By John Ikani
Netflix says it will “rapidly” increase its offer of African content, some of which has met with great success outside the continent.
Netflix, considered the world’s leading premium media streaming platform, operating in nearly every country in the world, claims to work to support the industry by fostering “new talent” and training “highly skilled” professionals to overcome current limitations.
Ben Amadasun, the Nigerian in charge of Africa Original Content and Acquisitions for the American platform, during a visit to Paris said “we to get to scale quite quickly in terms of the offering that we have in the market but we are seing that there is a limit to how many very high level producers they are on this market so we are working very actively to support the industries and the ecosystem with training schemes and other initiatives that we have put into place in the last year and a half.
“We are also looking into emerging talent in Africa and looking to see how we can develop them because their stories could have a big impact too, but we need to make sure we are able to bring some of their stories and have those different voices they represent in terms of overall offer on the market.”
Spurred by a young population and increasing internet connectivity, the entertainment space in Africa, including video streaming services, is gaining a larger audience and receiving record amounts of funding.
The number of video on demand subscription users in Africa is projected to reach over 5 million by the end of this year and triple to 15 million by 2026, according to a new screening from Digital TV Research, a company based in London. intelligence company.
Netflix is expected to have the highest number of subscribers both at the end of this year, at 2.61 million, and by 2026, when it is expected to have around 5.84 million.
