The Programme Director, the Honourable Minister of Telecommunications of the Republic of Angola
Chairpersons and chief executive officers of national regulatory agencies
Directors general, directors and officials of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat
Senior policy and regulatory agency officials
Captains of the industry and manufacturers
Representatives of consumer and community groups
Ladies and gentlemen
It is indeed a great pleasure, as representatives of the sub-continent’s communications sector, to meet once again after the SADC Ministers Meeting in Gaborone, Botswana in June 2011.
For the region’s national regulators, the June 2011 meeting of SADC Ministers was also historic in the sense that we got to launch and inaugurate the new Communications Regulatory Association of Southern Africa.
The new Communications Regulators Association of Southern Africa (CRASA) brings together regulators from the communications and postal sectors. This time around we meet to put into effect the mandate derived from our principals to review and implement the SADC Digital Broadcasting Migration Roadmap.
This initiative to ensure a seamless transition towards a digital platform for the whole region is consistent with the SADC clarion call – Towards a Common Future. We have a mandate to ensure that the communications and postal sectors in our region, and respective countries work Towards a Common Future. This spirit of the SADC founding fathers and mothers is best illustrated in the work of this Digital Migration Forum.
This room will bear testimony to a wide range polemical discussions and exchanges as we chart the way forward for a new digital age for Southern Africa. The resultant digital dividend from digital migration will see the licensing of a multiplicity of broadcasting services for our industries.
With the availability of more and more channels at our disposal, we should be able to meet the universal access and service challenges confronting our countries and economies.
The quest to bridge the digital divide is within reach, and the promise of deploying information communications technologies to fight poverty, ignorance and disease is within sight. Producers of content should be on hand to come up with diverse radio and television content - offered and provided in a variety of regional languages.
As we engage about the standards to be followed in the manufacturing of Set Top Boxes (STBs), we should be mindful of consumer challenges that come in this wake. Thousands of our people should not be left behind as we migrate into a digital platform. Publicity and marketing drives should be put in place to ensure that consumers and the general public fully understand their rights.
Consumers must be in the know that henceforth they should purchase high definition television sets that are compliant and commensurate with the digital broadcasting signal. With digital migration, job and entrepreneurial opportunities will be unleashed as the decoders will require installation, repairs and maintenance.
As we get down to work and deliberate over the next three days, we should have one thing in mind: to meet the 31 December 2013 digital migration deadline as stipulated by the SADC Minister of Communications and information and communication technology (ICT’s).
I have all the confidence and belief that the pool of talent and expertise gathered here, has all it takes to prepare our sub-continent for the new digital age.
I thank you.
