Emma Okonji
StarTimes Group President, Pang Xinxing has said the company will provide more job opportunities for African young people.
He gave the assurance at the recent 2017 YouthConnekt Africa Summit, which held in Kigali.
According to Xinxing, Africa has the youngest population in the world of 226 million people aged between 15 and 24 – and the highest youth unemployment rate of about 60 per cent in the world.
He noted that lack of employment opportunities, low levels of education and skills combined with limited access to sexual and reproductive health services, have resulted in a generation of young people with limited association to the formal job market.
“Africa’s youths represent a significant asset for sustainable growth if the demographic transition, characterised by an increase in the working age population is appropriately harnessed,” Xinxing said.
He added: “Since StarTimes entered African market in 2002, it has grown rapidly with creating a large amount of job opportunities for African locals, especially for young people.â€
Xinxing said at the summit, with noting that StarTimes is to provide more job opportunities for African youths.
“StarTimes adopts a localised human resource strategy with having engaged 4,000 Africans in various departments who are stationed in over 30 African countries. African local staff occupies 75 per cent of the company’s employments. And the company is still in the process of employing more African members of staff as its business continues to roll out to other parts of the continent.”
He said StarTimes now serves nearly 10 million subscribers with a signal covering the whole continent and has established subsidiaries in more than 30 African countries with a massive distribution network of 200 brand halls, 3,000 convenience stores and 5,000 dealers.
More jobs are being created through the establishment of the dealer network which currently stands at over 5000 dealers in towns and cities where StarTimes has signal covering. This network is crucial to the growth of the economy as it will positively contribute to more job creation as StarTimes rolls out to more towns and cities across the continent.
He further said that StarTimes is empowering African young people by offering professional training programmes and learning opportunities so as to improve their overall professional qualities.
Last year, StarTimes Group held the first Star TV Drama Dubbing Contest in Tanzania and invited 10 excellent contestants to Beijing, where they accepted professional dubbing training and got opportunities to work in StarTimes Headquarters, he said.
Hilder Edmund Malecela, who won the first prize of the dubbing contest said: “I am so happy to realise my dream and work on such a good platform. Now, in addition to dubbing, I have learnt other skills in the TV field, such as editing and recording.â€
In his speech at the summit, Xinxing also unveiled a plan to establish TV program production and dubbing centers in African countries, which will help train more talented dubbing actors and TV programs producers.
StarTimes, as a media group, is also empowering African young people with providing abundant TV contents as TV serves as a key channel for young people to acquire information.
