SA Show-Streaming Service Spreads All Across Africa

ShowMax, the entertainment streaming service owned by South Africa’s Naspers is now also available in 36 countries in Africa, the company said on Friday.

ShowMax, a cheaper alternative to Netflix (R99 versus $7.99 or R123) – with arguably a better selection of content, since it offers popular US shows from the HBO channel such as “Game of Thrones”, but not Netflix’s own series – launched in South Africa in August 2015. It beat by several months the giant Netflix’s international launch in 130 countries, South Africa included, in January.

ShowMax’s platform is also used to provide Kyknet International’s Afrikaans series and movies in 28 more countries, including the United States, UK and Australia.

The ShowMax expansion comes in the same week that Naspers, which also owns DSTV, Takealot, Multichoice, Media24, has a 34 percent stake in the Chinese Internet company Tencent and recently bought social education network Brainly, opened an office in San Francisco, the home of Google and Facebook.

The 36 African countries newly added, all in sub-Saharan Africa, include Zimbabwe, Congo, Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Swaziland, Cameroon, Senegal, Rwanda and Uganda. Obviously missing from the list are Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and most of West Africa.

ShowMax said it had adapted its service for Africa’s connectivity constraints. New product features it developed include: 1) Download functionality to save up to 25 TV shows and movies in total to Android and iOS smartphones and tablets for viewing offline; 2) User-selectable download quality to limit data usage; and 3) User-selectable streaming quality to limit data usage.

“The other key to success is making sure you’ve got the right mix of international and local content. We’ve added Kiswahili and Nollywood shows and movies to our existing class-leading catalogue of Hollywood and British favourites,” said ShowMax’s chief product officer Barron Ernst.