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Canal
Futura Africano
A
24-Hour-a-Day Portuguese Language Educational Television Service for
Africa
Prepared
by Peter T. Knight, Ph.D., Partner, Knight-Moore Telematics for
Education and Development
and Francisco Carneiro, Partner and Member of the Management Council,
PROMARTE
This project will provide a 24-hour-a-day
Portuguese language educational television service covering Africa, but
specially designed for Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique,
and São Tomé e Principe. These five African countries are known in the
Portuguese-speaking world as the PALOP, a Portuguese acronym for African
countries having Portuguese as their official language. This service
would initially be delivered by satellite, cable, and broadcast
television, but in a second stage would add an interactive, web-based
component delivered via satellite and/or landlines.
Background
Promarte, an independent
producer in Maputo, Mozambique that enjoys excellent ties to public
broadcasters in that country, has expressed its interest in both
producing programs itself and identifying other producers who could
collaborate in production for. Efforts will be made to recruit
additional producers, with first priority to producers in Angola, the
most populous of the PALOP. Negotiations
are also underway in Brazil to obtain technical assistance and financial
support for the project.
The Project
The project includes fivc principal components.
- Training of Promarte and other PALOP producers
in Brazil. The Brazilian
Cooperation Agency (Agência Brasileira de Cooperação - ABC),
Brazil’s international aid organization, which devotes 30 percent
of its resources to the PALOP, is a potential source of funding for
this component, perhaps in association with the Community of
Portuguese Speaking Countries (Comunidade de Países Língua
Portuguesa – CPLP).
- Production or acquistion of African educational
television programs. Prime candidates for African production
would be news programs for use in classrooms, educational news
programs, news of innovations in education with a focus on Africa,
and historical and other culturally sensitive programs. Potential funders for this component would be companies doing business in the
PALOP (including Brazilian companies), foundations with an interest
in Africa, and international assistance agencies. This is the model
used by Canal Futura in Brazil – Brazilian public and
semi-public agencies, Brazilian companies, and multinational
companies (e.g. Compaq and CNN) make annual contributions to the
production costs of Canal Futura and in return have their
logos displayed together with the programs they have helped fund.
- Uplinking of Canal Futura Africana’s signal to a
high-powered satellite with a footprint covering sub-Saharian
Africa. This is the portion that would be financed by the GSTF.
- Rebroadcast by terrestrial broadcasters and/or
cable transmission. These services would be provided free of
charge of public broadcasters in the PALOP and by cable companies,
public or private.
- Organization
of a web-based interactive educational service provider to
complement Canal Futura Africano. This is really a second stage
of the project, and would be explored while undertaking components
1-4.
Organization and
Fundraising
Knight-Moore
Telematics for Education and Development (www.knight-moore.com),
a virtual company operating within Communications Development
Incorporated (CDI) (www.cdinet.com)
has carried out the organizational work, which has taken over by Telemática
e Desenvolvimento Ltda (TeD). CDI or TeD may administer the
financial resources obtained for the project and provide the required
monitoring and reporting for funders. Alternatively, if a non-profit or
Brazilian organization is required by funders, such an entity can be set
up by TeD, which has offices in Washington and Rio de Janeiro.
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