Majority of countries will not be able to meet the set June 2015 digital migration deadline.
This is despite the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) and Information Ministry repeating severally that Africa is required to migrate to the digital platform by mid this year.
Three quarters of all countries will not be able to make the switch.
Records show that at least 30 African countries are also exempted from the 2015 deadline, which was adopted in 2006 at a meeting referred to as the Regional Radiocommunications Conference (RRC-06) attended by countries from Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Some of the 30 African countries instead chose a post-2015 deadline. They cited various challenges ranging from technology, standards, licensing and investment in the necessary infrastructure and the need for people to replace their televisions.
It is mainly southern African countries that are committed to 2015 under the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) decision.
Prof Guy Berger, a lecturer at Rhodes University, describes this information as “one of the little publicised fact.”
ADDITIONAL FIVE YEARS
“The 2006 treaty allows for an additional five years for a total of 30 African nations beyond the 2015 cut-off point. Most Latin American countries, incidentally, have agreed to a switch-off of analogue TV transmissions around 2020,” says Prof Berger in his report on the challenges and perspectives of digital migration in Africa.
The 2020 cut-off was also agreed for countries that did not attend the 2006 conference.
In fact, the 2020 list includes powerhouses of the North African region like Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, which are more advanced technologically than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The list also include countries closer home like Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, DRC and Somalia among others.
Prof Berger cautions African countries on the rush to beat the 2015 deadline “when there is no pressing matter of frequencies, when many are exempted from the ITU deadline and when the consequences of missing the due date are minor.”
An ITU document on the status of digital migration worldwide, dated 2013, concedes that Africa’s migration from analogue broadcasting to digital terrestrial television (DTT) is relatively slow.
The same document cautions that from June 2015, analogue signal will no longer be protected in Africa, but also states that “there is no deadline for the switch-off of the analogue signal in Africa.”
The document also shows that many Latin America countries have a switch-off deadline of 2020. Argentina, for example, has a deadline of 2019, Brazil (2016), Peru (2020) and Venezuela (2020).
In Europe, the transition to digital took many years. Britain took 14 years to complete the process, Spain (10 years), Italy (8 years), Sweden (8 years) and France (6 years).
