Over the past couple of months, this column has argued that African broadcasting needs sustainable business models.
- We’ve argued that advertising and subscription innovation is no longer optional.
- We’ve said that decades of archive footage are being lost, or left undiscovered, while the technology to save it sits within reach.
- Newsrooms can automate the routine and reinvest in the journalism that matters.
- That satellite and cloud, working together, are how our broadcasters achieve reach without giving up resilience.
- That the algorithms deciding what viewers see too often bury the best of what we make.
- We can’t keep pricing audiences we cannot prove.
- And piracy is quietly draining value from every one of those efforts.
See, if you read these on their own, you might think: ok, seven separate problems – each with its own technology and its own fix. But, in fact, they are not. This is one problem, seen from eight angles.
African broadcasting already has what it needs to build a modern, profitable industry: enormous, loyal audiences; a growing supply of original content; and, for the first time, technology that is genuinely affordable at our scale. What has been missing is the coordination to put those pieces together, at an industry level rather than one broadcaster at a time.
This is why the Broadcasters Convention – West Africa 2026, taking place at the Labadi Beach Hotel, Accra, on 22 and 23 September, matters more than another entry in the events calendar.
The room itself is the argument. Public broadcasting leadership will be there, including Amin Alhassan, Director-General of Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Abdoulie Sey of Gambia Radio and Television Services, and Tari Taylaur of Nigeria’s NTA, alongside Grégoire Ndjaka, Chief Executive of the African Union of Broadcasting, giving the conversation a genuinely continental frame.
Nigeria’s Broadcasting Organisations, represented by Dr Yemisi Bamgbose, sit alongside Ghana’s regulators, the National Communications Authority and the National Media Commission, in the same sessions as the commercial broadcasters actually competing for the same viewers and the same advertising naira and cedi, among them Citi FM and ChannelOne TV’s Samuel Attah-Mensah and Bernard Avle.
The tech side of the argument will be in the room too. LAWO, SES, VIORY and SPUTNIK bring the infrastructure expertise behind the satellite and cloud conversation.
So, sustainability, new revenue, archiving, automation, infrastructure, discovery, measurement, and piracy all get solved faster and more cheaply when the people who own each piece of the puzzle sit at the same table.
That table is set for 22 and 23 September. Looking forward to seeing you in Accra, Ghana!
This article is written by Benjamin Pius (Publisher @ BMA) as part of the forthcoming Broadcasters Convention – West Africa 2026, 22–23 September 2026, Labadi Beach Hotel, Accra, Ghana | Register to attend: wab-africa.broadcastingandmedia.net
