In an unusual twist, iROKOtv has chosen to locate its East African office in Kigali, Rwanda instead of Nairobi, Kenya. Typically, as Nairobi is deemed to be the natural “commercial capital” of the East African region, one would have expected Jason Njoku, the founder of the internet TV company, to locate the office in Kenya.
Though Jason says that he would disclose his reason for choosing Kigali over Nairobi in the future, he stated in a recent post that he is settling for Kigali because “Rwanda is located perfectly between Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Tanzania to enable our executives to serve the region comfortably. Also, the local market is too small to enable us to get lazy and attempt to build for that market alone which forces us to retain a broader, region-wide sense.”
He senses that since the East African market has a vibrant payment system and cheap access to data, iROKOtv is expected to grow faster in the region when compared to Nigeria.
According to Jason;
Payment
Even though 80% of our African viewers use card to subscribe for iROKOtv, I am very mindful that in Nigeria payment is a problem. Across East Africa? Not so much. Across the adult populace mobile money / Pesa penetration sits at nearly 50%. And they are active. And the official definition of active is someone who has transacted in the last 7days. Everywhere you look there are Wakala outlets who are essentially acting in the capacity of retail banks. In fact, mobile financial services [MFS] are larger in Tanzania than the former retail banking industry. I believe the numbers are 3m (retail banking) vs 12m Pesa (Vodacom, Airtel and TIGO). There are trillions of Tanzanian Shillings TSh (Billions of dollars) in transaction volume and liquidity across this system monthly. This ubiquity enables a frictionless payment experience and essentially facilitates commercial activity. For a Pay TV business such as my own, this makes the region super seductive.
Data
I saw a unicorn in Tanzania. I came across an unlimited plan in Africa. I literally couldn’t believe it. Data is dirt cheap. Stupidly cheap. Suspiciously cheap. In Nigeria 500Mb is N2,000 [$12]. In Tanzania 35Gb is 20,000TSh [$12]. Don’t take my word for it – here are Airtel Tz, Vodacom Tz and TIGO website numbers. That’s unlimited or 35Gb for $12 [N2000].
The largest problem for an Internet TV platform is the access to data. In Tanzania at least, that isn’t a problem. The same in Rwanda. In Kenya the prices are more realistic. Yet for Airtel Kenya for ~$13 you get 1750Mb whereas with Safaricom ~$11.3 gives you 1.5Gb. Still both for the same price gives you x3 the data one would expect in Nigeria.
iROKOtv is a web platform that provides free and paid-for Nigerian films on-demand. It is one of Africa’s first mainstream online movie steaming websites, giving free and instant access to over 5,000 Nollywood film titles. iROKOtv is a part of iROKO Partners which is one of Africa’s leading entertainment companies, housing brands such as iROKING, an online music platform and its YouTube website, Nollywoodlove.
iROKOtv was launched on 1 December 2011. Its parent company, iROKO Partners, was founded by Jason Njoku and Bastian Gotter in December 2010, with its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. iROKOtv which has been dubbed the ‘Netflix’ of Africa, is the world’s largest legal digital distributor of African movies.
