66 •
The Lion King
• July - September 2017
The last word
By Femi Bamigbetan
T
he entertainment industry in Africa
has been thriving for years now.
The two most prominent sectors -
Film and Music have both had several
revolutions in the last decade to bring
about a wave of improvements that
have now placed the entertainment
space in Africa among the best in the
world. Countries like Nigeria, Kenya
and South Africa are at the fore-
front this new change transforming the
continent into a powerhouse when it
comes to media.
Growing up, I was heavily influenced
by foreign media and this left me at
odds with content made in Africa.
Little did I know I was going to join
the media industry and have to make
Entertainment in Africa:
The future is digital
content in the very same space I was
not so fond of. Fast forward to now, I
can proudly say that content made
in Africa is so good, it can compete
with content from any other part of
the world.
The digital content space is the new
frontier. Media consumption, world-
wide, is increasingly happening
in digital formats. Netflix is a well-
known platform for digital content
and with the advent of high speed
internet, and more devices that sup-
port digital media, it is now possible
to turn mobile devices into potable
entertainment platforms. YouTube,
SoundCloud, ITunes, Google Music
and even Groove by Microsoft are
all platforms creating disruption in the
content space in the world today.
Africa has not been left out of these
revolutions. A lot of media consump-
tion is also happening in the digi-
tal space. REDTV (
is
a good example of an indigenous
African new content disruption plat-
form. REDTV provides content for the
new generation of content consumers
and belongs to this new class of digi-
tal front-liners. In fact, the kind of on-
demand content provided by these
digital platforms are challenging the
traditional entertainment hubs as the
music and video industries continue
to observe the steady shift towards
digital formats.
