MINISTER of Youth and Sports Moses Mawere has announced that ZNBC will start broadcasting live the ongoing Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations tournament after accessing rights from CAF.

In a ministerial statement to Parliament this afternoon, Mawere attributed ZNBC’s failure to televise previous games to “financial technicalities” which the national broadcaster was facing.

He confirmed that ZNBC was owing CAF $750,000 for the 2015 edition of AFCON as of December 31st 2016.

“ZNBC will start airing the games effective today, March 01, 2017. The match between Guinea and Egypt will be televised at 15:00 ours while the one between Mali and Zambia will be televised at 18:00 hours. I wish to inform you that ZNBC which is supposed to be airing these games had some debts with CAF for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations and again this year there was still need for ZNBC to pay some broadcasting fees to CAF which they never did,” Mawere said.

The House heard that CAF had allowed ZNBC to broadcast live the AFCON tournament at no cost after engaging in talks with the Sports Ministry.

“My ministry engaged in talks with CAF yesterday to negotiate if we could be allowed to televise the games and then pay later on and I am glad to tell you that CAF has allowed us to broadcast at no fee at all,” said Mawere.