Archives: Dispatches

The Times of Zambia is a state-owned English-language daily broadsheet newspaper published in Zambia and headquartered in Ndola, wholly owned by the Government of the Republic of Zambia. Its predecessor, the Copperbelt Times, was established in Northern Rhodesia in the early 1930s and later renamed the Northern News, a twice-weekly newspaper that became a daily from 1953. Under the ownership of Lonrho, controlled by businessman Tiny Rowland, the paper was renamed the Times of Zambia on July 1, 1965, with journalist Richard Hall appointed as editor. The Kaunda administration intervened to appoint its own editor-in-chief in 1972, and Zambia’s ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP) took the paper over outright in 1975. Following the return of multiparty democracy, a court transferred ownership to the Zambian government. The paper also publishes the Sunday Times of Zambia and falls within the supervisory portfolio of the Ministry of Information and Media alongside the Zambia Daily Mail.

The Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) is Zambia’s statutory public service broadcaster, wholly owned by the Government of the Republic of Zambia. It was established by the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation Act of 1987, which converted the preexisting Zambia Broadcasting Services — a government department under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services (now the Ministry of Information and Media) — into an independent statutory body, and began full operations on April 1, 1988. The corporation’s predecessor institutions trace their history to the Northern Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation, established following the breakup of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1964. ZNBC operates three radio channels — Radio 1, Radio 2, and Radio 4 — and multiple television channels including TV1, TV2, TV3, and TV4. The corporation describes its mandate as providing information, entertainment, and education to all Zambians. Although formally structured as an independent statutory body, the State Media Monitor has noted that the government retains direct control over key appointments — the ministry responsible for information holds the power to appoint and dismiss board members — and that as of mid-2025 the corporation’s operations depended almost entirely on government disbursements, with ZNBC described as “mired in deep financial crisis.” As of May 2026, the last publicly available annual report on the ZNBC corporate website covered 2021. In November 2025, the Zambian parliament passed the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation Act, 2025 (Act No. 26 of 2025), assented to by the president on December 23, 2025, repealing and replacing the 1987 Act; the legislation introduced a new statutory broadcast levy, reconstituted the board with prescribed institutional representation, and added formal language enshrining press freedom and editorial independence as governing principles — though the minister retained the power to appoint all board members. As of May 2026, the Act had not yet entered into force, pending a commencement date to be set by the minister by statutory instrument. ZNBC holds a 40 percent minority stake in TopStar Communications Company Limited, a joint venture incorporated in June 2016 with China’s StarTimes Group (四達時代集團), which holds the remaining 60 percent controlling stake; under the terms of the deal, accompanied by a loan of over 200 million US dollars from the Export-Import Bank of China, TopStar was granted the right to collect all ZNBC advertising revenues and broadcast tower rental fees for 25 years — a structure former ZNBC Director-General Chibamba Kanyama described in 2021 as a “rip-off” that would drain the broadcaster of income, and which independent analysts had already described three years earlier as giving StarTimes de facto control over the public broadcaster.

The Zambia Daily Mail is a state-owned English-language daily broadsheet newspaper published in Lusaka, Zambia, wholly owned by the Government of the Republic of Zambia and incorporated under the Companies Act (Cap. 388) of the Laws of Zambia. Its history traces to February 23, 1960, when the first edition of the African Mail was published in Northern Rhodesia as an independent weekly pro-independence newspaper; it was renamed the Central African Mail in 1962. In 1965, the newly independent Zambian government acquired the paper from its private owners — majority shareholder David Astor among them — renaming it the Zambian Mail and subsequently expanding it into a daily publication renamed the Zambia Daily Mail in 1970, at which point it was instructed to become an “instrument in nation building.” The paper also publishes the Sunday Mail. It is one of two state-owned daily newspapers in Zambia, alongside the Times of Zambia, and both fall within the supervisory portfolio of the Ministry of Information and Media. In 2021, the Media Institute of Southern Africa called for the need to “reform government-owned publications such as the Daily Mail” so that they reflect the diverse views of all Zambians — reflecting longstanding concerns about the paper’s editorial independence.