Jun 24, 2025
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Africa’s Role in the Global Streaming Ecosystem
Africa is a growing market for streaming platforms. The main players in the global market increased their presence throughout the continent, bringing foreign productions to Africa while also betting on the national productions. Despite the presence of powerful local markets such as Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa, foreign platforms and productions still lead in volume and reach.
Streaming Services in Africa – Business Models and Availability
In 2025, there are +560 streaming services available in Africa. Two-thirds (67%) operate on a single business model, while the rest (33%) use hybrid approaches, allowing viewers to choose between subscriptions, with ads, or transactional access.
Taking into consideration both hybrid and single business models, subscription remains the preferred model, used by 56% of platforms. Free access comes next at 43%, and Free with Ads follows at 21%. Transactional video-on-demand appears at 13%, while TV Everywhere and Subscription with Ads are rare. In fact, only 12 platforms on the entire continent currently use a Subscription with Ads model—examples include OSN+ and Viu.
Local vs. Global Platforms: Who’s Gaining Ground?
Among local champions, Showmax stands out. Launched in South Africa in 2015, Showmax has expanded to 44 countries. While its global expansion stalled, its strategic refocus on Africa gives it a competitive edge.
On the global front, Netflix is still the leader in Africa in terms of market penetration. Being the only one of the big streaming services that is available in all the 60 African countries. Prime Video also has an important presence on the continent working in almost all the countries. Then, Disney+ drops the number, since it’s only available in 13 countries, less than 1/4 of the total number of countries where Netflix and Prime Video are available. They seem to focus on the countries with the biggest markets like Egypt, South Africa and Morocco. Max, however, remains absent from Africa entirely—no current availability, no rebranded version and no announced plans for expansion.
Given this distribution, Africa’s “big three” appear to be Netflix, Prime Video, and Showmax—two global, one local. But content strategies differ greatly.
Foreign content vs African content
Across all streaming platforms, more than 60K unique titles are available in Africa. But only 2% of those are fully local productions. An overwhelming 97% come from outside the continent, and just 1% are international co-productions involving African countries.
Regarding coproductions, there are 3 countries that stand out. The foreign country with the most copros distributed in Africa is, as expected, the US. Out of 363 coproductions, 44% are produced partially by American capital. This is a huge difference compared with the country in the second place, the UK, that represents 13% of the copros. In third place, are French coproductions with 12% titles. This makes sense considering that in the global market, the USA invests in 54% of the international copros, UK in 20% and France in 19%.
In the case of African countries that coproduced movies or series with foreign countries, South Africa leads with 139 coproduced titles, followed closely by Egypt (130 titles) and Nigeria (46 titles) falls behind. However, this changes if we look at local productions.
Egypt emerges as the biggest producer of local titles that are then distributed in streaming services in Africa with 449 movies and series being produced in this country. Nigeria follows by a very close number (447) while South Africa has 175 titles productions being distributed in the African streaming service market.
Now, with this data, we can see that Egypt has a big local market and is also an interesting country for foreign nations to coproduce with. While Nigeria is not so common to coproduce with foreign countries but also has a strong local market. And then, South Africa is the most common option to foreign nations to coproduce within Africa but has a considerable smallest local market than Egypt and Nigeria.
Fabric is currently working to expand coverage of platforms like Showmax and iBAKATV—both key distributors of Nigerian titles—to better reflect Nollywood’s relevance as one of the largest content production markets globally.
To this day there are 3 copros announced in production with African countries: Superstore, Lagos Love Stories and Alex From Oil & Gas. However, the true kings in the distribution of content in Africa are foreign countries.
Distribution Power Still Rests with Foreign Countries
In terms of pure volume, foreign countries continue to control content availability across African platforms. The US leads by far, with over 27K titles distributed across the continent. India contributes over 10K, and the UK supplies around 6K.
Compare that to Egypt, the top African producer, with just 449 titles—the gap is massive. This imbalance underscores why local stories, despite growing output, are still underrepresented in the viewer experience.
Genre Trends: What Stories Are Being Told?
No matter the origin, drama reigns supreme across all types of content—foreign, local, and co-produced.
Thrillers also perform well. In co-productions, they are the second-most common genre. In foreign and local productions, they come in third. Documentaries rank second for foreign and co-produced titles, while comedy takes second place among local productions.
These patterns suggest that while there’s alignment in genre appeal, local creators also focus more on humor and everyday stories, contrasting with the documentary-heavy strategies of foreign platforms.
A Market of Opportunity, Still Finding Balance
The overwhelming presence of foreign content remains a challenge. But local production in Egypt and Nigeria is rising steadily, and South Africa’s attractiveness for co-productions signals untapped potential.
