Tamale gets first TV station

The station, with its headquarters in Tamale in the Northern Region, is one of the many investments of the Discovery International Group of Companies (DIGC), Ghana, which sought to, among other things, market the investment opportunities of the three northern regions to prospective investors.

Philip Assibit Akpeena, group chairman of Discovery, in an interview with the GNA (Ghana News Agency) said the three northern regions had been starved off vital information, hence the need to set up the Discovery TV to discover the potentials of the people and the area.

He said a lot of businesses, especially in the Tamale Metropolis, were booming, but the bureaucracies and time involved to advertise on the TV stations outside the region were de-motivating while there were limited opportunities for traditional and other opinion leaders to speak on issues of national importance.

Akpeena said what also spurred him on to setup the TV station was to sustain the fast development of the region, advance skills development, create employment, and reduce poverty.

"As a company, we recognise that communication was fused to development, and there is the existence of radio and print leaving the television, so we thought it wise to breach that gap," he emphasised.

Akpeena said the television station would serve as a platform to promote peace and unity to propel the development of the region.

He described the north as a safe haven for business investment, which needed a tool such as television to showcase the potentials in the region to attract more investments to improve the economy.

Akpeena said the north had all the potentials to become the food basket of the country due to its vast lands for the cultivation of maize, rice, sorghum, sugar cane, groundnuts and other crop cultivation, but what was needed was support for farmers.

He urged people in the region to support the various interventions by private organisations and governments aimed at improving the livelihood of the people.

"Part of our problems in this country is the 'pull him down' syndrome, instead of supporting a worthy initiative, people rather gossip and level unfounded allegations against people," he emphasised. - GNA

Source: allAfrica