StarTimes and DSTV Battle For Audiences in Africa’s Intensely Competitive Pay TV Market

One of the revealing aspects of Africa’s pandemic-related downturn is that, while it’s causing financial chaos across the continent this doesn’t seem to be slowing the outside interest in certain African consumer sectors.

Take TV, for example. For a long time, the African cross-border satellite TV market was dominated by one player – South Africa’s DSTV. Evolving from Nasionale Pers [National Press] a keystone apartheid media conglomerate, DSTV introduced satellite TV to South Africa and then branched out across the continent. It managed to expand in markets like Nigeria through seizing on the Nollywood boom relatively early, although scholars have pointed out that this frequently happened through problematic contracts with filmmakers who didn’t have many other options.