According to a recent report from Digital TV Research, Africa will have 13.64 million paying SVOD subscriptions by 2027, up from 4.90 million at end-2021, with only 6.6% of TV households paying for at least one subscription by 2027 (up from 3.9% at end-2021). It was in this growing context that leading FAST channel provider OTTera decided to bet on the continent and appointed Simon Tchokonte, Director of Business Development, OTTera Africa.
Interviewed by Prensario, the executive said: ‘As a fast-growing continent where the demand for content is rapidly increasing, Africa with a population of over 1.4 billion inhabitants of which the majority is under 35 is the future of Fast and OTT. We are a leader in the industry has hired me to implement our growth in the continent due to my knowledge of the multiple cultural differences and my connection to broadcasters, content owners and the Telcos’.
Among the main objectives and business vision, he added: ‘By 2050, the African population is expected to reach over 2 billion people. Africans and the diaspora are looking for content they can relate to. OTT apps and Fast channels offer a boulevard to content owners to be distributed worldwide and generate more revenue through Ads and subscription. We are here to help them achieve this goal’.
‘Working with local producers, broadcasters and telcos is what we are aiming at in the continent. There are many content owners that do not have access to the OTT international market. As a certified partner for the major platforms and connected TVs worldwide, we will distribute the Fast channels and OTT apps that we are powering and partnering with to various platforms across the globe’, underlined Tchokonte.
Opportunities? ‘Due to high fees of data consumption across the continent, Telcos are key partners to the growth of OTT in Africa. In addition to that, mobile devices are the first gate to access online content for most Africans. The World Bank and African Development Bank report there are 650 million mobile users in Africa, surpassing the number in USA or Europe. Mobile technology has been a game changer for Africa (UN.org)’, remarked.
And he concluded: ‘Our goal is to power the vast majority of content owners and broadcasters all over the continent, and bring African content to households across Europe, America and Asia where the demand is growing’.
Concluding on the Digital TV Research report, Netflix will remain the SVOD market leader, with 6.41 million subscribers by 2027 (48% of the region’s total). Given its limited rollout, Disney+ will only have 1 million subscriptions by 2027,Amazon PrimeVideo will start in Nigeria and South Africa in 2023, so the research company forecast 2.63 million subscribers by 2027.
