Hi, Quartz Africa readers!
Three years
Last Friday, Jun. 1, it’d been three years since we rolled out the Africa edition of Quartz. As unpredictable and perilous as the media business has been in recent years, it turns out that experimenting and fine-tuning a different lens through which to cover African news and features can be a lot of fun and genuinely eye-opening. We’ve learned a lot over the years from readers, partners and colleagues around the world and are grateful for all the support. Needless to say, we’re still learning a lot and still having fun. Through our focus on business, innovators, contrarian ideas, boundary-pushers and creativity we’ve been forced to challenge our own and our readers’ preconceptions.
One media and entertainment business that has always been creative, innovative and contrarian on the global stage, particularly over the last decade, has been Netflix. Legend goes that video store chain Blockbuster famously passed up on offer to buy Netflix for $50 million back in 2000. When you consider that 18 years later some of our younger readers are right now googling “What is a video store?” and Netflix, now with a market cap of $156 billion, is bigger than Walt Disney, you see the power of being a boundary-pusher.
Netflix has a content budget of $8 billion a year, most of which goes to original production and as we’ve noted, if it dedicated just 1% to 2% ($80 million to $160 million) of that every year to licensing and producing original African shows and films it would have an outsize and transformative impact on African’s major content production centers.
While you might have assumed this was the story of a typical American company failing to see the African opportunity early enough, one of Netflix’s strengths is the sheer amount of viewer data it has in its possession. It’s been testing the waters with Nollywood movies like Wedding Party and South African fare like Catching Feelings. Netflix very likely now understands the opportunity with African content isn’t just African, it’s global.
This week we reported on Netflix finally getting serious about building an African library of shows, as the Los Gatos, California company is now looking for a director of content acquisition for Africa, Middle East and Turkey based in Amsterdam. It’s a start. Netflix might very well be ahead of the traditional Hollywood curve again.
— Yinka Adegoke, Quartz Africa editor
Stories from this week
Africa needs another million PhD scientists. Africa currently produces less than 1% of the world’s research output, due to lack of funding and official commitment to drive scientific discoveries. Alan Christoffels outlines what governments and institutions can do to build solid scientific infrastructure and the next generation of scientists.
Central banks in Africa want adopt the China’s yuan as reserve currency. This week, finance officials from 14 African nations met in Harare, Zimbabwe to discuss adopting the yuan as a sovereign reserve currency. The move signifies the rise of China and its push to internationalize its currency in trade and investment dealings and could spell waning role of the US dollar.
Fighting corruption and the dysfunctional nature of trying to write Nigeria’s budget. Long delays, political machinations and threats to put ministers in a “wheelchair” define the record time it takes to write a budget for Africa’s largest economy. Feyi Fawehinmi learns from a new book by ex-finance minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala that things are as bad as they seem from the outside.
A closer look at Rwanda’s multimillion-dollar deal with Arsenal. To boost its tourism, Rwanda signed a three-year, estimated $40 million sleeve sponsorship with soccer club Arsenal. Filip Reyntjens discusses the nuances of the deal and why it sends a controversial message for one of the world’s poorest nations to sponsor one of the world’s richest soccer clubs.
The Black Panther lawsuit that is testing the cultural exchange between Africans and African-Americans. British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor recently filed a lawsuit against American rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar for copying her artwork to use in the video of the Black Panther soundtrack. As Lynsey Chutel finds, the case highlights the issues of borrowing and appropriation that has dogged artists in Africa and those in the African American diaspora.
Unpacking all the references in the This is Nigeria music video. Nigerian rapper and actor Falz’s This is Nigeria—his take on Childish Gambino’s This is America—has gone viral around the world with its acerbic take on many of Nigeria’s socio-political problems. Oluwatosin Adeshokan explains the obvious and less obvious meanings behind many of the video’s scenes and lyrics.
Chart of the Week
The concentrated boom of Africa’s hotel industry. Africa is home to a thriving hotel sector, which has recorded a steady improvement in demand and performance over the last decade. But as Abdi Latif Dahir reports, much of that transformation is happening in a few major cities, and specifically in the most popular tourist and business destinations.
Other Things We Liked
East Africans are considering cremation over burial as attitudes change. As space in major African cities, like Kampala and Nairobi, starts to come at a premium, locals are starting to have to consider cremation despite how they feel it might go against age-old traditions. In Kampala, Rodney Muhumuza for Associated Press writes that attitudes are slowly changing.
South Africa’s lead anti-land reform organization is taking its fight overseas. The South African Afrikaner-led organization AfriForum has been leveraging global white nationalist sentiment to highlight their domestic campaign against land reform aimed at majority white landowners. In Africa is a Country, Michael Bueckert details the group’s global quest for credibility.
The defiant act of replastering a UNESCO-protected mosque. Every year, residents of Djenné, located in the central region of Mali, come together to coat the mud-bricked historical Great Mosque. But as Katarina Höije documents in Roads and Kingdoms, the annual celebration is now an act of resistance against the growing militant threat to the sacred ritual.
Keep an eye on
Afrobytes Tech conference, Paris (Jun. 7-8). The event brings African entrepreneurs and innovators together with big global tech and financiers in Paris to discuss opportunities for the local tech ecosystem.
Jacob Zuma back in court (Jun. 8). The former South African president faces 16 charges of fraud, corruption, and racketeering based on 783 counts of wrongdoing.
TEDx Kakuma (Jun. 9). Dubbed the first TEDx event hosted in a refugee camp, with refugees, and for refugees, the event’s speakers will include former and current refugees like model Halima Aden and athlete Yiech Pur Biel.
*This brief was produced while listening to Ethiopia by Teddy Afro (Ethiopia).
Our best wishes for a productive and thought-filled week ahead. Please send any news, comments, suggestions, best African scientists and Nigeria’s World Cup jerseys to africa@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter at @qzafrica for updates throughout the day. This newsletter was compiled by Abdi Latif Dahir and edited by Yinka Adegoke.
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