THOUGH countries of the ECOWAS sub-region are working on a common format of migration to digital broadcasting, peoples in many African countries are aware of the digital migration and what it entails, unlike the Nigerian public which largely is still ignorant of the development, save a few informed individuals.
Sensitization of the entire continent had been taken up by Multichoice, the global pay TV giant which has sponsored a series of conferences tagged Digital Dialogue, aimed at sensitizing publics in African countries of due obligations as the June 17, 2015 switchover deadline approaches.
The first of the sensitization conferences held in Johannesburg, South Africa, last year, followed by a second one in Lagos, also last year. The third in the series of Digital Dialogue conferences held last month in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Ghana, an ECOWAS country, is almost ready and the country’s public is aware of the digital switchover. Kenya is ahead of most African nations, by far. Daniel Obam from Kenya’s National Communications Secretariat disclosed that by December, Nairobi and environs, up to 70 km radius, will have its analogue signals switched off, while by March 2014, other cities like Mombasa, Kisii, Nyeru, will be switched off in phases.
ECOWAS nations are signatories to the GE-06 Agreement, under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which established a frequency plan for Digital Terrestrial Transmission (DTT) in the bands 174–230MHz (VHF Band III), 470 – 582 MHz (UHF Band IV) and 582 – 862 MHz (UHF Band V). The GE-06 pact requires member states of the ITU to complete a transition from analogue to digital transmission, in the first instance, by 17 June, 2015 in UHF Bands IV/V and subsequently, by 17 June, 2020 in VHF Band III.
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