Online streaming giant, Netflix has on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, announced plans to expand its operations in Africa, after looking at how investment on the continent since 2016 has already created some hit shows.
The announcement was made at an event in Johannesburg where Netflix launched a report on its impact in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.
According to the report, the online video streaming giant has invested the equivalent of £140m ($175m) million in film content production in Africa since 2016 and has created over 12,000 jobs on the continent and intends to build on this success beyond just three countries.
“The expansion of our operations here is a good thing for Netflix,” the company said in the report.
“We have undertaken this report to reflect on Netflix’s social and economic impact in the key countries. We are still in many ways at the inception stages of our investment journey, so it’s doubly exciting to know that we are poised to deliver an even greater impact if we maintain our current momentum – and if the right circumstances for investments in our sector continue to prevail,” Netflix’s sub-Saharan Africa policy director, Shola Sanni, said in its introduction.
She pointed to African productions like Silverton Siege (South African), Aníkúlápó (Nigerian) and Disconnect: The Wedding Planner (Kenyan) as all having at one point made it into Netflix Global Top 10 lists.
However, to keep telling African stories on a global stage, Netflix needed to have the support of “governments, civil society, private sector and industry” to allow the created industries to thrive, Ms Sanni said.
“Enabling policy frameworks, flexible regulatory mandates and ease of doing business are inextricably bound to the continued growth of the audio-visual sector and streaming services.”
South Africa is the site’s top African contributor, with more than 170 films, series, and documentaries. In 2020, “Blood and Water,” a series centred on a Cape Town teenager who investigates her sister who was abducted at birth, had even placed first in the United States.
Credit: BBC Africa & Africa News
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