2018 was a year of strengthening and consolidation for audiovisual and media players
Uncertainty surrounding elections, which generally slows down the advertising market, affected Mali at the beginning of the year, then Cameroon and the DRC. Senegal is in the same situation at the end of this year, as elections will be held in February 2019. As this was not a favorable time for risk-taking, the media sector saw a consolidation of existing positions, a restructuring of organizations, and an increase in cooperation and partnership initiatives.
The major players in pay TV, CANAL+ and STARTIMES, continued to grow.
With more than 3.5 million subscribers in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, CANAL+ has continued to grow, supported by the quality and quantity of the sports rights it holds.
In addition, the CANAL+ channels were expanded in 2018 with two new channels (CANAL+ COMEDIE and CANAL+ACTION).
Read: CANAL+ Action and CANAL+ Comédie enrich the CANAL+ channel offering
It was also a particularly busy year for CANAL+ ADVERTISING. Monica Mollon, the new managing director of the Ivorian subsidiary, signed an agreement with 7info, the upcoming Ivorian digital terrestrial television news channel, which entrusted her with the sale of its advertising space. At the same time, TV5Monde and France 24, which until then had been managed for Africa by France TV Publicité International, also joined CANAL+ ADVERTISING in January 2019. Finally, at the end of December 2018, the advertising agency announced the appointment of Daniel Galinsky, former CEO of Lagardère Active Radio International, as CEO, while Pierre-Paul Vandersande took over as chairman.
For its part, Startimes is approaching 200,000 subscribers to its satellite offering in Côte d'Ivoire, which was also boosted by the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Several announcements of sports rights acquisitions also serve as a reminder of STARTIMES' ambitions in pay TV in French-speaking Africa. These ambitions were temporarily thwarted in Senegal at the end of 2018, when Startimes' new satellite offering in that country was the subject of a legal challenge by its competitor EXCAF, which has a monopoly on distribution via DTT.
Public television: strength in unity
Public television channels are resisting private competition to varying degrees but are trying to organize themselves: under the impetus of RTI and UAR, cooperation initiatives between public channels have multiplied.
Read: How are African public channels resisting national and pan-African competition?
Last September, RTI initiated a regional seminar on public radio and television news programs to reflect on strategies for improving regional news coverage and creating synergies between the various member countries of the sub-region in the field of news.
For its part, the UAR proposes to set up a "program and information exchange network"
for audiovisual publishers operating in Africa.
Finally, several initiatives have highlighted the importance of fact-checking and combating fake news in the processing of information.
Audiovisual production: new ambitions
Several achievements and announcements attest to the willingness of major global players to devote more resources to more ambitious fiction projects supported by significant marketing resources and produced in Africa by Africans.
Awarded at the La Rochelle festival, "Invisibles," a 10-episode series of 52 minutes directed by Alex Ogou and financed by CANAL+, is the first African fiction series to win such a prestigious award. As has been pointed out, "there will be a before and after 'Invisibles.'" The proof is there: with ambition and, above all, resources, African talent can compete with the best.
TV5Monde has also continued its long-standing policy of supporting African fiction.
Finally, Kwese iflix and Netflix recently signaled their willingness to invest in African content, for the time being on the English-speaking side.
Accelerating digital development
Contrary to popular belief, digital technology is not developing exponentially in French-speaking Africa—quite the contrary. The cost of data remains so prohibitive that all indicators of Internet and social media usage show only slight growth.
In this context, Eutelsat's announcement that it will remedy this phenomenon using satellite technology through the Konnect Africa project deserves attention and support.
Read: Interview with Jean-Claude Tshipama, CEO of Eutelsat's Konnect Africa initiative
DTT and private TV in Côte d'Ivoire: a year of intensive preparation for an upcoming launch
Two years after the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HACA) allocated four free DTT frequencies to private Ivorian television operators, the launch of the channels is approaching. The Ivorian government has announced in the Council of Ministers that the signal is now available, enabling the District of Abidjan to be connected to DTT by the end of December 2018, with other regions being connected gradually.
The five new channels (RTI3, NCI, A+ Ivoire, Life TV, and 7Info) have spent 2018 quietly fine-tuning their programming schedules and preparing for their launch in the first half of 2019. A+ Ivoire, for its part, has already unveiled its programming schedule and advertising rates and announced its launch for January 14, 2019.
There is also movement at JC Decaux,
which announced in 2018 the signing of its first contract in Côte d'Ivoire, a country where the company was not yet established.
TRACE
is continuing its development and restructuring its organization with the appointment of a new CEO, the launch of Trace Kitoko, and the announcement of an equity stake in Coin Afrique.
Africa Radio
, which obtained a frequency in Brazzaville after the one obtained in Abidjan and is continuing to build its African presence.
The Walt Disney Company,
which unveiled its African strategy last September.
Read: The Walt Disney Company France unveils its African strategy