Often perceived solely as a telecom operator, Orange is changing its status in Africa. In recent months, the group has stepped up its initiatives in audiovisual content, entertainment, and media.
Films, series, streaming platforms, partnerships with African creators, local productions, sports… Orange is continuing and expanding its content creation efforts, which began nearly 10 years ago in French-speaking Africa.
One of Orange's first initiatives in 2016 was Afrostream, a VOD platform specializing in African and Afro series and films, with the aim of developing VOD in Africa and enriching Orange's TV offering with premium Afro content.
Then Orange began developing proprietary formats such as the TV magazine "Y'Africa," launched in 2020, which features African artists (39 artists from 10 countries in season 1, 13 episodes), with season 2 filmed and broadcast in 15 African countries and on YouTube and podcasts.
Orange Studio then positioned itself in the co-production of African films for African audiences, with several projects in French-speaking Africa, drawing on the group's presence in many countries across the continent.
In 2017, Orange launched Orange TV in Côte d'Ivoire, a television service offering around 30 channels and a VOD platform with African and international content available 24 hours a day.
In 2019, an exclusive partnership made RTI channels available on Orange TV in Côte d'Ivoire, presented as a lever for "promoting local content" for the benefit of national audiences and the diaspora.
This leverage was also used in 2020 by integrating all private Ivorian channels Life TV, NCI, A+ Ivoire, and Ivoire Music into its channel package.
From 2020 to 2025, Orange also invested in numerous Ivorian fiction productions, often in co-production with Ivorian channels. Assinie, un homme à marier, Cœur d’ébène, les Perles de Babi, and most recently Buzz with NCI and Biama City with Life TV.
Orange Africa & Middle East (OMEA) has launched the Max it super app, which combines telecoms, financial services, and entertainment, with a "Max it TV" section dedicated to viewing audiovisual content tailored to African mobile users.
All 64 matches of the 2022 World Cup were available via ORANGE TV, and more recently, an agreement signed with the Confederation of African Football gave ORANGE mobile-only broadcasting rights for 35 matches of the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations Morocco 2025 (group stage for countries where Orange is present, several knockout matches, third-place play-off, and final) via Max it in 13 sub-Saharan African countries.
At the same time, Orange TV (in France) marketed a package combining beIN SPORTS and the Bouquet Africain Max for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, illustrating Orange's strategy of promoting African content to diasporas as well.
In 2024 in the DRC, Orange also entered into a partnership with TV5MONDE to offer Internet packages dedicated to the TV5MONDEplus VOD platform, providing subscribers with easy access to films, series, documentaries, and music programs in French.
This type of agreement is part of a strategy to form alliances with international French-language channels in order to strengthen access to premium catalogs, while leveraging Orange's mobile subscriber base in Africa.
Through these successive and ongoing initiatives, Orange confirms its desire to play an active role in what its customers watch, listen to, and share. By investing in content production, broadcasting, and distribution, the group is gradually establishing itself at the heart of the African audiovisual value chain.
The recent acceleration also reflects changing habits: smartphones have become an essential tool in major African countries, as shown by a recent Médiamétrie study in Senegal, which found that more than 9 out of 10 residents of Greater Dakar (97.4%) own a smartphone.
It also reflects a conviction: the boundaries between telecom operators, media platforms, and content producers are blurring. Content is no longer just an additional service, but a strategic lever for customer loyalty.
Orange has thus become, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire, one of the players that supports local production through its financial contribution, without which many projects could not be realized. As such, Orange could well establish itself as one of the pillars of the continent's future audiovisual landscape.