The Lay of the Land: Africa's Streaming and Pay-TV Market, Right Now

Tomorrow, Canal+ presents its fiscal year 2025 earnings, the first full financial results since the MultiChoice acquisition closed in September. It's the presentation "everyone" has been waiting for, and I'll be back with a detailed read once it's done. For now, I want to give you what I've spent most of this past week assembling: a continent-wide picture of what the streaming and pay-TV market actually looks like at this particular moment.

The Showmax closure announcement on March 5 accelerated work we (African Film Press - AFP) were already doing. The platform's shutdown is the most consequential single event of the past twelve months in this space, but it's one chapter inside a much longer, broader story. Platforms have entered and exited. Commissioning budgets have contracted. New, smaller players have launched from inside the industry itself. And across different regions of the continent, the picture looks quite different depending on where you're standing.