USAID, citizens in Zimbabwe will soon be able to watch their government in action. Debates and other proceedings will be broadcast live beginning late September.

By Tawanda Karombo

Beginning later this month, Zimbabwe’s parliamentary proceedings will be beamed live on national radio and television. Plans to broadcast debates and other government activities are part of a comprehensive digitalization project being financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the nongovernmental organization Pact, which operates international development projects. The Southern Africa Parliamentary Support Trust (SAPST) is also involved in the financing and is handling some technical aspects of the program.

Zimbabwe’s Parliament, which uses the bicameral system, comprises a lower-house legislature and upper-house senate. Both houses have representation from the country’s three political parties: Zanu PF and the two formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (one led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the other by Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara).

Few of Zimbabwe’s public institutions are computerized and most lack modern ICT equipment beyond phones and fax machines. To update the government’s systems, USAID, working together with Pact and SAPST, have allocated funding worth US$500,000 for the purchase of audio and other communication equipment.

In a press release to local and international media, USAID explained the project is intended to promote good governance and increase parliamentarians’ communication and debating capacity.

“USAID has had a long standing relationship with the Parliament of Zimbabwe and this donation is symbolic of our wishes to continue to work with Parliament to expand its capacity,” said Karen Freeman, the USAID Director, in a statement.

The first phase involves the installation of a new sound system and voting equipment for Parliament. The sound system is intended to make it easier for Zimbabwe’s media to cover parliamentary activities. Some of the equipment will be used to undertake easy simultaneous translation of deliberations from English to either Shona or Ndebele.

Thanks to the new equipment, parliamentary and committee debates can now be digitally recorded onto a computer, providing an archive for public discussion. The new system will also speed publication of the daily record of parliamentary debate and proceedings.

In an interview with the Newsday newspaper, Zimbabwe’s Speaker of Parliament, Lovemore Moyo, confirmed that the first phase of the project “saw the mounting of an audio and archiving system, includes a conference delegate system, an archiving system whereby parliamentary debates, committee meetings and other events are recorded and kept for future use, as well as a digital system for Members of Parliament to vote using smart cards assigned to each MP.”

Moyo believes the digitalization project is a step toward making government more transparent and accountable. “This digitalization will make the process of the business of Parliament easy and more easily accessible by the media and by the people,” he said.

Tawanda Karombo
Tawanda Karombo is a freelance journalist living in Zimbabwe. He has had experience with Financial, Business and Communication Reporting.