By Abdulwasiu Hassan
Streaming platforms are engaged in a fierce competition for eyeballs in Nigeria as the digital audience swells, impacting content distribution and consumption patterns in the home of the world's second largest movie industry.
Established players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are delving into production in the country at a time local players are trying to carve out a niche for themselves within the industry.
This trend has been fuelled by Nigerians diving en masse into the many-splendoured charms of streaming platforms, strengthening their hold on the entertainment business.
"Streaming platforms now influence almost everything related to films in Nigeria – not just distribution and consumption," Muhsin Ibrahim of the Institute of African Studies and Egyptology in the University of Cologne tells TRT Afrika.
Discussions on newly released movies or those in the pipeline trending on social media are now commonplace. Each time a new Nigerian movie releases on international streaming platforms, both movie producers and their audience take to social media to talk about it.
The bigger the online buzz, the more people are curious to see the movie that everyone seems to be talking about. It's a win-win for the streaming platforms all the way as they tap into the craze that rapidly spurs subscription growth.
Scope of impact
The Nigerian movie industry is a veritable assembly line, churning out content at a rate matched only by Hollywood.
The industry is collectively referred to as Nollywood, but within it are language-specific offshoots like Kannywood and Yollywood. Kannywood takes its name from Kano, which is the base for movies shot for a Hausa audience. Yollywood, on the other hand, denotes content in the Yoruba language.
Although the wave of migration in terms of movie distribution and consumption to video-on-demand platforms is creating a churn in the industry, the extent of the impact isn't yet known.
Muhsin says the audience shifting online has already led to some brick-and-mortar entertainment zones shutting down. “Of the two modern multiplexes in Kano, one has already closed shop.
This has a lot to do with viewing platforms taking over the audience." But according to Ishaya Bako, a Nigerian filmmaker, the transition hasn't quite made the dent that most people think it has. "Given our population, streaming platforms still have a low subscriber base in Nigeria," he explains.
The director, whose 4th Republic is among the more popular Nigerian films currently showing on Netflix, points out that people still use CDs and DVDs in the country's semi-urban areas.
Exciting times
At the same time, Bako is convinced that the advent of streaming platforms presents a good opportunity for the Nigerian creative industry.
"It's an exciting time for our culture. African culture is being exported, being shown to a global audience on platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Disney Plus and also Showmax, which is trying to do very interesting things in the African market," he says.
The one big hurdle is the current high cost of living in Nigeria, which could make it hard for most people to be able to afford the monthly subscription fees of streaming platforms, especially the global ones.
Northflix is focusing on the northern Nigerian movie industry, which has otherwise not been featured yet on foreign streaming platforms.
Its CEO, Jamil Hajaj, believes the future is bright for his company given the number of native and non-native Hausa speakers around the world.
"I believe we have over 120 million of them. So, our focus is on them," he tells TRT Afrika.
Piracy problem
The older methods of film distribution and consumption such as CDs and DVDs lend themselves to piracy.
Once a movie is released, its pirated copies invariably flood the streetside shops, denying filmmakers the fruits of their labour.
Some had hoped that with streaming platforms spreading their reach, piracy would be a thing of the past, but the problem persists.
The producer of a recent release on a streaming platform shared on social media a picture of a man arrested with pirated CD copies of his new movie. It wasn’t clear if the movie in question had been illegally recorded from a streaming platform.
Northflix insists that its system is piracy-proof. “The kind of security system we have used in developing our platform doesn't allow anyone access to screen-recording or downloading of content,” says Hajaj.
Foreign vs Local
So far, the streaming giants operating in Nigeria haven't started showing movies made by Kannywood, the niche that Northflix is betting on.
Northflix charges 1,000 naira ($1.3) monthly for a basic subscription, based on its own assessment of the purchasing power of its target audience.
Hajaj says the platform has gotten a lot of paying customers even in countries where he never expected Hausa speakers to be present.
“Our target is to hit around one million subscribers. And if you have one million subscribers paying one thousand naira each, that's a huge amount of money. You are talking about almost a billion naira in monthly revenue," he says.
“So, imagine 50% of that or two-thirds going back to the industry. This can help transform the sector."
On the flip side is the scramble for subscribers by the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and the possibility of these foreign platforms showing Hausa movies at some point.
Filmmakers like Bako aren't complaining. As long as there are subscribers to keep afloat streaming platforms, there will always be the opportunity to tell the world stories from Nigeria and the rest of Africa, as seen through their eyes.
