Dear colleagues and friends,
Good news is hard to come by these days so this one should be celebrated.
No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s COVID diagnosis (sorry, not sorry). Sudanese filmmaker hajooj kuka was released from jail, alongside the other 4 artists who were arrested with him. Another group of artists who were arrested later on are still being held however, so the African filmmaking community remains engaged.
On October 1st, we also celebrated Nigeria’s 60th birthday, with some of the world’s biggest brands joining in for the party: Nike gifted its 2020 Super Eagles Football kit to several diaspora influencers like the writer Luvvie or the musician Jidenna (the simple fact that a company like Nike has a Naija collection should leave no doubt on the importance of the Nigerian market); Apple Music launched its month-long Oshe Naija ("Thanks Nigeria" in Yoruba) campaign; and Netflix came through with the surprise release of the documentary Journey of an African Colony, The Making of Nigeria.
For a more poetic, less commercial take, British-Nigerian visual artist Asiko wowed the interwebs with his Nigerian Renaissance photographic project inspired By Delacroix’s 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People. The conceptual series brings forth a vision of Nigeria stepping out of the shadows of the past into a new dawn. Cheers to that.
This week in HUSTLE & FLOW, we’ll also celebrate African creators doing so much #winning in Fashion, Architecture, Visual Arts and Literature; Orange releasing a $30 smartphone; Nigerian cinemas’ reopening strong, and Netflix and Canal+iRoko experimenting with mobile-only sVOD, among other tidbits like a 5G revolution in slow-motion, Ethiopian mobile money, local football’s new sexiness, a Christmas music channel and South Africa’s first female-led animation studio.
If you missed a previous edition or haven’t subscribed yet, head over to www.restless.global/hustleflow. To get in touch and share your comments, questions, or corrections, email me at marie@restless.global, or connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter @marieloramungai.
Happy reading to all,
Marie
INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
To the delight of South African telecoms operators, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has agreed that they could keep using the temporary 4G and 5G emergency spectrum allocated to them during the lockdown until March of 2021. The South African regulator has also started receiving applications for licenses for its high-demand 3G/4G spectrum.
Thanks to the temporary spectrum, MTN and Vodacom were able to launch their 5G networks in South Africa ahead of schedule. However, the 5G revolution is still a long way off across the continent, where 5G connections will account for only 3% of the total mobile connections by 2025. When the technology does become mainstream, it will take 32 seconds to download a high-definition movie, as opposed to 22 minutes on a 4G network.
MOBILE
Orange has released the Sanzo touch, a $30 4G Android Go smartphone supported by Google, which the operator describes as “the most affordable device globally”. Orange will start commercializing the device this month with a bundled mobile data plan in Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast and Madagascar, before rolling it out to its other markets in the Middle East and Africa region. Orange hopes that this price point will be a game changer that will accelerate the pace of digital adoption in the region - which it might very well be. However, and in case you were wondering, the Sanzo is far from being the cheapest smartphone in the world. In 2016, the Freedom 251 was released in India by a company called Ringing Bells for the shockingly low price of… $3.70. Although many customers received their phones, which seemed legit, Ringing Bells ran into trouble when some of its distributors accused it of not fulfilling all its orders and the company’s CEO ended up behind bars for fraud. Although it does seem doubtful that such a low price could be achieved without some sort of forced labor involved, it does make us wonder about how cheap technology will become during our lifetimes and what this will mean for a continent like Africa.
The National Bank of Ethiopia has finally given the greenlight to the national telecom company, Ethio telecom, to start mobile money services. Foreign firms will initially not be allowed to engage in mobile money service in Ethiopia, except for the one that will eventually acquire the 40% stake in Ethio telecom made available through the company’s on-going partial privatization process. Ethiopia is expected to generate $13 billion in mobile money revenue by 2025.
E-COMMERCE
Embattled e-commerce leader Jumia continues its strategic overhaul with a new partnership with Airtel Kenya that will allow consumers to make prepayments using Airtel Money. The prepayment option, which is already operational in Ghana and Uganda, is aimed both at enhancing contactless safety measures and at limiting the damage to Jumia caused by “last mile” issues such as delivery personnel being unable to find the address, or the customer changing their mind when they see the goods. However, customers will still be allowed to pay on the spot if they choose to, leaving that last issue unresolved. Jumia is also considering opening its logistics operations to third parties in a bid to increase revenue and is looking at expanding into rural areas to reduce reliance on customers in capital cities.
FASHION
September and October mean Fashion Week in the world’s fashion capitals of New York, London, Milan and Paris, and despite the move to digital this year, African talents are out there making their mark. South African knitwear line MaXhosa by designer Laduma Ngxokolo made its second appearance on the official calendar at New York Fashion Week with a vibrant and well-reviewed virtual runway show on Youtube, while LVMH Prize finalist Sindiso Khumalo, who focuses each of her collections on the life of a historical Black woman, debuted her Harriet Tubman-inspired collection with a fashion film presented at Milan Fashion Week. Khumalo’s previous collection was an homage to the Egbado princess Sarah Forbes Bonetta, who was taken as a prisoner of war as a child and spent many years in the British Royal household under Queen Victoria, and the next one will be inspired by South African activist Charlotte Maxeke.
Also showing at Milan Fashion Week were Vogue Italia’s Scouting for Africa Initiative 2020 winners Emmy Kasbit and Rich Mnisi, who are featured in the September issue of Vogue Talents, an initiative supported by the African Fashion Foundation and the Impact Fund for African creatives to recognize emerging African creative talents. Vogue has been a key supporter of African designers globally, and the company’s efforts might even intensify now that Nigerian-Swiss Chioma Nnadi has been named the new editor of Vogue.com. With this promotion, Nnadi joins British Vogue’s Edward Enninful and Teen Vogue’s Lindsay Peoples Wagner among the Black editors-in-chief within the Vogue global franchise.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s Fashion Week, which will be taking place later this month, has been rebranded as the “business of ethical fashion” to echo African fashion business’ on-going transformation into a leader in sustainability. According to CEO Lucilla Booyzen, SAFW has been reimagined as an environmentally-friendly digital experience staged at the Mall of Africa in Johannesburg, which will use a fraction of the lighting typically used, smaller sound systems, smaller teams, and a minimum number of models to reduce the event’s carbon footprint.
Another approach to sustainability is the one of Egyptian online fashion rental service La Reina, which has raised an undisclosed six-figure funding round to expand its team and launch a new fashion subscription service called The Box. La Reina, which has over 100,000 users, allows women to rent their evening and bridal gowns to each other. In 2018, the startup had already secured a $1 million Series A round from Algebra Ventures and 500 Startups. New service The Box will partner with global fashion brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, or Mango to provide the members with the newest collection to be used and returned within a week.
And finally a correction: in the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW I incorrectly linked to a CNN profile of IAMISIGO’s designer Bubu Ogisi while talking about celebrated stylist Daniel Obasi. Both are extremely talented Nigerian creatives with very distinctive styles, so if you didn’t click on the link last time you now have a second chance to discover them both.
VISUAL ARTS
The Ivorian art world is definitely buzzing these days. In the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW I talked about Abidjan’s dynamic contemporary art gallery scene. This week, OkayAfrica profiles four young and exciting Ivorian female photographers - Akobs, Aicha Fall, Noella Elloh and Saphir Niakadie - whose work is worth checking out.
In more West African art news, Ghana-born Nigerian sculptor and art world rockstar El Anatsui has been awarded the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture’s 2020 Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. El Anatsui is well-known for his large scale tapestry-like sculptures composed of thousands of folded pieces of metal sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire.
ARCHITECTURE
On a similar topic, Africa’s most famous architect, the Tanzanian-born British architect of Ghanaian descent Sir David Adjaye, has been announced as recipient of the 2021 Royal Institute of British Architects’ royal gold medal, one of the world’s highest accolades for architecture. Adjaye is the first black architect to receive the prestigious distinction in its 173-year history. The very busy Adjaye, who is behind the striking National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC and the Alara concept store in Lagos, is currently building a high-rise tower in Manhattan, the new National Cathedral for Ghana in Accra, a library in Florida, a financial center in Dakar, and the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library in Johannesburg.
LITERATURE
And we finish this week’s round up of African creatives just #winning with Zambian author’s Namwali Serpell receiving the UK’s top prize for science fiction, the Arthur C Clarke award, for her first novel The Old Drift. The book, a mix of historical fiction, magical realism and sci-fi, tells the stories of three families over three generations, moving from a colonial settlement by Victoria Falls at the turn of the 20th century, to the 1960s as Zambia attempts to send a woman to the moon, and into the near future. It was described as “the great African novel of the 21st century” by last year’s winner of the prize, Tade Thompson.
MUSIC
In a testament to the global label’s commitment to the growing African market, Zimbabwean Taponeswa Mavunga has been appointed Director of Africa at Sony Music UK. In this newly created position, Mavunga will be responsible for amplifying UK signed artists across Africa, as well as supporting artists within Africa to develop relationships, identify opportunities and increase visibility within the UK. Mavunga is a veteran of the African music scene, having distinguished herself through previous stints as Head of Talent and Music for Viacom Africa, working on MTV Base, BET Africa and Nickelodeon channels, and Head of Publicity for Sony Music’s Columbia UK label.
SPORTS BUSINESS
The scramble for European premier league rights that we have witnessed over the past few weeks doesn’t seem to have satisfied the appetites of broadcasters, who are now busy looking for more, with their attention shifting to local leagues. Multichoice has announced a 5-year title sponsorship by DStv of the South African Premier Soccer League (PSL), while StarTimes has signed a $1.1 million, 7-year contract with the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) for the live broadcast of the local premier league matches, both men and women national teams matches, plus some thirty other matches from the lower-tier of the Kenyan league.
Meanwhile, French club Paris Saint-Germain is launching a football academy in Rwanda, after months of delays caused by the pandemic. The academy is part of a 3-year sponsorship deal that was signed last December between Rwanda and the French football giant which will also see PSG promote Rwanda as a tourism destination. In an opposite move, Dutch club Ajax is exiting its South African franchise Ajax Cape Town after its second successive failure to win promotion back to the Premiership. The 21-year association was meant to produce a steady flow of talented young players for the European market while at the same time sustaining a top club in South Africa's PSL. But the results have proved disappointing, and Ajax management bluntly declared that “the South African football market has not produced enough talent at the level that Ajax strives for” and that “Ajax does not see sufficient potential for the future.” Ouch. Efforts by European clubs to invest in talent sourcing and training in Africa have so far been haphazard. My feeling is that they have suffered from the common symptoms plaguing many Western approaches to Africa: under-investment and lack of adaptation of Western practices to the local environment.
Hopefully this will not be the case of the projects supported by the Agence Francaise de Development’s new African sports initiative, the online platform Sport En Commun. Based in Dakar, the pan-African platform aims to promote the financing and support of projects combining sport and development in Africa by referencing various funding opportunities and connecting interested parties.
BROADCAST
Music TV group Trace has announced that it would institute a permanent 50/50 video airplay for women artists and other women-produced content on its channels, after testing out the concept during Women’s Month in August. It is unclear if this measure will apply to Trace’s channels globally or in South Africa only, but in any case such a self-imposed constraint is a bold move. In fact, Trace seems to be full of good marketing ideas recently as it also just released Trace Xmas, a brand new pop up music channel dedicated entirely to Christmas hits on Sky Channel 364 in the UK, in a bid to “lift the country's spirits”. The hilarious concept will be coming soon to Francophone Africa, the Caribbean and the Reunion. Full disclosure, in 2016 Trace Group acquired my company Buni.tv, which was then merged with their own VOD service Trace Play.
CINEMA EXHIBITION
As major global cinema chains, such as Cineworld Group, announce new shutdowns in the US and UK in the face of a second wave of the pandemic and the repeatedly postponed release of tentpoles like the new James Bond film No Time To Die, the Nigerian cinema exhibition sector is hoping for a strong rebirth carried by local blockbusters. The industry breathed a collective sigh of relief when the comedy Fate of Alakada, the first local release since the reopening of theaters, made over 10 million nairas ($25,800) on its Independence Day opening despite seating restrictions, placing it among the top 5 highest grossing opening days for Nollywood since 2018, according to distributor FilmOne Entertainment.
Vivendi’s CanalOlympia will also count on local releases to drive audiences to its first Nigerian location opening in Abuja later this month after a 6-months delay in the company’s roll out plan.
VOD
However, with the past few months’ persistent incertitude over the state of the local cinema business, it is no surprise that the producers of some of Nigeria’s most highly anticipated films - such as Oloture, Citation, or King of Boys II - made the decision to skip cinemas for the first time and release their movies directly on Netflix. The unprecedented move privately shocked many theater owners, who were counting on the high-profile films to restart their business. Threatening the delicate economic balance of Nigeria’s film sector, whose business model is highly dependent on box office revenue to survive, is a risky move for Netflix.
But after all, the global giant might not be interested in playing nice as it is looking for ways to speed up its growth 5 years after it arrived in Africa. Digital TV Research estimates that Netflix currently has 1.4 million subscribers on the continent, still a far cry from Multichoice’s 20 million. Last week, the platform announced it was now experimenting in Nigeria with much cheaper, mobile-only subscriptions priced at $2.95 a month, after trialing similar offers in South Africa and Egypt. Such a strategy has been highly successful in India, and we can expect that it will be as well in Africa, even in countries, like Nigeria, where the internet infrastructure is still lacking. It is, truly, only a matter of time.
Interestingly, Vivendi-owned Canal+ announced last week that it was also developing its own mobile-first VOD service for Francophone Africa, in partnership with iRoko (Canal+ acquired iRoko’s ROK Studios last year). It is not the first time that Canal+ attempts to jump start the VOD market in French-speaking Africa, and it is also not its first try at creating synergies with iRoko. So far, none of it has worked, but I also believe that the market was not ready. Another challenge, which might seem trivial but is not, is creating successful products wile working across the Franco/Anglo cultural and language divide. Good luck to them - we will be watching.
In any case, if we believe Digital TV Research’s new finger-licking guesstimates on Africa’s sVOD industry, at least some of these initiatives are bound to bear fruit as the market is set to grow almost 5 times to reach 12.96 million subscriptions by 2025. Digital TV Research predicts that Netflix will count 5.7 subscribers and Disney+ 2.71 million, even though it is not expected to enter the African market until 2022. Showmax will be the 3rd-largest platform with 1.65 million subscribers.
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Double FESPACO winner (Gold Stallion in 2013 and 2017), French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis will dedicate his next feature film to Thelonious Monk, the famous American jazz pianist and composer behind such jazz standards as Well, You Needn’t, Blue Monk and Round Midnight.
ANIMATION
South Africa’s first female-led animation outfit, Studio Yezi, has announced its first project in SOLA, an action-adventure, fantasy coming-of-age series “about the adventures of a girl named Sola who experiences her magic awakening in a world where magic is dangerous and deadly”. Founder Thandiwe Mlauli will act as producer, director and showrunner. Studio Yezi is currently running a crowdfunding campaign (#MakeSOLAHappen) to finance the project’s development and production.