Netflix recently announced motives to expand its operations in Africa on Wednesday, building on the success of films and series such as ‘Blood and Water’ in South Africa and ‘Far From Home’ in Nigeria.
According to the report, the online video-streaming behemoth has committed the equivalent of €160 million in developing film content in Africa since it started operations on the continent in 2016.
More than 12,000 employment have been generated as ascribed to its operations in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, the company claims. “This is just the beginning; we intend to expand across the continent,” Shola Sanni, Netflix’s head of Sub-Saharan Africa strategy, said during a press conference in Johannesburg.
More than 170 films, TV shows, and documentaries have been produced in South Africa, making it the leading African content provider on Netflix at the present time. Blood and Water, a series about a Cape Town adolescent who investigates her sister’s kidnapping during delivery, even won first prize in the United States in 2020.
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Netflix intends to leverage the milestone to expand more
The expansion is anticipated to contribute to helping Netflix become the most popular streaming service in Africa, where local content is getting more popular and competition from other streaming providers is increasing.
The move is also a significant investment in the continent’s creative economy, allowing African tales to be viewed by people all over the globe.
“We will use these milestones to grow our business by continuing to invest in supporting local creative industries and giving more and more African storytellers a strong voice on the global stage,” added Netflix.
In recent years, Netflix has sought to broaden its production outside of the United States, with shows such as the Spanish “La Casa de Papel” and the South Korean dystopian drama “Squid Game,” which was a global hit and was nominated for a Golden Globe.
In 2021, the corporation will collaborate with Unesco to sponsor six short films directed by young Africans. “It’s time for mainstream platforms to realise the richness and value of our stories,” one of the winners, South African filmmaker Gcobisa Yako, told AFP on the sidelines of the press conference on Wednesday.
Netflix prevalence in the African region
Netflix is expected to have 2.6 million users on the African continent by the end of 2021, out of a population of around 1.2 billion people, accounting for about half of all streaming on demand customers in Africa. The number of customers is expected to quadruple by 2026, reaching 5.8 million.
According to Flix Patrol (2019), the only nations that have more than 100,000 memberships are Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt.
On the other hand, Netflix has been investing in African originals since 2019. Among these are the star-studded reality programme Young, Famous, and African, which features superstars from throughout the continent, as well as the juvenile crime thriller Blood and Water and Queen Sono, another crime drama. This is in addition to a large number of licenced older titles.
It recently secured multiple multi-project collaboration agreements with top African filmmakers and production organisations. The King’s Horseman, a film version of Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka’s play Death and the King’s Horseman, is on its 2022/23 schedule. Others include Ludik, Netflix’s first Afrikaans-language drama, The Brave Ones, which centres on African folklore, and Kings of Queenstown, a South African soccer drama.