[qz-guide-hero id=”434624726″ title=”💡 The Big Idea” description=”African film, TV, and music are thriving. That’s good news for creators, homegrown platforms, and international companies trying to be part of the story.”]
Charting investment in African entertainment
African entertainment startups had their best funding year on record last year, raising a total of $13.9 million, almost 19 times what the sector had raised the previous year, and nearly 116 times what it had secured in 2018, according to a report by Disrupt Africa, a website for news on African tech startups. The money came mostly from local and foreign venture capital firms.
Homegrown platforms
Homegrown music streaming services are facing competition from Spotify and Apple Music, which recently announced plans to expand further in the continent. Here’s who they’ll be up against:
🎵 Boomplay: Partly owned by Transsion Holdings, a Chinese company that is Africa’s number one mobile phone supplier. The app comes pre-installed on its phones, and had around 75 million users as of July 2020.
🎵 Mdundo: Free music streaming and downloading service that started in Kenya in 2013, it allows people to download songs, rather than stream them, and plays ads at their start. Raised $6.4 million in its 2020 IPO.
🎵 MusicTime: Streaming app from MTN Group, one of Africa’s largest mobile network operators by subscribers. Launched in South Africa in 2018 as a pay-as-you-go service.
More African audio streaming and downloading services include: Nigeria’s uduX and Spinlet, Kenya’s Smubu, South Africa’s Mziiki and Senegal’s MusikBi.
One big number
400 million: The number of views on YouTube for global megahit Jerusalema by South Africa’s Master KG and Nomcebo as an example of how African entertainment is reaching new consumers. The route Jerusalema took to worldwide acclaim after its release in December 2019 is an example of the new pathways to success for African artists.
Case study
In March, Africans were treated to a new original streaming series: a police procedural and legal drama called Crime & Justice, inspired by real-life local crime stories in Kenya. The show has revived debate and discussion around controversies that might have otherwise faded from the news.
Revenue from subscription video-on-demand in Africa is expected to reach $1.5 billion by 2026. Last year, Digital TV research estimated that streaming video is expected to attract around 13 million subscribers in the next few years, led by Netflix, Disney+, and Showmax. The biggest audiences will be found in South Africa and Nigeria.
Quotable
“What’s most personal tends to be most universal. Hyperlocal content can still travel, but there’s a freedom in telling stories without trying to second-guess a foreign gaze.”
—Candice Fangueiro, Showmax’s head of content
Turn it up
Listen to Quartz Africa’s Spotify playlist of some of the biggest artists breaking through borders to reach international audiences in the last few years.
📚 Read the field guide
African entertainment comes into its own
The sounds putting Africa on the global music map
Africa’s entertainment deals are going down in the DMs
📣 Sound off
Which African musician is the best of all time?
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