Dear colleagues and friends,
As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to send ripples through the world in general and the Entertainment industry in particular (more in this edition), Nigeria is fighting its own fight against rape culture, which is a different but not unrelated topic.
As Quartz reports, a concerning 717 cases of rape have been registered with the police in Nigeria since January, leading to outrage and protests, and pushing state governors to declare a state of emergency on the issue. More recently, accusations of sexual misconduct have even rocked the more progressive worlds of tech, after a woman called out the CEO of Lagos-based ISP Tizeti for sexual harrassment, and music, with rape allegations made by Seyitan Babatayo against Afrobeats superstar Dbanj. The story of how Babatayo was arrested and intimidated by the police after she spoke out is deeply disturbing.
And that’s where the two issues intersect. Where Black men are at high risk of police or gun violence in the US and in other countries worldwide, the type of violence exercised on Black women often takes other shapes such as sexual violence or gaslighting. In another shocking reveal last week, a group of former employees of OkayAfrica, a prominent platform for African culture, came out to denounce CEO Abiola Oke’s abusive treatment of women in the workplace. Oke resigned from his post two days later. This wokeness wave might very well turn into a tsunami.
This week in HUSTLE & FLOW, I’ll talk about two African art auctions including a very controversial one, Queen Bey’s surprise announcement of her upcoming new visual album Black is King, Netflix’s gorgeous #AfricaOnNetflix campaign, and more.
If you have received this newsletter from a colleague, please make sure to subscribe here. Previous editions of HUSTLE & FLOW are available on my website at www.restless.global/hustleflow. And as always, don’t hesitate to reach out with your comments, questions, tips, or Zoom call invites at marie@restless.global.
Happy reading to all,
Marie
INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
The Internet Society has released an update to its 2012 original report on Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in Kenya and Nigeria. Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), by enabling local traffic exchange and access to content, are a key element to the development of fast and affordable local internet ecosystems. In 2012, which coincidentally was the year Jason Njoku launched IrokoTV and I launched Buni.tv, approximately 30% of internet traffic in both Nigeria and Kenya was localized. Now it is 70%. “The growth of the IXPs in each country was exponential, as were the cost savings”, says the report, with the cost of 500BM of prepaid data dropping from $5.92 to $2.92 in Kenya and from $12.75 (!) to $3.37 in Nigeria. In 2012, Google Global Cache was the only Content Delivery Network available locally, whereas the local CDN ecosystem now includes Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Facebook, Google Global Cache, Google Edge, Limelight, Microsoft and Netflix. As you know this is a space I am very bullish about.
MOBILE
MTN Group has announced that it has topped 100 million active data customers for the first time. This corresponds to 39% of the telco’s total subscriber base of 257 million across its 21 markets in Africa and the Middle East. However, about 60% of rural populations in Africa remain unconnected. To support smartphone adoption, in 2019 MTN distributed 675,000 cheap, data-enabled handsets across 12 markets, launched a digital literacy programme, and reduced entry-level data rates across its footprint by 60%.
In South Africa, MTN and competitors Telkom and Vodacom are gearing up for a “Battle Royale” over 5G spectrum, which is largely unassigned in the country but that the regulator, ICASA, has promised to auction by the end of the year. Vodacom currently has the lead since it switched on Africa’s first live 5G mobile network in May in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, thanks to temporary additional spectrum made available by ICASA during the lockdown. But Telkom is reportedly so focused on implementing its 5G plans that it decided not to pay its shareholders any dividends and reinvest instead in acquiring 5G spectrum and building related infrastructure.
E-COMMERCE
Nigerian digital payment startup Paystack has launched Paystack Commerce, “a collection of free tools to help African brands sell more physical and digital products online”. The new features and the demo video are beautifully done. In 2016, Paystack was the first startup from Nigeria to enter Y Combinator and it has since raised $10 million in funding from Stripe, Tencent and Visa.
I’ve talked about the recent forays of Nigerian payment companies into e-commerce in several previous editions of HUSTLE & FLOW. Techcabal has a very good in-depth piece on the topic this week, which explains how the context has dramatically evolved since the first generation of (failed) Nigerian e-commerce startups, namely Jumia and Konga. Since then, while Nigeria’s economic macros have weakened, underlying challenges such as payments and logistics are being solved, with a little help from COVID. Merchants have also changed attitudes and expectations and now prioritize a direct relationship with their customers, which benefits solutions proposed by fintech startups versus global e-commerce platforms. How these new, fintech-driven local solutions will fare once Facebook Pay arrives on the market is another question.
FASHION
Are virtual fashion models here to stay? This week serial innovator Sarah Diouf, in partnership with Ghanaian studio Balm.labs, launched Tongoro’s digital magazine MADE, which includes an editorial on the future of fashion and a photo spread featuring digital models. I have a lot of respect for Sarah’s work at every level, and props to her for continuously pushing the envelope. However I have to say that I find these giant and vacant-eyed virtual models quite creepy. One great thing about Anifa Mvuemba’s 3D fashion show for Hanifa was that she used realistic female bodies to model the clothes (with no face, probably a smart choice).
Lagos-born LVMH Prize winner Kenneth Ize has been tapped by Karl Lagerfeld, the late designer’s namesake brand, to design a capsule collection that will be released in April 2021. Ize, who is the first Black designer to ever collaborate with the brand, will likely bring his trademark Nigerian weaving technique aso oke to the collection. ”Our vision is to combine Karl’s Parisian-chic aesthetic with elements of traditional African artistry,” he said. This already sounds like a winner.
Talking about African fabrics, it is now a reasonably well-known fact that African wax prints are not, indeed, African. If this information has passed you by, the BBC has a nicely illustrated history of the wax print, from its origins in Indonesia to its current design and production in the Netherlands, most famously by Dutch company Vlisco, and in Asia. The BBC article, however, misses the last chapter of this story. In January this year, Afreximbank signed a term sheet with Kojo Annan’s Made In Africa Inc. to provide the company with a $190 million facility to finance the acquisition of Vlisco. If the deal is confirmed in this post-COVID world, it would bring the wax print under African ownership - a pretty major symbol.
VISUAL ARTS
The pressure is mounting on the controversial auction of African artifacts taking place today at Christie’s in Paris, which includes a pair of sculptures representing Igbo Alusi deities. The artifacts were initially bought by French collector Jacques Kerchache in 1968, during Nigeria’s Biafra war, and are estimated for sale between $280,769 - $393,077. Nigerian scholars and government officials, as well as more than 2,000 people who signed a petition titled "Stop Christie's from selling STOLEN Igbo Sculptures. #BlackArtsMatter”, question how these sculptures could have been legally acquired when the region they originate from was literally a war zone at the time. Which, you must admit, is a very good question. At the time of writing, the sale was going on as planned, with the most expensive item - another Nigerian sculpture - expected to fetch up to $1 million.
More auction news, with last Wednesday’s sale by Piasa of 172 contemporary artworks by 106 artists from 19 African countries. Le Monde highlights some of the works here (in French), which include paintings by DRC’s Cheri Samba and Eddy Kamuanga, Nigeria’s Wole Lagunju, or Uganda’s Joseph Ntensibe, whose Tropical Garden 4 (my favorite) more than doubled its estimate to sell for 67,600 euros. But many other works from well-known artists were far more affordable: you could have walked away with a Malik Sidibe print for 3,640 euros or a Yinka Shonibare lithograph for 1,560 euros.
Talking about Yinka Shonibare, the British-Nigerian superstar of the African contemporary art scene has had to adapt his Guest Projects residency program, which he normally runs from his London studio, to today’s socially-distanced world. The call for proposals for his newly-minted Guest Projects Digital residency is open until July 12th.
MUSIC
Stop the presses -- yesterday Beyoncé unveiled the trailer for Black is King, the new visual album that she will be releasing on Disney+ on July 31st. Black is King is based on music from The Lion King: The Gift, the Lion King remake soundtrack album produced by Beyoncé and featuring top African artists like Wizkid, Burna Boy, Mr Eazy, Tiwa Savage and Yemi Alade. I loved The Gift so much that I had to stop listening to it because I couldn’t get it out of my head. The visual album, which is set to feature appearances by some of the soundtrack artists, is described by Disney as "a celebratory memoir for the world on the Black experience. The film is a story for the ages that informs and rebuilds the present. A reunion of cultures and shared generational beliefs. A story of how the people left most broken have an extraordinary gift and a purposeful future." Well played Beyoncé, and well played Disney. That’s hitting the zeitgeist’s bullseye.
In the past few years, interactions between the global and African music industries have been growing at a fast rate (film and TV are next, sit tight and keep reading). Pulse has an in-depth explainer this week on the evolution of the global music market and how Africa fits into it, which is a good read especially if you are an investor interested in the space and looking for where to start. As a rule, what I tell my clients is: platform-building is for global players that have scale and unlimited resources. Anything that requires deep on-the-ground knowledge (talent spotting and development, content creation, tech features plugging a gap between local markets and global solutions - for example in payments or data collection and analytics, ability to leverage telcos relationships) are opportunities for investment.
BROADCAST
Successful Ivorian advertising and media entrepreneur Fabrice Sawegnon has launched his first TV station, Life TV, positioned as a general entertainment channel focusing on local content. Life TV is one of five free-to-air stations to win a broadcast license to exploit Ivory Coast’s new Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT - TNT in French) market, after Canal Plus’ A+ and RTI3. It is owned by Sawegnon’s Voodoo Group and French channel M6 which holds a 12,5% share, down from the 33% that were initially announced for M6 in 2017. Check out HUSTLE & FLOW #2 for an explainer on the misdirected enthusiasm of French broadcasters towards Francophone Africa’s DTT space.
ViacomCBS has promoted Monde Twala, senior vp of ViacomCBS Networks Africa, editorial and general manager, to the additional role of peer lead for BET International, tasked with growing the BET brand outside the U.S. Despite its positioning, cultural relevance, and worldwide reach, BET (Black Entertainment Television for the non-initiated) has so far been pretty tame when it comes to leveraging the global Black experience to expand its business worldwide. With the emergence of a global Black consciousness now dominating the headlines, it seems obvious that BET has missed a big opportunity. Perhaps it is not too late to course-correct, even though other Hollywood players, including HBO and Netflix, have been much bolder in terms of creating Black content that can drive global conversations.
Finally, a recently released report by Accenture shows that MultiChoice invested just over $2.1 billion in Nigeria between 2015 and 2019, including $400 million in the development of local talents within the creative industry. I would love to see the detail of what they include in that last number.
FILM
Realness has announced the selection for its 5th screenwriter’s residency, which will take place online from July 1st to September 1st, 2020. In the five years since its inception, Realness has supported 30 feature film projects from across Africa, the first two to be produced going on to screen at Venice, TIFF, Sundance, IFFR and Berlinale.
Moonlight director and Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins will be writing the film adaptation of the BAFTA and Oscar nominated documentary Virunga for Netflix, which Leonardo DiCaprio will executive produce. According to Netflix, "the film tells the story of those who worked to save one of the world’s most bio-diverse parks & the endangered gorillas inside." I’ll be interested to see where this project ends up filming (Rwanda, Kenya?).
VOD
There is no stopping Netflix’s methodical and enthusiastic advances in Africa. Last week the streamer gave other media brands a lesson in aspirational African marketing when it released its new #AfricaOnNetflix campaign, a beautiful video featuring some of the biggest African stars with content on the platform. The promotional content quickly went viral of course, with the stars themselves actively sharing the material on their pages. In a nice - but also strategic - move, the campaign also includes directors, such as Nosipho Dumisa or Kunle Afolayan, writers like Malenga Mulendema (Mama K’s Team 4), and Netflix’s own executives Dorothy Ghettuba and Ben Amadasun, both veterans of the African TV space whom everybody in the industry knows and respects. This signals to all African creatives that Netflix is the place where they can strive. I’ve said this before, but the goodwill that is being built here will be very hard for other players to compete against when they eventually come to the continent.
Talking about Netflix competitors, I’ve been hearing that Amazon Prime Video is looking for its first African projects. Meanwhile, it is gearing up to launch a linear TV offering in its home market of the US, which is not a bad idea considering that AVOD seems to be taking off, that live sports are one of streaming’s next frontiers, and that Amazon Prime has already established itself as an aggregator of third-parties on-demand channels (HBO, Showtime, etc).
CONTENT PRODUCTION
One of the exciting side effects of the global Black Lives Matter movement is that media companies and financiers are rushing to shift resources toward the production of Black and diverse content. LeBron James' SpringHill Entertainment (behind projects like Netflix's Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker and Top Boy) raised $100 million from investors including Elisabeth Murdoch, production company Sister (Chernobyl, Gangs of London), Guggenheim Investments, The University of California's UC Investments and private equity firm SC Holdings, and signed an overall deal for scripted TV with Disney’s ABC Studios. Meanwhile across the pond, the BBC has launched its Creative Diversity Commitment, which will prioritize £100 million of the broadcaster’s existing commissioning budget over three years (from 2021-2024) towards diverse and inclusive content. The BBC will also implement a new mandatory 20% diverse-talent target in all new network commissions from April 2021, and is looking for ways to make concrete changes sooner. This of course is great for all African diaspora talent working in the US or the UK, but I believe that it will also change how studio heads and TV commissioners view Black content in general, including African content.
Remember the Ikorodu Bois, the young Nigerian “mimickers” famous for their bare-bones and hilarious remakes of music videos and movie trailers? Well they are heading to Hollywood. The kids behind the videos, brothers Muiz (15), Malik (10) and Babatunde (23) Sanni and their cousin Fawas Aina (13), received an invitation from Extraction producers the Russo brothers after their homemade remake of the movie’s trailer went viral. Securing US visas and flights for Hollywood-obsessed Nigerian kids in this climate will be another issue though.
ANIMATION
African animation continues to make inroads and lands a prime profile in Forbes this week, which is worth reading in full. The article highlights the key structuring role played these past few years by the African Animation Network (AAN) led by the South African Nick Wilson, who has been tirelessly advocating for African animation for over a decade. Behind-the-scenes support from AAN has helped the emergence of several African talents on the global scene, such as Ridwan Moshood from Nigeria, winner of Cartoon Network Africa's Creative Lab competition with his genius original property Garbage Boy & Trashcan. Also worth noting is the role played by US story consulting company Baboon Animation, which has been working with African creators for years to develop their storytelling skills with great results, and is now partnering with Moshood to launch his new studio Pure Garbage. This is a model to explore for investors interested in the African content space. In recognition for this recent flurry of activity, Africa was supposed to be Annecy Animation Festival’s territory of honor this year, but the showcase has now been postponed to 2021.
Another leading initiative in support of the African digital creative space is Digital Lab Africa, run by Institut Francais. DLA unveiled the nine winners of its fourth edition last week in five categories: immersive realities, video games, music, animation and digital art.
CALL FOR PROPOSAL
And I’ll finish with a global call for proposals, also supported by Institut Francais and by AFD, the French Development Agency. Accès Culture seeks to offer finance and support for cultural projects presented by African and French cultural organizations working in partnership. The projects should encourage cultural cooperation and be oriented around community arts outreach, and the deadline for applications is July 30th, 2020.