MultiChoice to boost local content


By Content Nigeria reporter
March 2, 2021

News

African pay TV platform MultiChoice has revealed plans to increase local content on its channels from 38% to 44% over the next two years.

Calvo Mawela

MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela made this announcement in an interview on CNN Connecting Africa, noting that over US$136.49bn has so far been spent by the company on African productions.

Mawela said: “We have invested a lot in local content across the continent; we call it going hyper-local. Each year we spend over R2bn [US$133m] investing in local content productions across the whole continent.

“Our plan is to increase our local content composition from 38% to 44% in the next two years. We have been on this nice trajectory over a number of years and we think we should be able to achieve that.”

Speaking about the fact that international players could also have some level of local content, he told Punch Nigeria: “We go deeper into the communities and tell stories in the street language they use on a day-to-day basis and the storytelling is based on their everyday lives.

“If you look at our numbers, we are sitting at over 20 million subscribers and we think we can grow very quickly to 50 million subscribers. They are used to how we tell our stories, and I think that’s going to keep us competitive and we should be able to challenge the likes of Netflix.”

Mawela also said that MultiChoice had launched local content channels in Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia and will soon debut similar services in Uganda and Ghana.

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