Canal+ Group and iROKO are partnering to create and launch a Francophone SVoD service aimed at bringing affordable mobile TV content to French-speaking Africa. The app is set to launch in the coming months.
Designed to optimise data consumption, the service will be aimed at building a new mobile-only subscriber base across Francophone Africa. Canal + group now owns and broadcasts a large catalogue of African content, including Nollywood films and TV series, African homemade series and shows and South American TV Novelas, for French-speaking Africa.
The two companies have previously worked together through content distribution deals for linear TV channels such as Nollywood TV.
There are over 250 million French-speakers across 23 countries in Africa, with 165 million smartphones estimated to be in circulation before 2020., according to iROKO. The app will be translated fully into French and all content will be in French.
“Now that Canal+ is close to having two million pay TV households in Africa, our ambition is to widen our audience to those whose mobile is the main entertainment device,” said Jacques du Puy, president of Canal+ overseas (pictured), “iROKO’s original approach integrating popular content production and mobile SVoD perfectly matches our group’s entertainment vision in French- Speaking Africa. This will also allow us to make more accessible the contents that we specifically produce and design for the African market’
Jason Njoku CEO of iROKO added, “Together, we will be giving the many millions of French-speaking Nollywood and Telenovela fans unprecedented access to content that has previously been inaccessible. We believe truly amazing, yet affordable content is the right balance to strike in sub-Saharan Africa and this deal is testament to that.”
