Dear colleagues and friends,
It’s been a year since most of us started social distancing, working remotely, and forgetting planes even existed, but Spring is coming and I’ve decided to be positive today (albeit not forgetting about Senegal’s violent unrest and Ethiopia’s war crimes).
Last week, the first COVAX deliveries of the Covid-19 vaccine arrived in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Senegal, while other countries received the direct purchases they had made from the manufacturers or donations from China, Russia, India and the UAE. In total, 14 African countries have now begun the vaccination process. It is far from enough of course, but it’s a start.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s economy defied all predictions and unexpectedly came out of recession in the 4th quarter of 2020. As growth in agriculture and telecommunications offset the sharp drop in oil production, there is hope that Africa’s largest market might recover from this annus horribilis much faster than initially feared.
Finally, African entertainment startups had their best funding year on record last year, raising a total of $13.9 million in 2020, almost 19 times what the sector had raised in 2019. The money went to Kenya’s Mdundo (music platform), South Africa’s Carry1st (video games) and Sea Monster (animation), and Ivory Coast’s StarNews Mobile (mobile video).
This winning streak continues this week in HUSTLE & FLOW as I’ll talk about Liquid Telecom’s massively oversubscribed bond, Spotify's expansion to 40 new African countries, and girl superheroes ruling the animation world. Stick around as well for some words on an ancient trading town rendered futuristic in black legos, the magazine cover-ready faces of Nefertiti and Akhenaten, a football talent scouting startup, Chinese moves in African media, and a possible District 9 sequel.
To subscribe or visit the archives, head over to www.restless.global/hustleflow. To those of you sending me LinkedIn invites: please remember that I do not know who you are, so a quick note introducing yourself and explaining that you are a HUSTLE & FLOW reader will go a long way in getting a response.
Happy reading,
Marie
INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
Africa’s data race goes on unabated. A couple weeks ago, telecoms tycoon Strive Masiyiwa’s Liquid Telecom raised an impressive $840 million in a bond sale to refinance debt and expand further into Africa. The bond was 5.5 times oversubscribed, attracting more than 230 investor orders totaling $3.2 billion. The amount raised includes a $100 million investment by the International Finance Corporation, and other significant contributions by DEG and the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund.
This month, Teraco also secured $168 million in loans from South African bank Absa and other lenders to finance the construction of what will be Africa’s largest data centre - a 38MW hyperscale facility in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg. Teraco Data Environments, which already is Africa’s largest data centre provider, is now considering expanding to Nigeria and Kenya.
MOBILE
MTN continues to offload its non-Africa assets with the planned sale of its 75% ownership in MTN Syria for $65 million. TeleInvest, which is currently MTN Syria's minority shareholder, is the likely buyer. MTN Syria contributes less than 1% to MTN Group's profit.
E-COMMERCE
Despite pandemic-related supply and logistics disruption to its operations in 2020, Jumia made significant progress towards profitability in its Q4 2020, reporting record gross profit and improvements to its cost structure after years of losses. According to Jumia, these solid numbers are the result of changes in its business model and not related to any “Covid boost”. Indeed - and perhaps surprisingly - the company shared that it had not observed a drastic change in consumer behavior or a significant acceleration in the adoption of e-commerce by consumers at the panafrican level. The e-commerce giant is now planning to launch in the DRC, Ethiopia and Angola, three markets known to be challenging.
EDUCATION
Post-production is a weak link in most African countries’ film sectors, and it is one gap that French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis intends to plug. Gomis’ Yennenga Center, which will open - Covid permitting - in April in Dakar, will provide a first cohort of 24 young people with a free two-year training course in post-production, covering editing, mixing and color grading.
VISUAL ARTS
The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto has acquired Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE, a colossal sculpture made from 100,000 pieces of Lego by the Ghanian-Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, who is known for his Afrofuturist reimaginings of Black histories built from the iconic Danish bricks. The town of Kumbi Saleh, located in present-day Mauritania, was the center of the trans-Saharan trade route at the height of the Ghana Empire, a cultural and commercial exchange hub between Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Nimako’s monumental sculpture (which has a distinct Star Wars’ Death Star quality to it) transports the ancient trading town 1,000 years in the future as a beautiful but somewhat ominous futuristic cityscape.
Dutch artist and photographer Bas Uterwijk has reconstructed the faces of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, King and Queen of Ancient Egypt, through artificial intelligence. Uterwijk used a software called “GAN” (generative adversarial network) which analyses portraits from various media - in this case ancient sculptures - and transforms the data into a current photographic interpretation. The result are remarkably modern-looking portraits, showing versions of the ancient royal couple that would be well at home on today’s fashion runways.
MUSIC
Global music streaming giant Spotify has launched into 40 new African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania, to the delight of many music fans across the continent. Spotify, which is available for free with ads or on subscription for its premium service, claims to have over 70 million tracks, 2.2 million podcasts, and more than 345 million global users. The platform’s Africa experience already includes more than 100 playlists across some of the most popular genres in the continent, including RADAR Africa, a playlist uncovering emerging artists from Africa and the diaspora. Spotify's African expansion sets it firmly on a collision course with established global rivals like Apple Music, Audiomack, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Tidal (just acquired by Square), as well as local players such as Boomplay (75 million users) and Mdundo (7 million users), all vying for a share of a booming market that is expected to grow to $493 million by 2025. As a customer, I have found that my Spotify premium account brings me more value than any of my other content subscriptions which range from Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO to the New York Times and Quartz Africa, as excellent as those may also be. It will be a tough one to beat.
SPORTS BUSINESS
This week presents a real potpourri of football news. According to the NGO Solidarity Football, more than 6,000 minors leave Africa each year to follow their dream of becoming professional football players in Europe. Seventy percent of them fail. Search Your Team (formerly FrenchSportTryouts), a startup founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Wesley Mukerinkindi and Gaetan Ekoondo, wants to give amateurs a chance to be recruited from their home countries on the basis of a simple video. To compensate for the lack of visibility of African athletes, Search Your Team has formed a network with American universities and professional football clubs. Since the inception of the company, 9 talents have won athletic scholarships at US universities, and 4 have been onboarded (the others face visa challenges). Twenty-six players have also been scouted by professional or semi-professional clubs.
I called it a few months ago: South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe is likely to be elected president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) on March 12, as rival candidates Augustin Senghor from Senegal and Ahmed Yahya from Mauritania have reportedly agreed to step aside. Both stand to be named CAF vice-presidents instead, which illustrates the kind of smart and pragmatic deal making that Motsepe can bring to the position. In fact, the South African businessman’s agenda is centered around making African football a successful business, instead of using the CAF as a cash generator for his own personal benefit which, unfortunately, seemed to have been the main driver for many of his predecessors. Motsepe’s ambitious program includes measures such as the generalization of video assistance to referees, the better television broadcasting of African matches, and the construction of at least one stadium to FIFA standards in each country. A strong and clean CAF leadership could provide much-needed inspiration to the entire African football sector which still is, for all intents and purposes, a hot mess.
Talking about messy situations, StarTimes is reportedly at risk of receiving a court-mandated winding-up order after it has repeatedly failed to pay the $11 million it owes BeIn Media Group for the rights to French football Ligue1. StarTimes acknowledged on-going legal proceedings in Hong Kong but denied it had been subjected to any court order. BeIn is particularly irritated that StarTimes has kept announcing the acquisition of more sports rights despite its huge debt. Right on cue, a few days ago the Pay TV operator announced a new partnership with Manchester United to distribute its MUTV channel to 30 Africa countries. Awkward.
Finally, The Guardian looks into Arsenal’s controversial $41.5 million sponsorship by Rwanda’s national tourism brand Visit Rwanda, which is up for renewal this summer. The initiative was reportedly very successful, lifting the country’s overall tourism numbers by 8%. But then there is the matter of Rwanda’s murky politics, which I mentioned in the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW. “Where do we draw the line?” writes The Guardian. “Who do we deem acceptable from our own rather wobbly throne of judgment? Can we fly Emirates but not Visit Rwanda? Can we sell Saudi Arabia instruments of death but not a football club? This is simply football’s global landscape, a ziggurat of conflicting interests and messages, a place where nobody is really out of the murk.” Don't worry. I also didn't know what ziggurat means.
BROADCAST
This is the sad news of the week. Senegalese authorities have shut down Sen TV and Walf TV and partially restricted the internet in an effort to quell the protests that erupted last Wednesday after the arrest of former presidential candidate Ousmane Sonko. The key challenger to President Macky Sall is facing a rape trial that his supporters say has been politically orchestrated to prevent him from running in 2024.
Hunting, a Chinese TV series partially shot in Nairobi in 2019 reportedly attracted 250 million viewers when it was broadcast on China’s BTV-1, Dragon Television Chinese network. The series, which is based on true crime stories, focuses on a team tasked with tracking and capturing fugitives hiding in foreign countries. According to Kenyan company BlueSky, which serviced the shoot, the production spent over $900,000 to film a number of episodes in the country. Although Hunting’s storyline focuses on Chinese characters, it is clear that Africa-related content has barely scratched the surface of the potential it may hold on the Chinese market. Contrary to the long-held idea that Black content doesn’t travel in Asia and in China in particular, many signs (such as major investments by StarTimes, CCTV, Huawei, Boomplay and Huaha Media) point to a solid and growing Chinese interest in African media, which is likely to lead to some cross-pollination.
VOD
Case in point: UBettina Wethu, the upcoming South African adaptation of Ugly Betty produced by Known Associates and Moonlighting Films, has been acquired by Hong Kong-based PCCW’s VOD platform Viu, which also boarded the series as co-producers. This will be Viu’s first foray into original content in South Africa. The service, which launched in South Africa in 2019, said it may produce up to 10 original series next year, and as many as 20 the following year. Viu joins other, more established players in bringing exciting new opportunities to the South African content market. Multichoice’s Showmax has already produced nearly a dozen originals (including Love Island, which came under fire last week for being #ohsowhite), and is ramping up its commitment to high-end drama series with the goal to produce 2 to 3 titles with international partners a year. Meanwhile Netflix has greenlit a number of yet-to-be-announced projects and plans to continue investing heavily. Among the US streamer’s upcoming releases is South African comedian Loyiso Gola’s Unlearning comedy hour, the first African solo full hour of stand up comedy. Finally, although there is no talk of investment in original content for its VOD service TracePlay, music pay TV group Trace TV is also increasing its reach on the South African OTT market through a strategic partnership with Huawei which will see its video content pre-installed and integrated with the Huawei video app.
The steady march of VOD also continues across the rest of the continent, albeit more slowly than in South Africa or Nigeria. In Kenya, Safaricom’s latest attempt to launch a video service that would capture the local market is called Baze. The new platform will offer a revenue split of 60% to the content providers and 40% to Safaricom, a welcome reversal of the common practice in the African mobile space which typically sees operators keep up to 75% of the revenue. And in Cameroon, Netflix has made its first local acquisitions by signing up the movies Therapy and Fisherman’s Diary.
FILM
Despite major disruptions to its theatrical business caused by the pandemic and the #endSARS protests, leading Nigerian studio FilmOne managed to produce 7 feature films in 2020, 4 of which were on sale at the European Film Market (EFM) last week. According to Variety, “the slate reflects FilmOne’s aspirations to tap into the growing appetite for African content with the sorts of slick, commercial fare that can strike a chord with audiences overseas.”
British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo's directorial debut film The Water Man has been picked up by Netflix for worldwide distribution, after a successful premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. Inspired by the iconic movie E.T, The Water Man is a supernatural film with Black leads.
The Doha Film Institute has unveiled the list of 48 projects selected to take part in its 2021 Qumra masters program. Nine of these projects are co-productions with an African country, including Tug of War, the first feature of acclaimed Tanzanian filmmaker Amil Shivji. The film, which is based on a book, tells the story of a runaway Indian-Zanzibari bride who forms a strong bond with a young communist in the winding alleyways of 1950s British colonial Zanzibar. Less Is More (LIM), a European development scheme for limited-budget feature films, has also unveiled its 7th edition selection of 16 projects, which include films from Uganda and South Africa.
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Renowned Nigerian director Andrew Dosunmu will direct Winston Duke (Black Panther) as Marcus Garvey in the film Marked Man for Amazon Studios. The film is partly inspired by the Colin Grant biography Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, and the script written by acclaimed Black British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah. Interesting trivia: Kwei-Armah’s was born as Ian Roberts from Grenadan parents, but he changed his name at the age of 19 after tracing his family history to Ghana through the slave trade.
Ever since District 9’s massive success at the box office in 2009, South African director Neill Blomkamp has entertained the idea of making a sequel. Blomkamp has now revealed that he and writing partners Sharlto Copley and Terri Tatchell were in the process of writing a District 10 screenplay.
ANIMATION
Super Sema, a new animated series developed by Kenya-based Kukua is set to debut on YouTube today March 8th, on International Women’s Day. Founded in 2015 by 28-year-old Italian entrepreneur Lucrezia Bisignani, Kukua is a pan-African education startup building a suite of educational tools, including game-based apps and the new Super Sema series, that teach children reading, writing and maths. Super Sema is the name of the series' girl superhero, who operates in an African-futuristic world where along with her brother MB, she uses all her "technovating" powers to save her village from the villain Tobor. The show was written by Claudia Lloyd, the BAFTA-award winning producer of Tinga Tinga Tales, and directed by Lynne Southerland, the first female African-American director for Disney. To add to this high-profile list of collaborators, none other than Hollywood royalty Lupita Nyong’o is boarding the project as a voice actor, executive producer, and investor in Kukua.
In the same week, Disney+, Disney Junior and France Télévisions have announced that they had picked up Kiya, a series about a group of 7-year-old African girls whose magical headbands turn them into superheroes, developed by South Africa’s Triggerfish, Hasbro’s eOne, and France’s Frog Box. Kiya is expected to release in 2023, and plans are also in place to create YouTube content, music, apps, audio, toys and other consumer products based on the IP. You may remember that Triggerfish is also behind the upcoming Mama K’s Team 4, Netflix’s first animated original about 4 scrappy teen girls superheroes from Lusaka, Zambia. Now, the animated African girl superhero space may just be getting a tiiiny bit crowded.