AfricaCom’s big focus this year was on satellite and how satellite technology will enable better access to connectivity for all of Africa. To help raise the visibility for satellite communications to the estimated 13,000+ AfricaCom attendees, iDirect invited Ms. Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, Deputy Minister of Telecommunications & Postal Services for the Republic of South Africa, to share her views on new programs that are supporting the role of satellite in the mission to connect Africa.
Keynote Address from Deputy Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams
Over 500 delegates gathered to hear Ms. Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, Deputy Minister of Telecommunications & Postal Services, deliver her keynote address, Visions for Africa: ensuring a connected Africa through satellite communication.
Today, “the challenges of lack of connectivity and low tele-densities particularly in the rural areas of Africa are acute and exacerbate the digital divide,” the Deputy Minister said. “Therefore, policy interventions, an enabling regulatory framework, legislation and collective efforts are needed to build the information society and a knowledge economy in Africa in order to achieve improved socio-economic development and modernized standards of living.”
Satellite communications is key in enabling Africa to overcome these challenges, offering a scalable, quick-to-deploy communications infrastructure to areas where terrestrial alternatives are unavailable, unreliable or simply too expensive. Furthermore, “with the additional satellite capacity and new high throughput capacity coming into the region, price points for bandwidth are more economical and present a mammoth opportunity for providers to deploy services across the region,” Deputy Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams said.
“Thank you to iDirect and its business partners who are already serving businesses, financial institutions, and rural communities throughout Africa, to meet their satellite broadband connectivity needs accelerating communication, knowledge and financial growth,” she continued.
“These are indeed advanced interventions and it is therefore my fervent hope that the stakeholders congregated in this venue, will further engage in a quest to forge mutually beneficial collaborations that will better serve our people and country,” Deputy Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams concluded.
Watch here as the Deputy Minister joined David Harrower, SVP of Global Sales, at the iDirect stand as they share their views on the programs that are opening the doors for satellite and transforming the entire African ICT landscape.
To celebrate our growing business partners in the region we were honored to host the Deputy Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams, who delivered our key luncheon address. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to come together to reflect on the work we are doing to serve the people, businesses and governments in Africa, and most importantly, discuss and collaborate on new advancements to support the continent.
New Announcements
We’re excited to be teaming up with leading partners to provide satellite broadband connectivity to Africa. Here are two new announcements that were released during the conference:
Liquid Telecom Teams with VT iDirect and Telesat to Deliver Enhanced Services to Businesses in Africa New Liquid Telecom VSAT service will combine the power of iDirect’s DVB-S2X technology with Telesat’s Telstar 12 VANTAGE Africa Ku-band capacity.
InterSat Sets up Teleport Services in Nairobi
InterSat and ABS have announced the launch of iDirect platforms on ABS-3A C-band and Ku-band beams. The iDirect platforms will provide broadband internet across Sub-Sahara and South Africa and serve French-speaking African countries.
Thank you to all our partners for making AfricaCom 2017 a huge success, and we look forward to continuing to work together to lead the way in advancing a connected world.
Scenes from the show
