By  Emmanuel Elebeke

African Broadcast professional organisations, engineers, intellectuals, broadcast equipment manufacturers, content providers, the academia ,broadcast marketing professionals  and strategic industry stakeholders and broadcast partners across the globe will on Tuesday 21st to Thursday the 23rdOctober, 2014 converge in Abuja to brainstorm on the Digital Switchover, DSO.

The event will be the 10th  edition of Africast 2014  conference and exhibition, aimed at appraising the continent’s match to digital Switch Over from analogue with focus on the conference theme :Digital Broadcast Content ; Production, Sourcing and Delivery.

Sourcing and delivery

According to the organizers, the Biennial continental broadcast event convened at the instance of the National Broadcasting Commission (Nigeria) promises a huge platform that will connect Content Providers, Distributors and Marketers 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 ecology to the benefit of Africast member state’s organization and participants.

With the convergence of notable global broadcast  actors at the continent’s most unique   broadcast event,   the 10th edition of Africast, is expected to   motivate plausible networking among participants  across all broadcast frontiers to   provide a veritable platform for the harmonization of divergent digital migration viewpoints  for the promotion of   accelerated response to digital migration by African Union Member states in line with the International Telecommunication Union, ITU, global timeline for analogue switch off, which has 17th of June 2015 as the terminal date for analogue terrestrial broadcasting.

The event, according to NBC took a cue from the 2012 edition of Africast, which had as its theme: The Content Rule, with over 317 participants that thronged the two days plenary session to listen to over 17 professional papers in master classes session.

Organizers said they anticipated that the 2014 edition will attract more participants to deliberate on the crucial but topical issues on  digital switch over in the continent.

Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, Mr Emeka Mba, at a recent forum,    stated     that the 2014 Africast event will be more purpose driven for resolutions that will shape the next decade of digital broadcasting technology, content sourcing and delivery enrichment than previous editions.

He stressed that  emerging digital broadcasting issues at the conference/exhibition should engage all African broadcasters in the diaspora and at home on strategic initiatives to leverage on for the  improvisation of digital broadcasting in Africa with  global relevance supported by appropriate technologies  that will enhance continental digital  broadcast productivity for efficient  delivery of information, education and entertainment content  to target audiences in Africa and the global community.

“Digital broadcast will lead to high quality visual and audio transmission and reception. This qualitative improvement should have a corresponding impact on lives and our interpretation of our immediate universe for the use of all Africans,” said Mba.