Africa: Some States May Not Meet ITU Digital Migration Deadline

By Ben Omondi

Nairobi, Kenya---African countries face the prospect of failing to meet the 2015 deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for all countries to make the transition from analogue to digital television broadcasting.

Speaking at the recently concluded African IT Exhibitions and Conferences’ (AITEC) second Broadcast and Film Conference in Nairobi, Russell Southwood, chief executive of Balancing Act Africa, a UK-based  telecoms, internet and broadcast technologies consultancy, said that of the 53 states in the African continent, only five have launched the process of switching over from analogue to digital television broadcasting.

Among the 5 countries that have made public launches to the switchover, said Southwood, are two East African Community (EAC) member states – Kenya and Tanzania – while Mauritius is set to switch-off all its analogue television signals by the end of 2012.

“Currently, 10 countries are at the pilot stage of making the switchover while 29 states seem to be doing nothing. This means that over half of African countries may fail to meet the 2015 deadline set by the ITU for the transition from analogue to digital television broadcasting,” said Southwood.

He further challenged broadcasters to change their programming models, by shifting from time-based transmission to theme-based channels as this introduces the concept of “give viewers what they want, not everything in between.”

“Transition to themed transmission and channels could lead broadcasters to concentrate and focus on their niche audiences who demand and are interested in specific content. This move could also help them address the challenge of fragmentation of audiences due to increasing number of channels and media,” he said.

On the broadcast regulatory front, the conference heard that even though only 17 out of 40 African countries had by 2008 liberalized their free-to-air television broadcast sectors, the figure has by this year risen to 28 out of 46 states in sub-Saharan Africa which have liberalized both  their countries’ radio and pay TV industries.

“The ones that are yet to liberalise are relatively small states – like Mauritius and Sao Tome – and other authoritarian states,” said Southwood, adding that opportunities in broadcasting sector are currently available in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

Speaking at the conference, Kenya’s permanent secretary in the ministry of information and communications Dr Bitange Ndemo said that that Africa’s broadcasting stations need to increase their investments in capacity building of broadcast content creators.

Dr Ndemo added that in order for Kenya’s film industry to improve the quality of productions, the industry has sought and gained valuable lessons from other more developed film making locations of the world.

“Kenya has got experiences and lessons from India’s ‘Bollywood’ film industry which produces thousands of movies per year and is currently learning from Nigeria’s ‘Nollywood’ to develop its film and movie sectors,” said Dr Ndemo, adding that to further spur development of the sector, the government has established an incubator where local producers and broadcast content developers would be able to work on their animations.

The PS however urged broadcasters to delink “broadcasting houses from content producers in order to give independence and more bargaining power to the producers as the practice enhances competition.”

The conference also had increased emphasis for broadcasters to improve on their transmission of locally relevant content in order to boost stations’ audience numbers and further attract new advertisers to their outlets.

This is because currently, the programming content transmitted by most broadcasters is mainly foreign which is not attractive with many audiences, with BalancingAct’s Russell Southwood saying that the “missing bit in African broadcast stations is still local African content as local content always does better in attracting audiences compared to foreign material.”

He noted that one of the drivers of local content could be local content quotas being imposed on broadcasters, with an example being Kenya where current regulations require broadcasters to have at least 40 per cent local content.   He further challenged content producers to think about local content not just as a single country but continent-wide focused to have a wider audience.

Suhayl Esmaijee, the Wananchi Group chief operations officer said that current trends in the television broadcasting scene indicate a transformation in viewership “as content is no longer made and targeted at a particular geographic region but for a universal audience ” with an example being Kenya where the most popular programmes are Mexican soaps.

However, David Campbell, Mediae Kenya chief executive challenged the position, saying that Mexican soaps are favoured by free-to-air broadcasters as they are cheap to acquire than local productions which need huge capital investments to bring on the screen.

Industry insiders say that foreign programmes cost between US $ 300 to 400 per hour to acquire compared to local productions which cost about US $ 15,000 to 20,000 per hour to produce.