The Kenyan Government is spending over Sh500 million to re-introduce radio broadcasts for schools. The governmment has distributed over 5,000 WorldSpace satellite receivers to schools across the country. The Kenya Institute of Education has prepared the programmes, and to access the broadcasts each school must have its own password. The WorldSpace subscriptions are pre-paid by the government.
on May 28th, 2004 at 15:46
Makes a change to hear of a *genuine* use of Worldspace (as oposed to all the UK sourced garbage on there) …
on May 28th, 2004 at 16:07
Yes, I just looked at something we published back in 1998 that said “WorldSpace Foundation will dedicate 5% of the digital channel capacity on the WorldSpace AfriStar, AsiaStar and AmeriStar satellites to education and social development. Community broadcasters will be involved in creating content for this purpose.” To be fair, there is some already, but I doubt it’s 5% of the total capacity.
on May 29th, 2004 at 12:01
I think the WorldSpace founder (?) made recently a statement where he stressed that WorldSpace is a commercial operation and no charitable organization?
on May 29th, 2004 at 12:46
There are actually two WorldSpace organizations. The WorldSpace foundation has changed its name to First Voice International(http://www.firstvoiceint.org/) and remains a charitable organization. WorldSpace the company (http://www.worldspace.com/) is indeed a commercial operation. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the relationship between the two, but there was a major reorganization last year.