Digitisation imperative in Africa - AFRICAST 2008

AFRICAST 2008, held from 21 - 23 October 2008 was the most attended, since its inception in 1996, with more than 300 participants and all the 50 exhibition stands, two ballrooms, and six activity rooms were fully taken up by exhibitors of broadcast hardware and services from several African, American, European and Far Eastern countries.

At the end of the conference, the participants resolved that:

1. Digitisation of broadcasting is not only necessary but also imperative in Africa. This is because it has the potentials of revolutionising the media and communication activities within the Continent, creating better business opportunities, redefining national values and generally placing the Continent on the map of the digitally compliant world.

2. African countries must strive towards meeting the ITU deadline of June 17, 2015 for broadcasting to transit from analogue to digital. Otherwise, they stand the risk of paying the painful penalty of being isolated from the world's broadcasting community.

3. Policy makers and investors should take into consideration the peculiarity of the African environment, in terms of poor infrastructure and low personal income in planning for the inevitable transition from analogue to digital broadcasting. Thus, although some progress have been made towards digitisation on the continent, as exemplified by Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria, a lot remains, to be done.

4. African governments should, as a matter of urgency, enact and enforce laws banning the importation of analogue television sets into their countries. Also, they should, through effective legislation and policy implementation, fast-track the transition process in their countries. Both measures would help protect the continent from being turned into a dumping ground for obsolete analogue broadcast equipment.

5. African countries must adopt a deliberate policy of carrying their peoples along in the campaign for a successful transition from analogue to digital broadcasting. Accordingly, they should immediately embark on aggressive public enlightenment campaign to mobilise and sensitise the public on the process, benefits and implications of digitisation.

6. The success and sustenance of digitisation in Africa will also require that governments on the Continent lay emphasis on manpower development, encourage a sustainable maintenance culture, and energise their broadcast regulatory bodies through adequate funding and less political interference.

7. The digitisation of broadcasting has far-reaching implications and daunting challenges for governments, broadcasters, broadcast regulators and the people. The success of the transition will depend, to a great extent, on the co-operation of these parties and their willingness and readiness to play effectively their expected roles.

8. African countries should realise that, no matter what effort they make to achieve total digitisation, some of the challenges associated with the transition would still remain, due to the peculiarities of the African environment. Therefore, there is the need to set up appropriate mechanism to absorb the inevitable challenges, in order to make any meaningful progress towards digitisation.

9. The use of Converter Boxes or Set-Top - Boxes on the switch over from analogue to digital broadcasting should be seen only as a stop-gap measure. Therefore, African countries should strive for local production of digital broadcasting facilities, if they must save costs, achieve technological development and enjoy the full benefits of digitisation.

10. Operators of the broadcast industry must be prepared to re-equip their stations with appropriate digital equipment, recruit and train their personnel and produce adequate local content to service the increasing number of available channels resulting from digitisation.

11. Digitised broadcasting emphasizes content production and distribution. African broadcasters should plan towards feeding their viewers and listeners with adequate and quality African programmes.

12. Advisory Committee on Digitisation in African countries should research into the needs and implications of the transition project, so that they can offer useful advice to the government for a hitch free transition.

13. Digitisation implies more than its technological dimensions. Governments should formulate comprehensive policies on digitisation, and enact enabling legislations, based on the realities of their local environments.

14. Planning for digitisation should include the procurement of spare parts along with the digital equipment. The old practice of acquiring broadcasting equipment without attendant back-up spares had been the bane of broadcasting in many African countries.

15. Broadcast regulatory bodies in Africa should look beyond monitoring content on broadcasting stations and creating awareness on the forthcoming digitisation. They should equally concern themselves with the quality and state of broadcast equipment, infrastructure and personnel all of which are indispensable for successful digitisation.

16. African governments should be ready to empower their people to enable them benefit from the dividends of digitisation. This, they can do by subsidising the cost of Set-Top-Boxes as the United States of America did in preparation for her own switch over on 17 February, 2009.

17. Each African country should consider floating a single national carrier, while allowing individual stations to concentrate on content production. The prevailing practice whereby stations spend their fortunes on equipment provision and maintenance, while neglecting content does not augur well for broadcasting in the digital era.

18. While fashioning out a legislative framework for digitisation, frequency management and licensing, African broadcast regulatory authorities should consider, seriously, either to grant a single licence for both multiplex and channel, or a separate licence for each.

19. Digitisation poses a great deal of challenges to content producers. The older broadcasting stations, which have vintage programmes in their archives, should seek to meet the challenges partly by digitising such archival materials.

20. Digitisation demands comprehensive planning, adequate funding, improved know-how, infrastructural development and aggressive content production. African countries should anticipate and tackle these challenges if they were to transit to digital broadcasting by or before the ITU deadline of 2015.

21. Since most modern day broadcast equipment are software - driven, African broadcasters should seek to sustain productivity by recruiting younger generation personnel who are computer literate, in addition to training and retraining.

22. African broadcasters should use the forum of AFRICAST to evolve a global African brand with a view to meeting the growing yearnings of a global audience for a truly African content that confers beauty and dignity on the continent as opposed to the present distorted image of war, hunger, corruption and disease.

23. At the switch-over to digital broadcasting, African countries should reserve and equitably allocate the freed spectrum for the future development of digital community broadcasting, using appropriate technologies. Meanwhile, there should be no switch off timetable for FM and AM sound broadcasting services until there is a proven, viable digital alternative.

24. Community broadcasting has far-reaching social, political, economic and cultural advantages. African countries should ease off the stringent licensing and regulatory requirements to encourage the emergence, and facilitate the growth, of community broadcasting on the continent.

25. African broadcasters were advised to take advantage of the technological innovations as they plan for the transition to digital broadcasting.

26. African governments and broadcasters must ensure that, from now, only quality digital-ready broadcast equipment are imported into the continent. However, where there are restrictions or high tariffs, governments should grant immediate relief, to make the digitisation process less cumbersome and pain free for operators in the industry.

27. Public and private broadcasters in Africa have made significant efforts to acquire and install digital equipment in anticipation of the global switch -over to digital broadcasting. Be that as it may, they were advised to collaborate and co-operate with one another for a smooth and cost effective transition process.
    

The conference expressed gratitude to the NBC, the government and people of Nigeria for consistently and dutifully hosting AFRICAST in the past twelve years and hoped that the lessons from the 7th edition would go a long way to guide the nations of Africa into a smooth transition from analogue to digital broadcasting.

Some exhibitors were also of the opinion that, in order to maintain the tempo and momentum of AFRICAST and the digitisation programme, Africast should be made an annual event. Meanwhile, African countries were enjoined to endeavour to attend future AFRICAST for comprehensive deliberations on their common broadcast problems.

The conference also expressed appreciation to all participants, sponsors, exhibitors, resource persons and officials for continuously identifying with AFRICAST and for contributing immensely to the success story that is AFRICAST 2008.