UNAIDS, StarTimes to Collaborate on Anti-AIDS TV Content in Africa

Uchechukwu Nnaike

UNAIDS and StarTimes are in extensive discussions over a robust collaboration roadmap targeted at delivering anti-HIV/AIDS TV content for increased awareness and positive reorientation to Africans through StarTimes network across Africa.

UNAIDS Executive Director under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Michel Sidibé, last week, said UNAIDS expects to establish partnership with StarTimes to build a new bridge between Africa and China during a meeting with China-Africa Business Council in Beijing.

Sidibé said: “I can just confess that all the interventions were so pertinent and so relevant. Collaborating with StarTimes is also for me very important because what we are going to project is a new vision, which is to reach more people and create social reorientation which will also ensure that everybody can benefit from the digital revolution. StarTimes technologies,innovations, creativity and international stature can help expand access to information and aid Africans to live healthier.”

The UNAIDS Executive Director added: “For me, this is the only way to build a new bridge between Africa and China, through our partnership for the future to come.”

UNAIDS Director for Communications and Global Advocacy, Annemarie Hou also at the meeting, said that UNAIDS and StarTimes can work together to deliver anti-HIV/AIDS TV content to Africans. “We are working now with OAFLA (the Organisation of African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS) and First Ladies and we are doing an excellent work on content, and they are also asking for more TV content. So if we can work together, let’s think about things that will really help their message to be delivered to everyone in Africa.

“At a high level meeting in New York on June 8th, global leaders committed through a Political Declaration to double the efforts to end AIDS by 2030,” said GuoZiqi, Vice President of StarTimes Group, adding that StarTimes is ready to join the campaign of anti-HIV/AIDS and StarTimes would contribute its efforts to help achieve the goal of zero-AIDS in 2030.

StarTimes is the leading digital-TV network operator and content provider in Africa, covering 90 per cent of the continent’s population and having eight million subscribers in Africa. As a responsible media group, StarTimes has made great efforts through various initiatives to support the African people in areas including management of epidemics and deadly diseases like Ebola Virus in 2014.