Indeed, Naira devaluation is probably the most potent weapon against the prosperity of Nigerians. Nigeria’s migration from a potential industrial power house with bustling social affluence, to a subdued and stumbling economy clearly began with the adoption of IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme during Babangida’s regime: the chorus from International Agencies, at that time, was also that falling oil prices with an unserviced debt burden and the consequent restriction of trade credit to Nigeria, were the products of an allegedly overvalued Naira exchange rate.
By Emmanuel Elebeke
Having consistently cried that lack of funding could mar the country’s journey to digital broadcast switch over, it seems a life line is nearby. This is as the Chairman of the NBC Governing Board, Prof. Herbert Orji, has just revealed that the commission was accessing a N200 billion funding to execute the project.
Orji said plans had gone advanced stage towards the establishment of this fund with a feasibility study that will guide it with regards to how to manage it.
He revealed that the commission would technically study how the fund would be managed, even as the proposed fund will provide grants for capacity building in the country and also provide soft loans to the television, radio, cable stations and other producers including but not limited to distributors and acquirers of content.
NBC also seems to have been buoyed by the prospects of the funding, going by its showing at the recently concluded Biennial broadcast event tagged AFRICAST.
Content development
Meanwhile, stakeholders at the event gave a new order that all nations in the African continent must accord priority attention to content development as the key driver for a successful digital environment to be created.
From almost a general point of view, it was believed and stated that digitization is not all about technology, but about content, production, sourcing and delivery of appropriate equipments to achieve full and successful digitization regime in all African member States.
The event, which held at Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja, 21 – 23, October, 2014, was the 10th bi-annual edition of Africast convened at the instance of the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC and in furtherance of the communication objectives of the Conference/Exhibition.
The event entitled: Digital Broadcast Content: Production, Sourcing and Delivery, attracted African Broadcast professional organizations , engineers, intellectuals, broadcast equipment manufacturers, content providers, the academia , broadcast marketing professionals and strategic industry stakeholders and broadcast partners across Africa and the globe.
It provided a huge platform for Content Providers, Distributors and Marketers of digitization equipment to network positively in the effort to reconstruct the continent’s digital broadcast migration dynamics, with a view to optimizing the positive fall outs inherent in the emerging digital broadcast ecosystem to the benefit of Africast member states, organizations and participants.
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