was the city’s best residential area, and the vast, lavish home of the son of the country’s former president. Welcome to Africa. The country in question is fairly well developed, has a moderately stable democracy with a convertible currency, and a fairly solid mixed business and industrial base. In short, it’s not an African “basket case” or an out-of-control “banana republic.” But the European businessman knew enough about the country, having already spent 250,000 euro researching it, that he needed influence — the right kind of influence — to have any hope of success there. And that’s particularly the case with media, and even more particularly the case with broadcast media, in just about every African country one can name. Recently, Video Agereported in its April issue that Africa was TV’s last frontier. The context was the launch of Africa’s first TV market, DISCOP Africa, planned for February in Dakar, Senegal. As with any TV trade show, content providers will be selling to broadcast, cable and satellite TV station operators. Just as when DISCOP East started, reaching Eastern and Central Europe not long after their Communist governments fell, there is a dearth of free-to-air stations in Africa. Central European Media Enterprises (CME) — a Bermuda-based company set up in 1994 to establish new commercial stations across Central and Eastern Europe after the end of Communism — solved that by launching new commercial stations across the former European Communist bloc. Properly developing free-to-air stations is essential for the TV industry — especially in poorer countries. That’s what will need to happen in Africa, just as it did in Central and Eastern Europe. But chances are the road will be longer, more difficult and more costly there, as the European businessman might soon find out. Good quality TV entertainment arrived in Africa in 1995, with the launch of satellite broadcaster DStv across all of sub-Saharan Africa, but at a price. A decoder alone cost the equivalent of almost U.S.$600. DStv exploited the lack of good quality broadcast entertainment across Africa, and expatriates, starved of the type of programs they grew up with in America and Europe, were forced to pay through the nose, together with well-heeled Africans. Having spent a year in Angola in 2000, I remember my monthly DStv subscription to be substantially more than what was paid to my housekeeper. But competition arrived in sub-Saharan Africa in the form of Canal Overseas (owned by the French Canal+ group) in 2001, which rapidly expanded to 20 African countries by 2002. By 2004, DStv had dropped the price of its decoder to only $68. Pay-TV could become cheaper, said DISCOP Africa’s Patrick Jucaud. “Cheaper pay-TV offers becoming available across Africa will radically change television consumption throughout subSaharan Africa in the near future, and will fuel competition between television operators. This competition will provide great opportunities for distributors offering the right content under affordable terms, especially in a part of the world where television advertisers still have money to spend!” Even so, the proliferation of free-to-air stations will remain important for the growth of African TV, in order for program providers and advertisers to be able to tap the African consumer. That’s not easy in some sparsely populated but vast African countries. In those places, capital city-only TV stations may be the way to go, both for viewership and distribution reasons. A great many of Africa’s 54 countries have only one TV station, owned by the government, whose daily purpose is to it, particularly the perennially war-torn Eastern Congo, is of zero interest to a TV broadcaster. Even though, it is said that a city station could probably prosper in the bustling capital, Kinshasa. What any TV businessperson hoping to make a buck in Africa should look for in a territory is probably a combination of healthy GDP and GDP per capita, a fairly stable democracy, a reasonably long period of peace, a mixed base of industry and business (which should include a healthy tourism presence as tourist money keeps governments on their toes), a narrow division between the top 10 percent of income earners and the bottom 10 percent, and a reasonable employment rate. Unfortunately, in Africa, that list severely narrows down the field. In subSaharan Africa, right now those territories that qualify are probably much of West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana in particular), South Africa, and Kenya. City-based stations could find a home in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. It’s probably no surprise that virtually all these territories are English-speaking, with the exception of some Frenchspeaking countries in West Africa. South Africa is a special case. It had no television service until the 1970s, because the public service broadcaster, BBC, is complemented by a strong private sector, headed by ITV. Similarly, in Kenya, you have the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation side by side with a strong commercial broadcaster, Kenya Television Network (KTN). KTN succeeded in breaking the public service monopoly only as recently as 1990. Holding on to control of broadcasting is still dear to most African governments. Like South Africa, Kenya airs little imported programming, and the reason is probably cost as much as culture. Even the strongest African economies are weak compared to those in Europe and Asia, and the currency can seesaw (as the South African rand has) so program pricing will certainly be an issue at DISCOP Africa. Nigeria, the home of “Nollywood” — Nigeria’s answer to Hollywood — is Africa’s audiovisual powerhouse, but so far it has only four national TV stations, including the Nigerian TV Authority, backed up by some city channels. As the continent’s largest country with close to 150 million people, Nigeria will be top of the list for all content and format sellers at DISCOP Africa. But a useful word to know is “dash.” In Nigeria, it means “bribe.” You hear the word a lot in Lagos. Even though South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are the big beasts in the African TV jungle, there is evidence that the coming of DISCOP Africa will help boost other territories. In the end, it’s programming — not presidential preening — that brings in viewers. Some African TV stations are already writing their shopping lists. One of them is RTB, the state TV service in Burkina Faso, a West African country north of Ghana with around 15 million people. According to RTB’s programming manager, Yoda Bourema: “24 Hour Chronoand Prison Breakare both on my short list of top programs.” He added: “Programs produced in Africa are also essential to me as most of them address local issues and social concerns of great importance to African viewers.” Bourema has competition in the form of two private channels. That could be one reason he is going to DISCOP Africa. Competition tends to energize people. In the long run, competition will be good for Africa, and should be good for all international program export companies. The new “African” U.S. president surely has a role to play in boosting Hollywood’s sales to his Kenyan homeland and other African countries. Recently, the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya had speed bumps built on Muthaiga Road to slow down traffic on the busy thoroughfare that passes by his official residence. If America has the raw power to inflict such an alien concept on Africa’s road warriors, getting them to buy Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be no contest. David Short is an Africa-based journalist, and an associate consultant with Leriba Risk, an African political and business risk consultancy. He’s currently in Nairobi, Kenya V I D E O • A G E JA N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 (Continued from Cover) Africa Prepares For Television 42 Africa divided by its former colonial languages extol the achievements of the president and his henchmen. Currently, and for the near future, only a few territories in Africa are ready to be exploited in any worthwhile commercial way. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not a reliable guide to amenable territories. Angola is filthy rich with a GDP of $65 billion, but that’s predicated on its vast oil riches, most of which goes into the pockets of the ruling Dos Santos family and the associated families, called the “Futungo.” The rest of the population lives a dirt-poor existence in a country destroyed by 25 years of civil war. Nor do raw statistics such as geographical size or population help. The Democratic Republic of Congo is onequarter the size of the United States with a population of 66 million. But most of broadcast services were viewed with suspicion by the apartheid National Party government. However, its rich, developed economy boosted its TV industry in record time. South Africa’s TV service is almost a facsimile of any found in Europe, with a mix of public broadcast channels from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), private free-to-air channels such as e.tv, and affordable cable and satellite services, such as M-NET. South Africa imports U.S. and foreign programming, though it tends to produce its own domestic comedies and soaps ( Madam and Eve, Scoop Schoombie and 7 de Laan, for example). Like South Africa, Kenya’s television scene follows the British model of a public broadcasting service. In Britain,
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