Xinhua Signs News Exchange Agreement with Zambia News and Information Services

On August 25, 2023, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency signed a news exchange and cooperation agreement with the Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS) in Lusaka, Zambia. According to Xinhua, the agreement covered news content exchange, video and new media cooperation, and journalist training. Xinhua’s president, Fu Hua (傅華), met with Loyce Saili, director of ZANIS, at the ZANIS headquarters in Lusaka during a combined signing and equipment handover ceremony, at which Xinhua donated laptops and hard drives to ZANIS. Saili noted that the two agencies’ relationship dated to before 2005, when ZANIS was still called Zambia Information Services, and said the 2023 agreement renewed a memorandum of understanding first concluded in 1984. Saili mentioned that the newly formed ZANIS Television would begin broadcasting later in the year and suggested the agency would look to China for training of related personnel. Using official discourse typical of such arrangements, subordinating media issues to diplomatic relationships, Fu framed the agreements within a broader push to build “a favorable environment in terms of public opinion for both countries to pursue a development path suited to their national conditions” ahead of the 60th anniversary of China-Zambia diplomatic relations in 2024, and invited ZANIS to participate in the fifth World Media Summit, a forum organized and funded by Xinhua.