Factual content on Africa's biggest streaming platform (it's not Netflix)
The Big Wide #003
Welcome back to The Big Wide. This week a look into factual content on an African streamer, their best shows so far, what they’re missing, and who to pitch. And scroll all the way down for this weeks best finds from the corners of the web including new editing tools and a BBC Studios foray into AI generated docs.
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Read on…
The biggest streaming platform across Africa isn’t Netflix, Prime Video or Apple TV - it’s Showmax.
Owned by South African Multichoice Group, by November 2023 Showmax had edged ahead of Netflix with 2.1 million subscribers across Africa - and in February 2024 it launched its new low-bandwidth optimised streaming app across 44 countries.
The battle for Africa’s eyeballs is heating up. As audiences stagnate in Europe and America, streamers look elsewhere for growth. And the continent is one of the biggest growth markets in the world, only just emerging as smartphones, online payment methods and cheap data become ubiquitous and allow a streaming model to take off. Only 1% of households currently have a streaming subscription - compared to 71% of North American and 52% of European households.
Amazon Prime recently announced it would scale back and stop producing original African content, leaving only Netflix to do battle with Showmax. The two platforms are estimated to have 18 million subscribers between them by 2029 - but the ratio is yet to be determined…
We know, given previous data points, that the local content is what resonates best. So we will double down on our spend on local content.
Marc Jury, CEO of Showmax
To solidify their lead, this year Showmax plans to produce 1,300 hours of original African content, with a focus on their current core markets in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
Much of that new content will be factual, and with Showmax open to co-productions and licensing existing formats, we fired up our VPN and took a look at some of their biggest African-original factual hits to date (spoiler - there’s a lot of true crime).
Showmax factual highlights
🇿🇦 Devilsdorp (2021): Four part true crime docuseries by Ideacandy about 11 brutal killings in the town of Krugersdorp that became known as The Satanic Killings. It went on to win awards and set a record as the most watched series in it’s first four days on Showmax - leaving Game of Thrones which is also on the platform in its dust.
The result of an 18-month research process, Devilsdorp shows again that truth is stranger than fiction, especially in South Africa
Director of Devilsdorp David Enright
🇬🇭 My Perfect Funeral (2022): In Ghana funerals are elaborate, and can take three to four months to plan. This ten part documentary series from creator and executive producer Deloris Frimpong Manso, filmed across a year, follows five families in Ghana preparing to send off their loved ones.
We’re the number one pallbearers in Ghana. We added the dancing to it, and nobody can take that away from us.
Benjamin Aidoo, star pallbearer in My Perfect Funeral
🇿🇦 The Stella Murders (2023): Buoyed by the success of Devilsdorp, the same director and production company duo went on to make this single film about the mystery surrounding the deaths of two schoolgirls in 2018. Showmax branded director David Enright as South Africa’s ‘King of True Crime’ after this one launched.
🇳🇬 Journey of the Beats (2022): A ten part docuseries about the origins of Afrobeats as it blows up around the world.
Afrobeats has come a long way from the recesses of music studios and the street to being one of the biggest sounds globally, with several international artists clamouring to work with musicians in Nigeria. With the world’s attention on us, we must tell our stories and document our journey by ourselves, and I’m glad that the streaming platform, Showmax, helped share and birth the vision.
Producer of Journey of the Beats Obi Asika
🇳🇬 Freemen (2024): Co-produced by Daro Umaigba and rapper Tobechukwu Ejiofor, Freemen is a seven part documentary series about a unique business system in eastern Nigeria where, instead of a business growing large over multiple generations, it provides extensive training and seed money to its apprentices to enable them to start out on their own. Over time, the original businesses pass off their customers to the new enterprise, leaving a society that is largely equal. Showmax used it to launch their revamped streaming platform in February 2024.
🏆 Honorable mentions: The Real Housewives of Durban (four seasons of it!), Sports Wives, Inside Spinners car stunt action from Red Bull Media House, The Illuminated about niche religious movements and Sex and Pleasure, about…
Where are the gaps?
It’s a small sample size, but true crime, reality and social issue documentaries are well represented. Here’s where we see some obvious gaps in their library of factual originals:
Natural history. Most of it is filmed across Africa and there is now plenty of homegrown camera and production talent.
Engineering Mega engineering obs docs, restoration programmes like Car SOS or The Repair Shop, semi-reality ‘men shouting at broken things’ series like Gold Rush.
Homes and DIY Think DIY SOS or Homes Under The Hammer.
Food. No homegrown food content yet (but Plimsoll have a six part African food series in the works for a big streamer)
Light hearted obs docs. Police, hospitals, shops, the vets…
Who do you pitch?
Via their submissions portal, or:
Nicola van Niekerk Head of Premium Content & Co-Productions
Allan Sperling Executive Head of Content
Mbalenhle Ntuli Head of Unscripted Content (Middle and Mass market)
Read more:
African Streamer Showmax’s CEO on Doubling Down on Originals, How Africa Surprises Hollywood Folks Hollywood Reporter
SNIFFING AROUND 🐷
● Huge balls and a tiny Sony FX3 / FX30 camera setup did the trick for Sean Langan behind enemy lines in Russian-held Ukraine - watch his feature-length documentary here and listen to an interview about his process here.
● BBC Studios is in development on an AI based history series, says Alan Holland, Head of Specialist Factual. Read our article about history docs and AI here. We expect they are using Eleven Labs voice cloning tools:
We have a production in development for one of the streamers that is hopefully going to be our first foray into virtual programming. In this world of AI, we have an opportunity to bring people back to life in a way that has never been done before and extend the remit of archival material. That’s incredibly exciting. We’re seeing what we can do in that space to reignite lost souls and bring back lost voices. From a technological perspective, that’s our direction to travel.
Alan Holland, Head of Specialist Factual, BBC Studios
● YouTube are coming for Adobe by launching their own editing, live-streaming and production tool called YouTube Create. It’s basic now, but will inevitably get more advanced as time goes on. They also recently launched multi-language videos (essentially just outsourced dubbing) that will allow big creators to grow their channels even further into other regions.
● Need open source or cheap stock footage from a country that is perhaps a little off the beaten track? The likelihood is there will be little to choose from - 33 countries have fewer than 10 clips available on Wikimedia. But now a new startup is launching an open-source stock footage site that aims to change that and provide a way for local journalists to give greater representation of their home countries.
● One we can all sympathise with - a new podcast from Malcom Gladwell on the Hollywood scripts that get dragged kicking and screaming into development hell…but after listening to episode one, we can’t help but think it’s just a clever trick to breathe life into his failed Blink adaptation.
● True North are going into production on a ‘special for Black History Month about Black Cinema - presented by A list talent’.
● If you have ten minutes here is an excellent article on microculture vs macroculture (“A single individual living in Greenville, North Carolina defeats enormous global corporations with tens of thousands of employees—and does it every month”) accompanied by a food for thought graph:
● Grain Media, producers of Netflix’s first massive documentary hit Virunga, are beginning production on a new feature doc in DRC.
● Lost amidst other Red Bull news, overhyped FPV drones finally find the perfect use case thanks to the Dutch Drone Gods, Red Bull’s F1 factory, and eight months of design and testing.
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