Three Reasons Africa is the New Media Frontier

To say Africa is a diverse place would be an understatement. In fact, Africa is perhaps the most culturally diverse places in the world. With 54 counties between its shores, and more than 2000 languages spoken, it represents an immense TV audience that is growing thanks to satellite media distribution. Below are three reasons content creators and distributors should be paying very close attention.

Africa’s economy is improving

General economic trends are poised for steady growth, which combined with digitization, is driving investments in media from governments and private players. A prime example is the Nigerian film industry (“Nollywood”) – globally recognized as the second largest film producer in the world with a planned $1 billion in export revenue.

GDP for Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow between 3.7% and 4.1% from 2021 to 2025

(source: IMF, 2021)

Africa is now the youngest continent

Such a young population is attractive for content providers and advertisers as viewers tend to form viewing habits at a young age. There is also an abundance of opportunity to provide the variety of content viewers are looking for in one of the 2,000 ethnic languages represented. Providers can also leverage satellite’s global distribution capacity to better reflect the continent’s diversity and quench audiences’ thirst for content with which they can identify.

60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 25

Over-the-top can’t summit setbacks

Around 700 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t have internet access. 270 million people also live outside mobile broadband coverage areas. As a result, OTT suffers from high data fees for fixed and mobile broadband which few can practically afford. In contrast, satellite doesn’t rely on terrestrial infrastructure and so can be delivered across significant coverage areas.

TV penetration of the 240 million Sub-Sahara African households is only 42%

Intelsat 20 (IS-20) covers most of Sub-Saharan Africa and carries over 600 channels, connecting people to content across multiple genres. IS-20 reaches 40+ million free-to-air urban adult viewers (details by country below) in the top six African economies alone.