Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS)

Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS) is the Government of Zambia’s official news and public-information department, operating directly under the Ministry of Information and Media. ZANIS is headquartered at the Mass Media Complex, Alick Nkhata Road, Lusaka, alongside the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, and produces text, photographic, video, and broadcast content for distribution to Zambian and international media partners.

Media assets

News agency: ZANIS

Television: ZANIS Television Channel

Ownership and governance

ZANIS is a public-information department within the Ministry of Information and Media, formed in 2005 by the merger of two former government wings: the Zambia News Agency (ZANA), established in 1969 as the official Zambian news agency with headquarters in Lusaka and branches across the country, and the Zambia Information Services (ZIS). The merger consolidated the government’s news-gathering and information-dissemination functions under a single departmental structure. ZANIS today operates through three principal units, Editorial, Technical Services, and Research & Publications, and describes its core mandate as interpreting government policies and providing accurate, comprehensive information to encourage public participation in national development programmes.

The Director of ZANIS is a civil-service appointment, remunerated directly by the Ministry of Information and Media. Loyce Saili has served as Director since her appointment on 31 January 2022, becoming the first woman to head the institution. Saili began her career as a journalist at ZANA in the 1990s, later serving as Director of Communication and Public Relations at the Road Development Agency and as Communications Manager at Lubambe Copper Mine. She holds a Diploma in Journalism from Evelyn Hone College, a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Edith Cowan University in Australia, and a Master’s degree in Public Relations from Liutebm University.

Operational oversight of ZANIS sits with the Ministry of Information and Media, headed since 25 September 2023 by Hon. Cornelius Mweetwa, MP, who also serves as Chief Government Spokesperson. Information and Media Permanent Secretary Thabo Kawana is the senior civil servant with day-to-day responsibility for the Ministry’s portfolio, which includes ZANIS, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the Zambia Institute of Mass Communication (ZAMCOM), and oversight engagement with IDC’s two newspaper publishers.

The launch of ZANIS Television Channel in October 2024 marked a significant operational expansion of the department. ZANIS TV was launched at the Mass Media Complex with a speech by President Hakainde Hichilema read on his behalf by Information and Media Minister Cornelius Mweetwa, and Director Saili described the channel as a state-of-the-art installation enabling live broadcasts from across the country. The Ministry of Information and Media subsequently signed a contract with MultiChoice Zambia to onboard ZANIS TV onto the DStv platform, with Permanent Secretary Kawana framing the carriage agreement as a means of expanding access to official government information and Director Saili describing the channel as a contributor to national development.

Source of funding and budget

ZANIS is primarily funded through the Ministry of Information and Media budget within the annual national appropriation. Some commercial or partnership revenue may be sought around ZANIS TV, but no detailed standalone financial statements or consistently itemised public budget line for ZANIS were identified in this review. Earlier monitoring cites a sharp fall in ZANIS allocations between 2019 and 2022, with figures of ZMW 18.8 million (approximately US$800,000) in 2019 and ZMW 4.9 million (approximately US$227,000) in 2022. No publicly itemised figures for ZANIS within the 2024 or 2025 annual budgets have been released, and the 2026 national budget envelope of ZMW 253.1 billion, presented to Parliament by Finance Minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane on 26 September 2025, does not publicly disclose a separate ZANIS subvention line. The lack of transparent line-item reporting raises questions about the sustainability and operational scope of ZANIS’s activities, although the October 2024 launch of ZANIS Television, the subsequent DStv onboarding, and the department’s continued daily news output throughout 2025 and into 2026 indicate that the department remains operationally active.

ZANIS produces text, video, and photographic content and distributes it to national and private outlets including ZNBC, the Times of Zambia, the Zambia Daily Mail, private newspapers, commercial and community radio stations, and private television stations.

Editorial independence

ZANIS operates under an explicit institutional mandate to interpret government policies and build public support for government initiatives, a remit set out on its own departmental literature and reaffirmed by senior government officials. ZANIS is structurally a government public-information department rather than an editorially independent public-service news agency. No publicly available evidence of an internal editorial charter, code of journalistic ethics, or independent editorial-oversight mechanism was identified at ZANIS in this review.

ZANIS’s coverage during election cycles and around government-policy announcements has been observed to operate as a primary state communication channel, with content routinely picked up by ZNBC and the IDC-controlled newspapers as part of the broader state-aligned media information ecosystem. The broader Zambian media-regulatory environment has seen two reforms over the past three years that may indirectly affect ZANIS’s operating context: the repeal of the law criminalising defamation of the President, enacted through the Penal Code amendment assented to by President Hichilema on 23 December 2022, and the Access to Information Act, enacted in December 2023 and commenced in 2024, with implementation regulations and guidelines approved by Cabinet in July 2025 and the supporting statutory instrument issued later in 2025. Neither reform alters ZANIS’s institutional mandate or governance structure.

AI and digital policy

ZANIS maintains a digital presence centred on the zanis.gov.zm news portal, with daily output across local, national, business, sports, agricultural, and political news, and complementary distribution through social-media channels on Facebook, X/Twitter, and YouTube. The October 2024 ZANIS Television launch and the subsequent DStv onboarding extended a real-time broadcast capability that connects the Mass Media Complex editorial centre to viewers across Zambia. No publicly available evidence of a formal ZANIS policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content provenance frameworks such as C2PA was identified in this review.

May 2026