(c) Reuters and Amazon

January 2024: A Tale of Two Africas.

This past month, AFCON dazzled in Abidjan as Amazon Prime Video fizzled, announcing a surprise exit from the market.

Amazon Prime’s exit is a boon for the new Showmax - and not an insignificant time for Vivendi's Canal+ to finally make an official offer to acquire MultiChoice (we’ve been waiting for it).

But also, the Nigerian Creator Economy came out of stealth in Lagos, showing its true potential for the first time - and it’s bigger than you think.

For the full gist, plus more stories on gaming, gastronomy, and sports, read on below!

SPORTS

AFCON feels different this year.

🎉 The 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations - AFCON or CAN for short - kicked off in January in Abidjan. Although it was six months late on the original schedule, it was worth the wait: Africa’s biggest sports competition is bold, it is shiny, and the game itself has been full of thrilling twists and turns.

It is also generating an unprecedented amount of media coverage, especially on social media. According to Nineteen31, the Confederation Africaine de Football (CAF) itself has gained 1 million new followers on TikTok and 500,000 on Instagram so far!

That is A LOT of eyeballs. And the industry is waking up to the full commercial potential of this event.

Here’s a few numbers, courtesy of Africa Sports Unified (download their full report here):

✅ Investment by host nation: Ivory Coast has spent $1 billion on hosting the tournament. The country built 4 new stadiums, renovated 2, and also constructed or upgraded airports, roads, hospitals and hotels in Abidjan, Bouake, Korhogo, San Pedro and Yamoussoukro.

✅  Stadium audience: 600,000 reported so far, despite issues accessing tickets to the games.

✅ Prize monies: $7M for the winning team. This compares solidly to the Asian Cup ($5M), the Copa America ($10M) and the UEFA ($9.8M).

✅ Sponsors: TotalEnergies (Title sponsor: $250M for 8 years), 1xBet ($64.5M for 10 years), Visa, Orange, Unilever + a raft of regional and local sports.

✅ Apparel: Puma(6 teams), Umbro (2 teams), Adidas, Kappa, Le Coq Sportif and Nike (1 team each). Interestingly, local brands and new labels are also represented, such as Lacatoni (for Angola), One All Sports (Cameroon), Guisport (Guinea-Bissau), or Airness (Mali).

✅ Media rights: So, this was a mess. If you haven’t followed the drama, the exclusive rights for 46 Sub-Saharan countries were acquired last year by mysterious newcomer New World TV from Togo, which later sold Pay TV licenses to Azam TV and StarTimes. Multichoice’s SuperSport initially turned down a deal, before settling (presumably for a hefty chunk of cash) under customer pressure. AfroSport, NTA, and SuperSport Nigeria also bagged the rights for the Nigerian market.

⚠️ No streaming platform secured the rights for the AFCON games this year. But judging by the enormous popularity of AFCON-related content online, one can bet that streaming rights will be a hot topic for the next edition.

While the spotlight was on Ivory Coast, another unique sports event took place deep in northern Nigeria.

👶🏻🥊 👨🏿 For the first time, a White fighter competed in a Dambe competition in Katsina, northern Nigeria.

British professional wrestler and boxer Luke Leyland became the first European to venture on a Dambe sandpit, according to the organizers of the event, the African Warriors Fighting Championship.

He faced - and lost, but with his dignity and body parts intact - Garakuwar Bahagon Yansanda, a boxer from Plateau State. “I am thrilled to be in Nigeria, representing the UK in the ancient art of Dambe. This marks a historic moment for the sport, and I am honored to be part of it,” said Leyland.

😁 A white lad from Liverpool taking on a battle-tested Nigerian Dambe warrior? That’s what I call a great entertainment proposition.

💡This cheeky stint is another smart way in which Maxwell Kalu and his African Warriors Championship are bringing global attention to the traditional sports of Dambe.

Back in July last year, the promoter inked a landmark sponsorship deal with leading crypto betting platform Stake.com. Already a sponsor of the UFC and Nigerian UFC Champion Israel Adesanya, the partnership is Stake’s first sponsorship deal in Africa.

FILM

🥇Meanwhile, another record was broken in Nollywood.

It came from serial record-breaker and multi-hyphenate Funke Akindele.

🚀 A few weeks ago, ‘A Tribe from Judah’ passed the N1 billion Naira at the Nigerian box office and became the highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time.

🤯 A feat made even more remarkable by the fact that Akindele is also responsible for Nigeria’s number 2 and 3 highest-grossing films, ‘Battle on Buka Street’ and ‘Omo Ghetto: The Saga”.

Akindele produced, co-directed, and starred in all 3 films.

Akindele has been a star in Nigeria for at least 15 years, since her 2008 breakout hit ‘Jenifa’. Throughout her career, she’s established herself as a master creator of popular local comedies centered around societal issues. She is, by all accounts, a major content powerhouse.

🤔 And yet, Akindele doesn’t own a house in Malibu or a villa in the South of France. She is not being inundated by offers from Hollywood.

🇳🇬 A major reason for this is that her audience - although massive - is deeply Nigerian, and that most of her revenue comes from Nigerian sources priced in Naira (cinema ticket sales, sponsorship deals, etc).

📉 The reality is that, in USD equivalent, Nollywood’s impressive growth of the past few years has been wiped out by the continuous downfall of the Naira, which lost 55% of its value in 2023, making it the worst performing African currency of the year.

Today, “A Tribe from Judah”’s N1 billion represents $1.2 million. Ten years ago, it would have translated to $2.8 million.

💸 On this one movie, Akindele and her team effectively lost a staggering $1.6 million to Nigeria’s economic mismanagement.

Nigeria’s macroeconomic woes and currency issues have been a big deterrent to foreign investment, with many international investors adopting a “wait and see” approach.

This means two things:

🌍 In order to survive, Nigerian entrepreneurs (in Creative and other fields) need to focus on products and solutions that can attract a global customer base and generate revenue in forex. License deals from Netflix and Amazon, which are priced in USD, have become lifesavers for many Nigerian filmmakers. By the way, a note to Hollywood: I personally believe that, in the hands of the right producer, Akindele definitely has cross-over potential.

💪🏿 Nigerian investors able to transact in Naira should step up. Not only as a matter of national pride, but also because this challenging state of affairs represents an opportunity for them to access opportunities before the Americans come in... or return 👇

VIDEO STREAMING

👋🏾 So long, Amazon Prime. It was nice knowing you for a couple years.

The streaming giant announced that it was restructuring its business model and retrenching its Africa and Middle East operations to focus on the European market.

🤩 Amazon had ambitious goals when it landed in Africa in December 2021. It did not spare any expense setting up teams for its first target markets, Nigeria and South Africa, and signing high profile content partnerships with local production studios.

In fact, it one-upped Netflix by landing ground-breaking multi-year partnerships with Nigerian producers Anthill, Inkblot, and Jade Osiberu’s Greoh. Osiberu’s long-awaited movie ‘Gangs of Lagos’ was released with great fanfare in April 2023, officially launching Amazon in Nigeria. Within two months, ‘Gangs of Lagos’ became the 9th most watched non-English title on Prime.

That was just 9 months ago.

⛔️ Now, the streamer has announced that it would stop commissioning African originals, and its African staff has been let go.

So, what happened?

⚠️ First, the going got tough for global tech companies, who had hired massively during the pandemic and are now facing macroeconomic headwinds. Amazon’s Prime Video Africa layoffs represent just a few of the 27,000+ jobs that the online retailer has cut over the past 12 months.

⚠️ Second, the video streaming business presents additional challenges. It necessitates huge investments in content while ARPU (average revenue per user) is low. The global platforms, which had been on a spending spree for years, have all recently cut down on content costs.

⚠️ Finally, the reality is that Africa is not yet a profitable market for these companies. When they do make money (which is not the case for Amazon Prime or Netflix) it is peanuts compared to the billions that move around in developed markets like the US or Europe.

In this context, Amazon’s decision seems like a no-brainer.

Amazon Prime’s exit is certainly not good news for the African film industry, but it is a boon for the “new Showmax”.

🚀 Ten months after MultiChoice Group announced a partnership with US media giant Comcast (owners of NBCUniversal) and UK’s Sky to create “Showmax 2.0”, the new service is ready.

The revamped Showmax app will be available for download on January 23rd, while the full service will officially launch in February.

Comcast and Sky took a 30% stake in Multichoice as part of the overall deal, whose objective is to combine top local and international assets to birth a “Netflix killer” (my words) on the African continent.

📈 Multichoice reportedly invested some $40 million* - excluding content costs - to relaunch and position Showmax for the future. In exchange, the company is targeting 50 million subscribers and $1 billion in revenue in the next five years.

Late last year, new data from Omdia showed that Showmax had edged over Netflix to become Africa’s first VOD platform, capturing 1.8M subscribers and 40% of the continent’s streaming market, while Netflix accounted for 35%.

But 1.8M is a long way from 50M. So how does Showmax intend to get there?

✅ By proposing attractive, low-cost mobile packages, including the highly anticipated standalone Premier League bundle, which offers all 380 games live for just $3.69/month, ten times cheaper than the premium subscription for DStv. Considering the popularity of the Premier League on the continent, this in itself is a game changer.

✅ By doubling down on local content. Multichoice already owns what is likely the largest library of African original content, including the mega hit Big Brother Africa franchise. In 2023, it dedicated $1 billion to African content production and acquisition. Showmax will be releasing more than 1,300 hours of new Originals in 2024, including 21 new African originals in the month of February alone.

✅ By getting its tech ready for scale. Showmax 2.0 was rebuilt using the technology behind NBCU’s streaming service Peacock, which Multichoice is paying $13 million to license for 7 years.

✅ By leveraging its new relationship with Comcast to bring top international content, such as the latest Mission Impossible or Spiderman movies, to African audiences.

“Nobody understands Africa like we do,” said MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela. That might very well be true. Let’s see if the company can keep its edge as competition intensifies.

*My estimation, adding the $13 million Peacock tech license to the other $27 million Multichoice said it invested into the Showmax relaunch.

BROADCAST

This new rejiggling of the African streaming space is not an insignificant time for Vivendi’s Canal+ to make an official offer to acquire Multichoice.

Indeed, it better make a move now, just in case Showmax is about to explode.

🤑 Canal+, already the top shareholder in MultiChoice with a 31.67% stake, sent a non binding offer letter based on a 40% premium on MultiChoice's closing share price. This offer values the South African Pay TV giant at $1.7B.

This new development is not surprising. Vivendi had already offered to acquire Multichoice several years ago, but that offer had been rejected. Then in 2020, the French company started buying Multichoice’s shares, slowly making its way towards an acquisition - or a hostile takeover (a tactic Vivendi is well known for).

🌍 Canal+ has been increasing its focus on Africa in the past decade, growing from just 1M African subscribers in 2016 to 7.6M in 2023. In 2019, it bought Nigeria’s ROK Studios to secure a pipeline of fresh Nollywood content. In 2021, it entered Ethiopia and acquired local channel Kana TV. It has also made several smaller acquisitions, bringing into the fold a couple West African production companies (Plan A in Ivory Coast, Marodi in Senegal).

Canal+ said it was planning a stock market listing in South Africa. This could potentially help the French entity overcome regulatory hurdles that include a law that restricts foreign companies from holding more than 20% of the voting rights of a South African broadcaster.

CREATOR ECONOMY

🚀 Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Creator Economy is booming, and the world doesn’t know it yet.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited to give the keynote speech at the inaugural African Creators Summit in Lagos.

The convenor of the event was Apollo Endeavor, a company headed by Oladapo Adewunmi that currently represents 300+ of Nigeria’s top Content Creators.

👑 You may have never heard of them, but they reign over legions of fans: Mark Angel has 39M followers across platforms, Lasisi Elenu and Josh2Funny each have 9.2M and Kiekie 7.7M, for example.

The African Creators Summit - one full day of panels attended by 1,000 creators, and a VIP dinner for 150 guests - was free and fully funded by Apollo Endeavor.

There, I learned that:

🤯 Hundreds of creators in Nigeria make more than $100,000/year. A few of them, like Mark Angel, make millions. This means that the Nigerian Creator Economy already is a multi-million dollar industry.

📱This money mostly comes from ads placed on Creators’ video content on YouTube and Facebook, as well as from direct brand deals.

⚠️ Facebook currently limits monetization to a select number of “partner” Creators, while monetization is not yet enabled on Instagram and Whatsapp. But it’s coming. In fact, TikTok is about to launch its Creator program. As monetization options expand in the next months and years, Nigerian Creators’ revenue is going to explode.

💵 This revenue is made in USD (and not in Naira) - the holy grail.

🤳🏿These Creators are multi-talented. They act, they sing, they write, they teach, all the while being enormously charismatic and entertaining. Their skills are easily transferable to many other creative sub-sectors such as film, music and fashion, but also to the education sector.

🌐 They create jobs. They employ videographers, editors, photographers, stylists, makeup artists, lawyers, accountants, and managers.

In a market where disposable income is very low and global streamers are struggling to gain subscribers, Content Creators have found the gold mine: a business model that works.

Highly entertaining content, available to very large audiences for free, with ad inventory and delivery managed automatically by the world’s best advertising companies (Google and Meta).

At the event, one Creator asked this question: “What do we need to do for people to take us seriously?”

The answer: Show them the numbers.

GAMING

🎮 Carry1st becomes the first African startup to receive investment from the recently launched Sony Innovation Fund: Africa.

Late last year, the Sony Corporation Venture arm launched its first African investment vehicle - a $10M seed fund - to invest in early stage Entertainment African startups.

💰 South African mobile games publisher Carry1st is the continent’s largest Creative startup, having raised more than $60 million so far from blue chip investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), BITKRAFT, Google, Riot Games, and the rapper Nas.

Founded in 2018, Carry1st works with international gaming companies such as Activision, Supercell and Riot Games to bring global game franchises like “Call of Duty: Mobile” and “Valorant” to Africa.

📱 Carry1st specializes in developing social and casual puzzle-based mobile versions of these games for the African market, enabling monetization through its localized payment service Pay1st. Next, the company is planning to develop its own original titles, with development underway on three new games.

🚀 This business model has been successful so far: Carry1st says its revenues grew by 9x between 2021 and 2023.

Sony is coming in as a strategic investor. Among other things, it will leverage its expertise in gaming to help Carry1st develop new products and access new opportunities on the continent.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s gaming industry is expected to generate over $1 billion for the first time in 2024, according to research from Carry1st and venture capital firm Konvoy.

GASTRONOMY

🇪🇹 World renowned Ethiopian-born chef Marcus Samuelsson has opened his first Africa-based restaurant in Addis Ababa.

🗽 Samuelsson, who lost his mother during Ethiopia’s 1970s civil war, was adopted by a Swedish couple and raised in Sweden. At 23, he moved to New York where he became a celebrity chef, eventually opening restaurants in Harlem (the famous Red Rooster), Montreal and London.

His new eatery, named Marcus Addis, combines flavors from Ethiopia and the rest of the world and is located on the 47th floor of the nation’s tallest building, the headquarters of the Ethiopian Commercial Bank.

👨🏿🍳 🍳 Although Samuelsson’s journey is unique, he is also part of a new generation of chefs promoting and developing a new identity of African cuisine.

Long relegated to the realm of comfort food (jollof and plantain, anyone?), African cuisine is now earning its stripes in the elite world of global fine dining.

Here are some other names you should know:

🇸🇳 The pioneer of this new wave is without a doubt the Senegalese Pierre Thiam, Executive Chef and co-founder of Teranga, a fine-casual food chain in New York that sources ingredients from farmers in West Africa. Thiam is also the Executive Chef of Nok by Alara in Lagos and the Signature Chef of the five-star Pullman Hotel in Dakar.

🇲🇱 🇸🇳 Last month, French-Malian-Senegalese culinary wunderkind Mory Sacko opened Lafayette’s, his second restaurant in Paris. The 30-year-old chef’s first venture, MoSuke, earned him a Michelin star just months after opening in 2020. Despite my best efforts, I never managed to snag a reservation there, but I enjoyed a meal at Lafayette’s a few weeks ago.

🇳🇬 In London, Nigerian-inspired Ikoyi was launched in 2017 by friends Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale. It has since gained 2 Michelin stars and reached the #35 spot in The World’s Best 50 Restaurants’ ranking.

🇨🇬 Born in Congo-Brazzaville and educated in Germany, chef Dieuveil Malonga is the owner of Meza Malonga, a culinary lab in Kigali, Rwanda, and the founder of Chefs in Africa, a social enterprise committed to shedding light on Africa and diaspora gourmet rising stars.