A review of Lesotho’s digital migration challenges: Policy lessons from global and regional experiences

This article presents an analysis of Lesotho’s apparent challenges in its quest to migrate from analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB) from 2006 to 2015. The move towards DTTB had given the state-owned Lesotho National Broadcasting Services a glimmer of hope to strengthen its position in the local market and thwart competition from South African broadcasters. However, the country lacked a policy direction or a clear road map to gain resources for DTTB development and subsequently failed to meet the international analogue switchoff deadline of 17 June 2015. Given the high level of foreign television service penetration in Lesotho, I argue that the government’s weak and sluggish intervention spells tragedy for the national broadcaster in the digital era, unless corrective policy measures based on comparative lessons from early adopters, with a rapid and coordinated implementation strategy as proposed in this article, are vigorously pursued.