The scramble for the African market is getting intense
Disney Plus Starts Streaming Services in Africa Next Year
BY Alo Folakemi
September 22, 2022
3:33 pm
Disney Plus, the official streaming service of the Walt Disney Company, broke into the African market earlier this year, launching in five African countries: South Africa, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. This big move is part of Disney’s global expansion plan after debuting in 2019 in the US, Canada, and the Netherlands.
Currently the most used streaming service in the world, it beat Netflix in the subscriber game by having 221 million customers in the quarter ending of July 2022, many Africans wondered when the streaming service will finally be available in their territory. Nigerians especially took to Twitter to plead with the streaming service to make its debut because watching beloved shows such as She-Hulk and Moon Knight is difficult to do without a subscription.
So, when is the in-demand streaming service making the big move to West Africa? Juliette Vivier, international director, Hiventy Group made it known to the audience during her presentation at the recently concluded Nigerian International Film & TV Summit (NiFS) that Disney Plus (also known as Disney+) will “penetrate the market next year.”
She further stated that they were supposed to make their West African and Sub-Saharan debut this year as projected, but due to reasons known to them, they backpedaled.
Hiventy Africa, an annex of Hiventy Group, set up studios in Nairobi, Kenya in 2019 and then in Nigeria in 2020. It has since expanded to other African countries like Morocco in a bid to, in their own words, “bring the company’s expertise to the widest audience possible.”
Hiventy Group is the trusted partner of streaming services like Disney Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video for all things broadcasting and production of content. They act as a bridge between the production and post-production stages of content creation by providing technical support, audiovisual support, film distribution services, and broadcasting advice to those in the film industry. Their headquarters is in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.