MultiChoice’s Showmax is making a big move to secure more market share in Africa as competition intensifies between the online streaming platform and its rival Netflix. As a strategy, Showmax is investing in producing its own local content for African audience, Reuters reported.

The move is in line with the broadcast rules announced by Nigeria’s Ministry of Information last year, that reinforces the requirement of 70% local contents in the broadcast industry. The Ministry mandated the broadcast regulator, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), to use their capacity to ensure that contents being broadcast are localized to meet the 70% requirement.

MultiChoice launched Showmax in 2015, and it has risen to become one of the largest streaming platforms in the world, available in 46 African countries and beyond. Showmax’s streaming services extends beyond African shores to Western countries, including Britain and France, which have sizeable African diaspora populations.

As competition with Netflix intensifies, Showmax’s senior executive Yolisa Phahle said in an interview that the company is focusing on developing movies and shows set in its biggest markets of Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

“For us, it really is about getting the local entertainment which we know African audiences enjoy, programming in their languages, stories reflecting their realities, their hopes and their dreams,” said Phahle.

She did not say how much Multichoice was investing in the production of local content.

The countries of focus are all pushing to have at least 30% local content in broadcasts, and the streaming companies are working to make it happen.

Showmax released six new original productions last year to add to its catalogue of content from the U.S-based cable channel HBO. It also offers global football, including the English Premier League, on its Showmax Pro platform.

Some of the shows released so far this year include a reality TV series from Nigeria and a police procedural drama set in Kenya.

As the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to spend more time at home, there was an initial increase in viewership for Showmax, Phahle said.

Netflix has in its stream, many popular Nigerian movies including Lion Heart, The Wedding Party, Road to Yesterday and October 1. The company is also introducing new African movies, some of which, it produced.

However, while local contents seem to be paving the way for players in the African streaming market, cost of streaming remains key in winning more audience.

Last week, MultiChoice said it would charge Showmax mobile subscribers across Africa on average 20% less for access on a single mobile device, in recognition that some users may not be able to afford such luxuries during the pandemic-induced economic slowdown affecting most countries.

Phahle said Broadcasters of all kinds on the continent are under huge pressure to keep viewers engaged, and they simply have hundreds and hundreds of other places where they can take their eyeballs or their wallets.

The company is co-producing programmes with HBO and Cinemax on productions set in Africa to global audiences, she said.

“They know that the stories that we are telling from our own backyard will find global audiences,” she said of HBO and Cinemax.

Good People, join me to welcome students and the Students Union Government of Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State Nigeria to Tekedia Institute CollegeBoost, a Tekedia Mini-MBA designed for college students. When students come together to go on an academic excursion, you have a reason to believe. Yes, instead of the usual (parties, etc), they want to spend time with us at the Institute to co-learn and co-share towards advancing the continent.

These are brilliant young people in one of Africa’s finest technical universities. They are already well prepared by FUT Minna; at the Institute, we will simply expand their horizons in market systems. They began today with us.

From Tanzania to Nigeria, from Botswana to New York, and beyond, schools, tech accelerators, innovation hubs, etc are making time to come to co-learn with us.

As always, I like to welcome our members, and a ceremony is already scheduled as follows:

Date: Friday, April 30, 2021

Time: 7pm – 8pm WAT

Topic: Building Innovators of Nations and Abundance in Future (presentation and Q/As)

Zoom Link: in FUTM Board

Since Adam Smith wrote his classic, in 1776, the Wealth of Nations, to upend the mercantilist system and set forward the basic foundations for modern classical economics, the world has changed. The core pillars of productivity and division of labour have remained the tenets of firms which thrive. A free market system has provided the cement mortars in states, seeding the pillars for the massive translation from invention to innovation.

The simple difference between a nation like the United States and another like Nigeria is that one is an innovation society while the other is an invention society. There are so many ideas in the latter but hardly enough products and services.

Until nations transmute from being inventive to innovative, they will remain poor. No nation has become rich without that translation. Yes, always remember that most of the pioneers of the most fundamental aspects of physics, mathematics and chemistry died poor. They were bright people – but they ended up poor. Why? They lived in societies of ideas with no products because there was no transduction from invention to innovation.

Nigeria has built a massive arsenal of idea-creators but it has struggled to find ways to deploy those ideas. From universities to mechanic garages, ideas everywhere but NOT a single solution to problems. So, you have a nation with legions of engineers but no water, roads, and electricity.

But this is fixable and it comes down to building the anchors: the anchor is productivity driven by competition. It would be hard for Nigeria to rise if the states are not incentivized to compete. The law of comparative advantages must work in Nigeria for it to rise, and fiscal federalism is the gunpowder that will WIN poverty for Nigeria.

Without that productivity, unlocked through fiscal federalism,  Nigeria will remain poor and keep getting poorer!

In physics, momentum is the product of mass and velocity. To build a great business, you need momentum but here the Mass is the size of your business and Velocity is the new basis of competition you are creating in the market. A new basis comes when a company is innovating, making it possible to chart a new pathway in the market. Without innovation, you have  only Speed which is simply participating in the market without a direction. In mechanics, you already know that Velocity is speed with a direction.

At Tekedia Mini-MBA, we provide a fundamental foundation of creating a new basis of competition, translating how we serve customers, moving beyond their Needs to expectations to Perceptions. The greatest companies serve customer perceptions, not just their needs. When you focus on meeting the perceptions of your customers, you engineer fandom. Fandom means your customers become fans of your brand. It means you have Velocity, not speed.

Join us in the next edition of Tekedia Mini-MBA which begins June 7 to Sept 1. Our school is big; we have 36 nations represented. Cost is $140 or N50,000 and it is 100% online, self-paced with thrice live Zoom sessions.

Come, let us master the physics of business success at Tekedia Institute. Register to beat the early bird deadline and get many benefits.

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Comment: Sir, I like the idea presented in your post. I strongly believe that businesses in Nigeria stand to gain a lot if they employ the scientific approach more often.

May we then make a comparison of two companies and their share of profit in respective markets:

Tesla and Dangote Group.

Tesla, operating with relatively low mass and high velocity, through rapid innovation is maintaining peak momentum within the global automotive industry.

On the other hand, Dangote Group has a high mass due to the number of subdivisions, employees, assets, liabilities etc. which is set to increase further when the refinery comes online.

However it can be said to possess a somewhat low velocity since the format of its business operations is based on a legacy of the industrial age (moving upstream and consolidation of weak points along its supply chain).

The product of its high mass and low velocity yields a high momentum as shown by its pole position in profitability within the Nigerian market.

It seems that different approaches may still yield the same result.

My response: Absolutely – there are many ways to optimize for that high momentum. But the greatest happens when mass is high and velocity is high. Think Amazon.