Telecommunications in Zaire

The Postal and Telecommunications Board provides overseas telephone and domestic and overseas mail service. In 1984 the country had only 30,300 telephones, almost all of them in the capital. A new satellite ground station was installed at Matadi in 1985, which greatly improved the quality of international calls. Calling Brussels from Kinshasa, in fact, was reportedly far easier than making a connection to a city in the interior. An American company, in partnership with local business interests, established a cellular telephone system for Kinshasa in June 1991. In 1990 there were reported to be 32,000 telephones in Zaire, but by 1992 the telephone system as a whole was reported to be dysfunctional.

Broadcast facilities increased throughout the 1980s, and residents of most larger towns can now receive radio and television programming. Fourteen cities have television stations. There were an estimated 40,000 television sets and 3.7 million radio receivers in Zaire in 1990. The capital has one medium-wave amplitude- modulation (AM) radio station and one frequency-modulation (FM) station with programming in French; there are two other AM and two FM stations in other cities. Five shortwave stations transmit programming in French, Kiswahili, Lingala, and several other languages to listeners in more remote areas. All radio stations are government owned and part of the Voice of Zaire (Voix du Zaïre) network.

The state of telecommunications in the early 1990s was reported to be deplorable. The only reliable national radio network is said to be that of the Roman Catholic Church.

Note: This article comes from Zaire: A Country Study, which is in the public domain. Full credit goes to the authors of it.