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Nigeria sees a rush to get Nollywood online
LAGOS, June 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A glamour blogger, a filmmaker and a tech
mogul are competing to create a homegrown African rival to Netflix, but poor
internet connections and intense competition are proving daunting obstacles.
They dream of popularising access to films made in Nigeria, which is home
to the world’s second biggest movie industry in terms of production behind
Hindi-language Bollywood.
With nearly $4 billion in revenue and almost 2,000 productions every year,
films made in what is known as Nollywood are largely sold on the streets and
to idling motorists caught in traffic as pirated copies for just a few
dollars.
Local start-ups and Nollywood stars understand the interest in changing the
distribution of films that are hugely popular across Africa, where cinemas
are few and far between.
With such a huge potential market, video-on-demand platforms have sprung up
in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital and home to the country’s film
industry.
And competition is already fierce.
– Netflix of Africa? –
Blogger Linda Ikeji — one of Nigeria’s biggest names on social networks —
recently launched Linda Ikeji TV (LITV) to great fanfare.
It offers dozens of films, series and programmes inspired by US shows but
with a Nollywood twist for a monthly fee of 1,000 naira ($2.80, 2.35 euros).
“We are hoping to be to Africa what Netflix is to the world,” Ikeji wrote
on her Instagram page, which has some two million followers.
She promised glamour, sass and humour, particularly with reality shows such
as “Football Wives” or “Highway Girls of Eko”, “a show on real-life
prostitutes” in Lagos.
The 37-year-old former model-turned-businesswoman made her fortune through
advertising revenue on her site, which tracked the lives of Nigeria’s rich
and famous.
She said she had invested “half-a-billion naira” of capital in the project.
As well as buying video, she is also making original content from her own
studios in Lagos.
Before the end of the year, Nigerian company Envivo is expected to launch
its own platform with an initial investment of more than $20 million, said
filmmaker Chioma Ude, who is the firm’s marketing director.
“(US telecoms giant) Cisco wants a big footprint in Africa, and as our
technical partner, they will provide all the tecnology, from the network to
the video compressions, etc,” the founder of the Africa International Film
Festival (AFRIFF) told AFP.
– ‘Prohibitive’ data costs –
A viable economic model for the promoters of Nollywood online still needs
to be found, given the lack of widespread high-speed internet coverage.
Only 34 percent of Africans have internet access compared with more than 50
percent in the rest of the world, according to the 2018 Global Digital
report.
But Africa showed the biggest progression in internet users last year,
especially through mobile telephones.
Serge Noukoue, organiser of the annual Nollywood Week in Paris, said price
was everything and the African consumer wanted to pay “as little as possible”
to watch a film.
“Even iROKOtv, the pioneer on the continent, doesn’t really make a profit,”
he said.
“They have had a lot of success in fundraising but what subscribers
actually bring in is less conclusive.”
Jason Njoku founded iROKOtv in 2010 but said he made a mistake to count on
streaming from the start. “It simply couldn’t work,” he explained.
“Data costs were prohibitive, as is access to reliable broadband across
huge swathes of the continent. Our customer service team was inundated with
queries.
“We totally rebuilt our product and rebuilt our entire company around the
African consumer and their habits.”
That led to an application that ate less data and which allows free mobile
downloads of video files.
There is original content, while films have also been subtitled in French,
Swahili and Zulu to make them more accessible to other African countries.
– Fierce competition –
Competitors have emerged elsewhere in Africa in recent years, including
Kenya’s BuniTV ($5-a-month) or South Africa’s Magic Go ($8-a-month).
“If these online platforms don’t make money yet they’re a bet on the future
for when connections are better,” said Noukoue.
“A lot of projects have been created but there will not be room for
everyone in the market in the long term. Competition will be fierce.”
Giants of the sector such as Netflix, which in 2016 launched in Africa,
could outshine the continent’s video-on-demand pioneers in years to come.
“Netflix doesn’t yet have a real Africa strategy but it’s started to
produce original African content. That will be a gamechanger.
“It has considerable means at its disposal that the others don’t have.”
BSS/AFP/IJ/1417 hrs