Luanda - Angola is committed to the project of creating the Southern African Development Community (SADC) television, with the aim of making it an effective reality, the minister of Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Social Communication, Mário Oliveira reported on Wednesday, in Luanda.
The Angolan official spoke to the press at the end of a courtesy meeting with officials from the Association of Public and Private Radio Television Networks of the SADC Region (SABA), whose delegation is carrying out a five-day visit to the country.
According to Mário Oliveira, in the first phase, the plan will focus on the exchange of content between the various television stations in member countries, to begin the region's television project.
Corroborating the Angolan initiative, the president of SABA, Stanley Similo, revealed that the project is 70 percent complete, while the remaining 30 percent should be implemented in collaboration with the ministries of the member states.
After the meeting, the SABA delegation visited the facilities of the Angolan Daily Newspaper (Jornal de Angola) and the Angola News Agency (ANGOP-E.P.), where they learned about the projects and functioning of these bodies.
At Agência Angola Press (ANGOP), the chairperson of the Board of Directors, Josué Isaías, expressed interest in cooperating with SABA in the ongoing training and qualification of professionals in different areas.
During the meeting, the president of SABA highlighted advances in digital journalism, highlighting journalism carried out using mobile phones.
Stanley Similo pointed to language, culture and politics as the main challenges and constraints of this association, created in 1993.
He added that the association has shared informative content with other institutions, including radio and television stations. SABA is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that works to promote quality media.
Goals of the Visit
Stanley Similo explained that the visit was aimed at learning and sharing experiences, as well as identifying what SABA can do for Angola to enrich and expand the co-operation, which is currently restricted to radio and television.
According to the source, SABA takes the activity of public broadcasting very seriously, so it is interested in knowing the authors of the stories published in the region also with a view to highlighting the national identities and promoting regional aspects.
He went on to explain that SABA is interested in the services of the Angolan satellite (Angosat2) to guarantee the connectivity of the first regional television channel, a project that is underway.
In this ambit, Internet costs were also analysed, with the delegation concluding that there is a need to stabilise the connectivity process with affordable internet access prices, so as to stimulate greater adhesion by the public in the region.
He informed that Namibia already has an almost final agreement with Botswana in terms of roaming charges, which SABA expects to extend to the whole region with a view to facilitating the access to Internet services in SADC.
SABA already co-operates with Angola in the areas of radio and television, having shown interested to extend it to the area of press, because, he explained, the idea is that all information regarding the region or even the continent “will find resonance with SABA”.
He then revealed that in the domain of human resources, SABA has been organsing many activities focused on the training of journalists and media directors, with a view to teaching principles of journalism to those involved in the process of news reporting aiming for good coverage of stories.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is made up of sixteen member countries, Angola and Namibia included.
SABA is headquarted in Namibia.
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