How Comscore Measures African Box Office: Nine Countries, Seven Years, No Expansion

This piece grew out of work we are doing on African Screen Intelligence (ASI), the market intelligence platform under development at African Film Press (AFP). Building a dataset for a sector where reliable information is scattered, undocumented, or non-existent means constant course corrections. A single piece of information can send you into a new line of research, and a short conversation can surface something that rewrites what you thought you understood.

Comscore is widely known as the dominant global box office measurement and analytics firm. I realized I had never examined how it operates across Africa. Its data is sold via enterprise contracts with no public pricing. Access is designed for major studios and large distributors, with little visibility for the rest of the sector, and I could not locate a basic public explanation of its Africa operations — which exhibitors participate, which countries are covered, and on what terms.