Egypt’s State Minister for Information Diaa Rashwan said 41 per cent of the television content covered by a national project to archive and digitise the country’s radio and television heritage was expected to be digitised by April.
The archive, he added, was the authentic property of the Egyptian people and should be handed down to future generations in a secure and modern form.
Rashwan made the remarks during a press conference held on Tuesday about the national project to digitise and preserve the country’s radio and television archives.
The project aims to preserve nearly a century of Egypt’s audiovisual history, including rare radio and television programmes, by transferring material from traditional tapes to secure digital formats.
The initiative covers material dating back to the establishment of Egypt’s national radio service in 1934, following legislation passed in 1926 to regulate privately operated radio stations, he said.
Ahmed el-Muslimani, chairman of Egypt’s National Media Authority, said the initiative was based on a digital first strategy that included using artificial intelligence to catalogue and classify content and upgrading the technological infrastructure of the country’s media archives.
Muslimani said presidential directives had given the project “an unprecedented historic push” after years of delays, praising political support for Egypt’s media institutions.
Supreme Council for Media Regulation chairman Khaled Abdel Aziz described the digitisation of the Maspero archives as a strategic step to protect Egypt’s national memory, comparing its importance with the restoration of the country’s ancient monuments.
The project is considered the largest digital archiving effort in the Arab world. It aims to preserve around one million audio and video tapes, representing up to 800,000 hours of rare historical content.
