Canal+ extends to Rwanda
July 23, 2012
By Chris Forrester
Canal + Afrique has extended its footprint to Rwanda in East Africa, says a report from BBC Monitoring. Françoise Le Guennou-Remarck, a senior staffer at Canal+ Afrique, says they are introducing “a new era” in pay television to help the country transition from analogue to digital broadcasting.
Canal+Afrique, a subsidiary of Vivendi group, is a pay television network that broadcasts its programmes in French and has already established itself in the Francophone West Africa before extending to Rwanda.
Viewers will have to pay 55,000 Rwandan francs (approximately €72.80) for a decoder, and then receive two Canal+ channels as well as 102 Canalsat channels at a cost of about €16.50 which is claimed to be substantially lower than the €105.90 levied by DSTV.
“Canal+ Afrique demonstrates its intention to propose a high-quality digital television devoted to meet the needs of the great majority through universal coverage courtesy of satellite technology,” said the C+ spokesperson.
Currently, the country has only two pay TV networks – DSTV and [Chinese-backed] StarTimes. Canal+ Afrique went live last week.