Introducing: Africa Streaming & Infrastructure Watch, First Edition

Showmax is shutting down. Canal+ completed its acquisition of MultiChoice in September 2025 and announced the closure in early March 2026. Netflix stopped commissioning new originals outside South Africa. Amazon Prime Video halted commissioning on the continent in early 2024. In short, the platforms that spent the better part of a decade building a foothold in African streaming at scale have, one by one, pulled back or disappeared entirely.

You know the story.