SPEECH BY SEAN MORONEY DURING THE OPENING OF THE 4TH BROADCAST, FILM & MUSIC AFRICA CONFERENCE IN NAIROBI ON 10TH JULY 2012

SPEECH BY SEAN MORONEY DURING THE OPENING OF THE 4TH BROADCAST, FILM & MUSIC AFRICA CONFERENCE IN NAIROBI ON 10TH JULY 2012

Karibu sana!

The theme of this year’s Broadcast, Film and Music Africa conference is “Innovation, investment and partnerships for local content and service excellence”. Today, I can say that we have certainly achieved this vision with the fantastic conference content and speakers we have lined up today.

It brings together a rich mix of expertise from across the continent and internationally.

We have speakers from all around the world. From China to the USA, from South Africa to the UK; From Japan to Nigeria and many other countries are contributing to the two-day programme, offering the region’s creative content industry the most impressive line-up of knowledge, business insights and mentoring they could hope for from any industry event.

I’d like you to welcome all our international speakers and delegates as they stand and are acknowledged:

Belgium
Brazil
Cote d’Ivoire
France
Ghana
Israel
Luxembourg
Mauritius
Netherlands
Nigeria
South Africa
Spain
Tanzania
UAE
Uganda
UK
USA

I particularly want to welcome our strong delegation from China.

BFMA is primarily a technology and business event for the media and creative content industries. The conference is focussed on two main areas of industry development: Content Development and Content Distribution. And we have some of the continent’s leading experts speaking on new, evolving business models for both these aspect of the industry.

Our vision is to grow BFMA as the continent’s premier business and educational event for the electronic media and creative content industries. We appreciate the support of our existing sponsors and partners, including the Kenya Film Commission, NDS, Balancing Act, Kenya ICT Board, Internet Solutions, Solstice and Smoothtel – as well as all our exhibitors. All these organisations share our vision of working together as an industry to expand and mature the industry through education and innovation.

One general point I’d like to make in relation to the development of the region’s film, music and general creative content industry, is that local business, banks and investors are failing to recognise the huge investment potential on their doorstop. These are new industries, usually with no bricks and mortar involved and I suspect that local finance sources are not agile or imaginative enough to grasp these opportunities. We have to reach out to international investors who understand these opportunities more clearly. That is why we have created at this year’s BFMA the first Africa Media Business Exchange, to enable start-ups to meet with international investors and present their business ideas for assessment and possible investment. Seven international investment funds will be participating in this. We are pleased to be organising this in partnership with FilmBiz Africa and we have seven international investment funds who will be meeting with start-ups during the conference to assess their business ideas and investment propositions.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, debates and discussions by experts at past BFMA  conferences have in the past contributed to the development of positive  energy and  growth momentum of these industries in participating countries across the continent. I’m confident that BFMA 2012 will accelerate that spread of innovation and positive energy even further.

Welcome to the event – and enjoy the networking, learning and business opportunities that it offers.