Dear colleagues and friends,
HUSTLE & FLOW is back.
Depending on whether you believe that 2021 started on January 1st or January 20th, I may be a little late or right on time to wish you all a Happy New Year. We still can’t travel and we still can’t touch each other, but at least we can breathe a little easier under our masks since America has rejoined the adults’ table.
With a swift stroke of the presidential pen, Joe Biden has already reversed many of the most repulsive Trump-era policies, including the various travel bans that targeted visitors from Libya, Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Nigeria, or Somalia. Deputy Treasury secretary Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo and health policy adviser Osaremen Okolo, both Nigerian-American, are also making their entry into the most diverse US administration in history.
The amount of gold-standard memes that the US inauguration gave us almost made us forget that Uganda was going through its own chaotic elections. However, there was no transfer of power there and, at the time of writing, pop star-turned-political opponent Bobi Wine was still under house arrest in Kampala. Meanwhile in Ethiopia, civil war continues to rage on.
The highlight of my locked-down weekend was to binge-watch Lupin on Netflix. The excellent and charismatic Omar Sy is clearly the main reason behind Lupin’s surprise worldwide success. Lupin, the first French series to crack Netflix’s US top 10, has been watched by 70 million households, surpassing other recent hits Bridgerton and The Queen’s Gambit to become the streamer’s top global program.
But is it really a surprise? The answer is in the signs. Sy is of Senegalese descent. The coolest film school in the world just opened its doors in Dakar. Senegalese-born Chef Mory Sacko just won a Michelin star. And Dakar Fashion Week won best overall by choosing a striking baobab forest as a setting. The truth is this: there is a Senegalese takeover underway, and it’s all been orchestrated by Bill Gates.
This week in HUSTLE & FLOW, I’ll talk about the Secret Senegalese Supremacy (SSS), but also the crash-landing of Loon’s balloons; classical music in the Congo; Naomi Campbell sparking a Twitter feud in Kenya; a major deal in African football; Omo Ghetto breaking The Wedding Party’s box office records in Nigeria; and the vibrancy of Africa’s comic book sector.
Please do be in virtual touch and send your comments, feedback, corrections, and simple plain hellos to marie@restless.global or find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter @marieloramungai.
Happy reading to all,
Marie
INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
Google’s Loon balloons have burst (pun © CNN). Less than a year after launching its first commercial service in Kenya in partnership with Telkom, the global company has announced that it would discontinue its pilot operation in March after realizing that its business model was unsustainable - aka the service was too expensive for the local market. Well, that seems hardly surprising, considering that even basic, last-century 3G technology is currently too expensive for the majority of African consumers. Still, it is disappointing. In a smart CSR move, Loon pledged $10 million to support nonprofits and businesses focused on connectivity, internet, entrepreneurship and education in Kenya as it exits.
Still in Kenya, Safaricom has announced that it was suspending the deployment of its Huawei-powered 5G network, despite successful testing and previously communicating about an impending launch. CEO Peter Ndegwa said the company would focus on converting millions of existing 2G and 3G customers to 4G service instead. There’s a bit of a mystery going on there, and if more information emerges I’ll be sure to bring it to you.
EDUCATION
As the Africa Season 2020 painfully hops along in France after being stuck for months in the Covid uncertainty vortex, several French-led initiatives to develop Africa’s creative sector are coming to fruition. In Senegal, French-Malian award-winning director Ladj Ly (of Les Miserables fame) has opened the Dakar outpost of his Kourtrajmé film school. The school, which is expected to bring a major boost to the cinema industry not only Senegal but in the entire francophone West African region, is partially financed by the French Development Agency (AFD). In Nigeria, 4 French companies (Teach on Mars, SUMMVIEW, WebForce3 and LAFAAC) have partnered with the Edo State government to launch a creative entrepreneurship and audiovisual e-learning platform. And in DRC, the soprano singer Isabelle Kabatu has launched her efforts to open an opera singing training center in Kinshasa with the support of Belgium’s Fondation Roi Baudoin. If the idea of classical music in the heart of the Congo seems innocuous to you, check out the excellent documentary Kinshasa Symphony which tells the story of Orchestre Symphoniste Kimbanguiste, and of the group of passionate amateurs who started it against all odds 20 years ago.
LITERATURE
For literature lovers (or Hollywood types in search of African IP to snatch up), here’s a yummy list of 50 notable African books of 2020. So much to read, so little time.
VISUAL ARTS
One of the continent’s most high-profile art events, Art X Lagos, took place in December, after HUSTLE & FLOW had wrapped for the year. Like any other gathering these days, this 5th edition of Art X Lagos took place online, and managed to attract a vast international audience from 101 countries to interact with 200 artworks from galleries across Africa and the diaspora, and engage in discussions on the theme ‘Present States; Shared Futures’. In response to the #EndSARS protests which rocked Nigeria in October last year, ART X Lagos also launched a support initiative for 100 photographers who worked at the frontlines and a selection of their works were shown as part of the fair’s special project, New Nigeria Studios.
Meanwhile, another flagship event of the African contemporary art space, the 1-54 art fair, just wrapped its first edition hosted for the first time and in-person at the Christie's Paris HQ. Twenty international exhibitors were also featured online at Christies.com. The fair was initially supposed to take place like it normally does in Marrakesh, but had to relocate due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.
In Accra, the Noldor Artist Residency has opened its doors as Ghana’s first independent residency program for emerging artists. Founded in 2020 by contemporary African art specialist and philanthropist Joseph Awuah-Darko, the Residency will invite one emerging African artist each autumn to work in a dedicated studio space. Ghana has produced some of today’s hottest contemporary African artists, so it will be worth keeping an eye on the new talents coming out of this initiative.
Finally, the New Yorker and the New York Times have great profiles of Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui and Kenyan satirical painter Michael Soi, respectively. Both are established artists in their own genres, but only one of them portrays scenes of African and Chinese characters engaged in various types of debauchery.
HERITAGE
To put on your travel list for one day in the distant future: Renowned Ghanaian-British Architect David Adjaye has been tapped to design the new Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) in Benin City, Nigeria. The Museum will house the returns of treasured bronze sculptures and other artifacts taken away from the Kingdom by the British government during its 1897 attack. According to Adjaye, a key part of the five-year-long project will be a $4 million-sponsored excavation of the site, from where fossils and discoveries would form the many artifacts to be housed by the Museum. EMOWAA will be situated beside the present palace of the Oba of Benin kingdom, primarily to help locals connect to their culture and history, even as it serves as a global historical monument.
HOSPITALITY
The tourism industry has been one of the hardest hit by the prolonged Covid crisis. In Kenya, which normally welcomes some 2 million foreign travelers annually, visitor numbers were down by 72% in 2020. Clearly, the government needed to take action, and it did so by appointing British supermodel and long-time friend of Kenya Naomi Campbell as the country’s tourism ambassador. The news did not go down too well locally, with many Kenyans complaining on Twitter about the choice of a foreigner to represent the country instead of local Hollywood star Lupita Nyong'o, for example. Tourism minister Najib Balala replied that Lupita has been “inaccessible for the past 5 years”, prompting Lupita to slap back with, basically, “LOL Nice Try but Nope”.
The newly-incorporated Kasada Hospitality Fund LP has gone bargain hunting and acquired a portfolio of eight fully operational Pullman, Novotel or Ibis hotels across three countries (Ivory Coast, Senegal and Cameroon) from AccorInvest, in what is billed as one of the largest cross-border hospitality M&A transactions in Africa. Kasada says the transaction is a reflection of its belief in the region’s “prospects for its post-Covid-19 recovery”.
GASTRONOMY
Congratulations to Senegal-born Mory Sacko who received his first Michelin star for his afro-japanese restaurant MoSuke. Sacko also won the best Young Chef prize for 2021. Sacko is part of a new generation of Paris-based African chefs, alongside Chef Anto and a few others, who are reinventing African gastronomy in the French capital.
FASHION
Dakar Fashion Week took place in December but it’s never too late to look at these pictures: in response to the pandemic, the organizers decided to move the event outdoors to a baobab forest. The result was majestic.
Launched in 2005 by the German foundation Aid by Trade with the support of German public partners (GIZ), NGOs and companies, the Cotton made in Africa (CmiA) project aims to integrate sustainable African cotton into the global textile industry. The initiative trains participating farmers to grow cotton in a more environmentally friendly and resource-efficient way. Last week, the Swiss subsidiary of the German distribution company Lidl announced the arrival in its shops of clothing made from CmiA cotton.
SPORTS BUSINESS
In what is probably the deal of the week, Egyptian conglomerate Mansour Group, valued at $7.5 billion in 2018, has invested $120 million to take control of Ghana’s Right To Dream academy. Founded in 1999 with a focus on both education and football by a former Manchester United scout, Right To Dream has since produced 20 Ghana internationals and bought Danish top-flight side FC Nordsjaelland in 2015. Mansour Group invested through a new entity called ManSports, and has plans to establish a Right To Dream academy in Egypt in addition to expanding existing activities in Ghana and Denmark. The move is one example of a new trend in global sports business: the influx of institutional capital. As leagues and franchises struggle to survive the pandemic, a flurry of new special purpose vehicles and private equity groups have been scrambling to take advantage of the situation to get their foot in the door of valuable properties. Indeed, despite the current challenging situation, the value of broadcast rights and the popular appeal of individual franchises remain on an upward trajectory.
Meanwhile in Nigeria, French club Olympique de Marseille has opened its first OM School at the Sports Institute of the University of Port Harcourt. Olympique de Marseille already runs two similar schools in Tunis and Algiers.
BROADCAST
In broadcast news this week, Multichoice’s Nigerian Idol is coming back for a 6th season in 2021 after a 5 year break. And still in Nigeria, two new TV stations have launched since the beginning of the year: TEEN Africa TV (TATV) founded by well-known filmmaker Charles Novia to focus on the underserved 13 to 19 year-old audience, and News Central TV, which will cover politics, nature, sports, eco-diversity, lifestyle, business, and sports.
Is it TV, is it VOD? Who knows anymore. Canal+ and Showmax have announced their second co-production after the South African Blood Psalms, and this time it takes place in Kenya: Crime & Justice, a gritty police procedural, will be the first original Kenyan show for both partners, who managed to make a move in the East African country before Netflix.
VOD
Our friends at Digital TV Research have released a new Africa OTT forecast report, predicting that revenue from OTT platforms in Africa will more than quadruple in the next 5 years to reach $1.7 billion by 2026. Market leader Netflix, which accounted for 57% of Africa’s SVoD subscriptions in 2020 with almost two million subscribers (and who, in case you missed it, appointed Zimbabwean Econet founder Strive Masiyiwa to its board last December), is expected to attract 6.3 million subs by 2026. Despite not launching in Africa until 2022, Disney+ is predicted to sign up 3.1 million subscribers by 2026, while 3rd-place contender and only local player Showmax, is forecast to reach two million by 2026. The race is about to start heating up, which is great news for African content creators.
Meanwhile, in this brave new digital world we are living in, Showmax has teamed up with MTN Nigeria to launch a special data deal for mobile subscribers; French TV streaming startup Molotov is expanding its service to 7 African countries; Kenya’s Media Pros Africa and Africa Digital Media Studios have partnered to bring African content to Vumicentral.com; and mobile company Mondia has introduced its entertainment platform Monsooq to the Nigerian market after launching in South Africa last November.
FILM
Putting an end to the 2020 curse on the Nigerian box office, Funke Akindele’s massive blockbuster Omo Ghetto (The Saga), has been on an incredible ride since its release in December and is on its way to break the records held by both Wedding Party movies to become the highest grossing Nigerian film of all time. After racking up more than a million dollars in a few weeks (not a small feat after the most recent Naira devaluation), the film is now getting an unprecedented release in Dubai, a first for a Nigerian movie. For cinema exhibitors, Omo Ghetto’s success illustrates the resilience of the Nigerian cinema sector, despite an increasingly gloomy global outlook for the theater business.
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Nigerian diaspora talents continue to shine in Hollywood, with several high profile projects in the works: Disney+ is developing Yvonne Orji’s comedy First Gen, which is produced by David Oyelowo and Oprah Winfrey; Tessa Thompson has come on board to produce the TV adaptation of Nigerian-American sci fi writer Nnedi Okrafor's Who Fears Death for HBO Max; and Cynthia Erivo is set to star in and produce a film about an enslaved Yoruba girl who was presented to the Queen of England as a gift in 1850 for BBC Film.
PODCAST
In the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW I talked about Africa’s arrival in the True Crime podcast game, and it is a given that other genres will follow. Earlier this month, the BBC World Service launched a competition to discover new podcast talents in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. The winners will be matched with a BBC Production team and will receive the full backing of the BBC World Service to turn their idea into a BBC World Service podcast.
Not exactly a podcast but still in the audio content format, a new audiobooks app called Afrikan Echoes is due to launch in March. The app will feature up to 50 original and unpublished African works that have been translated into multiple African languages, including Yoruba, Amharic and Swahili. African storytellers from across the continent will be able to pitch their stories to Afrikan Echoes by sending voice notes in their native language. These pitches will be evaluated by Afrikan Echoes’ creative team before being recorded in their studio.
SOCIAL MEDIA
YouTube has released the full list of Africa's 20 most creative YouTube content creators for the #YouTubeBlackVoices Creator Class of 2021, which includes 8 creators from both South Africa and Nigeria and 4 from Kenya. All of them will receive mentoring and funding as part of YouTube's campaign to spotlight Black voices. YouTube anticipates to fund over 500 Black content creators from across the world over the coming years. Social Media is becoming an increasingly valid avenue for African content creators to make money, with the pandemic only accelerating this trend. In Nigeria, the biggest YouTube earner is comedian Mark Angel who - allegedly - makes a whopping $326,800 a month from his 1.4 million daily views.
COMIC BOOKS
The small but vibrant African comics sector is the focus of two recent articles in The Economist and Forbes. While The Economist credits the pandemic for nudging African comic book artists and buyers towards digital platforms which provide easier access to fans and better margins to creators, Forbes points to the massive success of Black Panther as a catalyst for interest in Afrofuturism. In December, Kugali, a company co-founded in 2017 by two Nigerians and a Ugandan, made headlines when it announced a landmark deal with Disney to make Iwájú (The Future), a sci-fi series imbued with Yoruba culture. Similar enthusiasm can be found in Francophone Africa, as Le Monde reports, despite distribution, promotion and financing challenges. There, the most popular property is without a doubt the Aya de Yopougon series, created by the French-Ivorian Marguerite Abouet, which has sold 710,000 copies and was adapted into film in 2012.
GAMING
Esport may just be in its infancy stage in Africa, but it doesn’t mean that the continent’s best players don’t have the ambition to take their spot in this fast-growing, $1 billion a year global market. In 2020, the 18-year-old South African Thabo "Yvng Savage" Moloi made history by becoming the first-ever player from Africa to be sponsored by Red Bull. Can Kenya be next? CNN profiles two of the country’s most-promising gamers: Sylvia "Queen Arrow" Gathoni and Brian "Beast" Diang'a. Judging by their profile pictures, they definitely look the part.
