Hope Channel Tanzania Secures Five-Year Broadcast License

The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Agency has granted Hope Channel Tanzania a five-year, renewable broadcast license.

This license will place Hope Channel Tanzania on Tanzania’s national cable network that covers all twelve regions of Tanzania and reaches 50,000 homes. Additionally, the signal is strong enough to be received in 11 surrounding countries.

Hope Channel Tanzania began as Morning Star Television in 2014 with test broadcasts under just a studio construction license. However, financial, logistical, and regulatory barriers limited its reach to a confined local region. “Not long ago this was an impossible feat,” says Mazara Edwards, Studio Manager of Hope Channel Tanzania. “This miracle has happened because God wants to use Hope Channel to change lives.”

With just four employees and some volunteers, Hope Channel Tanzania now broadcasts 24/7 with 60 percent of its programming taken from the Hope Channel International feed and 40 percent produced locally.

Strong partnerships with area Seventh-day Adventist churches enable Hope Channel Tanzania to also live stream events. An example of this is the NET series of meetings currently being conducted by Geoffrey Mbwana, Vice President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. The daily meetings that began January 24 and end February 14 are attended by about 750 people every evening, and streamed live to about another 20,000 in 300 churches and homes across the country.

On Sabbath, February 7, thousands gathered by the Indian Ocean as 2,309 people were baptized as a result of these meetings.

“This is incredibly exciting news for us,” says Kandus Thorp, Hope Channel’s vice president for international development. “The very best way to celebrate this license is by broadcasting the NET series going on in Tanzania right now.”