/ 5 December 2006

Battle for the ear of Africa

Broadcasters from across Africa will gather in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, this week to propose new plans to bring digital sound to their hundreds of millions of listeners.

The first-ever Pan-African Conference on Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) — the name of the 103-member consortium from 32 countries and the system it has developed to bring digital radio to the world — will open on Wednesday and continue until the end of the week. The conference is hosted by Rwandan broadcaster Orinfor and Germany’s official voice to the outside world, the Deutsche Welle.

The conference, which will also be addressed by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, comes as audiences have been switching off from the crackle, fading voices and ever-shifting stations of far-away broadcasters beaming into their continent on short-, medium- and long-wave bands. Local FM stations with their clear sound — not to mention the attraction of Africa’s 1 000-plus local languages — are growing in popularity.

“The conference is mainly for African broadcasters,” Deutsche Welle’s Peter Senger said shortly before leaving for Kigali. He is also chairperson of the DRM consortium. “The ones coming in from overseas, such as the Deutsche Welle, BBC and Radio Nederland, will be there to explain the benefits of this technology. We’ve had three years’ experience broadcasting digitally in Europe and North America. We know how it works, and the benefits.”

The superpowers of world broadcasting clearly see digital radio as a way of winning back their lost audiences to the local FM stations in the battle for the ear of Africa.

In Kigali, the location of Deutsche Welle’s large relay station for its broadcasts into Africa, a special transmitter will be set up during the conference for pilot digital broadcasts of Deutsche Welle’s programmes. Each of the 100 or so delegates will be presented with a digital radio receiver to listen to the special broadcast.

“They’ll be hearing for the first time digital short wave with more or less FM quality,” Senger promised.

Receiver

At a press conference in Berlin before leaving, he showed off the small compact receiver everyone will receive. “Inside it’s more like a computer than a radio,” he said, preferring to call it a “receiver” rather than “radio”.

The receiver has a little display screen over which someone can scroll down news headlines and information. “In Kigali we’ll be running the latest headlines from Deutsche Welle’s internet service,” he said. “Listeners can also see the name of our station on the screen.”

The “receiver” has other in-built features that broadcasters think will make it a winner with the audience.

“Audio can be stored on a memory card,” said Senger. “Mine stores 150 hours of programmes. It offers completely new opportunities for schools and universities in Africa. Educational programmes can be stored, played back later, discussed and analysed. It also incorporates an MP3 recorder and can store 100 hours of podcasts.”

Other features included a button to push when one has to break off to do something in the middle of a programme. One can return later and listen to the programme where one left off.

“We are only at the beginning,” said Senger, suggesting that the new technology offers a range of services and programme choices still to be developed. On Friday, Deutsche Welle’s Uta Schaeffer and Adelheid Feilcke-Tiemann are to speak on this topic.

Cost

Two big questions are bound to be raised by conference delegates — the cost of the essential little “receiver” to replace the three billion anolgue ones in the world today and the digital radio transmitters themselves.

The location of the conference in Rwanda, a Central African country where 60% of the population are below the poverty line, will be a reminder that Africa may be the world’s so-called “radio continent” but digital technology could be beyond its resources.

The Hong Kong-assembled digital receiver that will be handed out in Kigali now sells for about €200 — far beyond the reach of most of Africa’s 800-million population.

“But the price will come down, perhaps below €50,” predicted Senger. “It all depends on how quickly the market develops. I predict that everyone will have a digital radio in the future.”

Deutsche Welle’s director general, Erik Bettermann, sees a world with India and China using the technology where a receiver would cost between €10 and €15.

Winning over Africa’s broadcasters to digital radio in Kigali clearly would play a role in boosting consumer demand and bringing down prices. Delegates will be told that digital radio transmitters use 50% less energy than analogue ones. They can also transmit analogue broadcast.

“That’s very important. It could be a saving for the entire African continent,” claimed Bettermann.

Ahead of the big sell of digital radio this week in Kigali, broadcasters from Nigeria and South Africa have decided to move into the digital radio age. The Voice of Nigeria has ordered three transmitters, according to reports. South Africa is preparing for test broadcasts. The conference organisers are hoping that after Kigali other African broadcasters will quickly follow.

“It’s a good time now to start,” said Senger. “Digital radio could be in the next 2008 broadcasting budgets, and some countries could be regularly transmitting digitally in 2009.”

The DRM experts gathered in Kigali clearly hope that they will be called on to assist the newcomers to the club. “We are the pioneers in this area,” said Bettermann in Berlin. — IPS