Television Zanzibar, the first colour television south of Sahara, is a state owned broadcasting station which produces and transmits development – oriented programs. The station was inaugurated in 1973 and broadcasts in Kiswahili and English and carries both local and International programmes. It covers totally both Islands of Unguja and Pemba and its signal reaches Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanga, Bagamoyo and the coastal belt of Tanzania Mainland up to Mombasa in Kenya.

The mission of Television Zanzibar is information, education and entertainment to the public taking into consideration their interests. Since its inception the motto for Television Zanzibar has remained ‘Television for education’, the idea which stemmed from the First President of Zanzibar the Late Abeid Aman Karume.

The organization is maintained by hierarchy of Leadership. It is lead by a Director followed by four high ranked officers; Chief Engineer, Program Manager, an Accountant, a Planning and Administration officer.

The Organization is highly respected and recognized by Public, the Government and other Institutions within the Country and outside as well (nationally & international). Hence it is very popular within the coastal belt of Kenya and Tanzania including the whole Islands of Zanzibar. Television Zanzibar has extensive experience in broadcasting educational programmes on health, poverty, Gender, Environment, women and children, and other socio-economic Development issues. It airs 50% of locally produced programmes and 50% programmes are foreign.

TVZ studio is situated in an old Municipal Hole building at Karume House where the structure is built of stones and mud as are most buildings in the stone Town area. The building has been going a series of maintenance several times to the extent that the construction engineers believe that the building needs a lot of resources to bring it to the required standard.

The building was renovated in 1972 when it was turned into TV studio and was meant to be temporary. Because of financial constraints the government could not put up another TV studio structure to date.

The space for the implementation of TV activities has long been not enough and it has now become worse where as production spaces, news room, program production space and others do not satisfy the needs of a modern TV studio.