adminFrom Ruth Butaumocho in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
African governments have been urged to step up efforts towards digital migration to prepare their countries for the global switch over of broadcasting services from analogue to digital in 2015. Speaking during the opening of a two-day Digital Dialogue conference here yesterday, the Secretary for Southern African Digital Broadcasting Association steering committee, Mr Gerhard Petrick said while a lot of fundamental challenges were likely to slow down the digitalisation of broadcasting services on the continent, African countries still needed to expedite the process to ensure that they would accrue benefits associated with the upgrading of broadcasting services.
“No growth can be achieved without digitalisation and I am glad that the region has taken a proactive approach to digitalisation, though I must say that it is happening at a very slow pace. From the time that the Geneva 2006 Agreement was made, only a few African countries are fast moving towards the attainment of that goal, with the majority lagging behind in terms of acquiring equipment and getting funding to make the dream a reality,” he said.
In 2006, several African countries signed a global treaty on digitalisation in Geneva that compelled them to move away from analogue broadcasting to digital by June 17 2015. The decision to sign the treaty heralded a new era that was meant to develop an all-digital terrestial broadcast services for sound and television.
Mr Petrick added that by speeding up the digitalisation process, African countries would not be used as a dumping ground for obsolete broadcasting products that were being offloaded by several developed countries that have since digitalised.
“Next year, there is certainly going to be a lot of dumping of obsolete television products which are not relevant to our needs as a continent, so let’s safeguard our people by expediting digitalisation,” he said.
Speaking on the same occasion, a Ghanaian engineer Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko said apart from moving with the rest of the world in terms of technological advancement, African countries also needed to look at the positive spin-offs of digitalisation, which included creation of jobs for locals and the production of local content to feed the available channels The digital switch-over will leap frog existing technologies to connect the unconnected and remote communities and close the digital divide.
The switch-over for individual countries varies, it could either happen in small steps such as was the case with the United Kingdom, where each region has a separate date to switch off, or the whole country could switch in one go, as happened in Finland, which went digital on September 1, in 2007.
Looking at Africa, Tanzania and Mauritius have since gone digital, while Ghana and Kenya expected to switch over from analogue to digital in December this year. Zimbabwe is working towards achieving the same feat. The workshop, which is being attended by representatives from 14 countries is expected to map the way forward for countries that need technical expertise on implementation.
Online Reporter