TELECOMS
Africa’s first major terrestrial cable takes ten years to complete and connects 660+ cities and towns – Liquid Telecom’s next pan continental route may be east-west
21 September 2018
The completion of Liquid Telecom’s One Africa network from the Cape to Cairo is a considerable achievement by any measure. In a continent that does not make it easy to build out terrestrial fibre this is probably the largest project completed to date. Russell Southwood spoke to Reshaad Sha, CEO, Liquid Telecom South Africa about how it will be used. The part of Liquid Telecom’s One Africa Network that goes from Cape Town to Cairo is over 10,000+ kms. It connects over 660 cities and towns and required more than forty national and regional licences. Before the Seacom and EASSy…
BROADCAST
Ghana – GIBA says StarTimes to get DTT contract, Government denies it but situation as clear as mud
21 September 2018
The course of digital migration in Africa rarely seems to run straight and Ghana is no exception to this rule. The Government is now approaching the tenth year of the process with no clear end in sight. Russell Southwood looks at the many twists and turns and what might happen. In 2008 Government broadcaster GBC ran a DTT pilot in Accra. It then teamed up with Swedish company Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB) through its local subsidiary Skyy Digital (now First Digital) and extended the roll-out to Kumasi Takoradi by 2010. At this point, the regulator intervened saying that there had…
REPORTS
Africa's Media Deficit and Access to Knowledge
Access to information is a fundamental human right. Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights1 (ICCPR) links the right to information to freedom of expression includes the right to information: When citizens have no access to media or only limited access to media their “freedom to seek, receive and impart information of all kinds” is restricted. Where this position exists, citizens are experiencing a media deficit that affects their access to knowledge. Therefore, this briefing paper sets out to do two things: To outline the scale and extent of the media deficit and the general factors…
