Amazon Prime Video is said to be downsizing its Africa and Middle East operations in a move that will affect teams in the two regions; according to a report in Deadline, the company will instead focus on European originals.
Following the changes, Prime Video will stop contracting originals in Africa and Middle East markets. However, shows given the go-ahead will continue as planned.
Additionally, the company plans to split the European team into two groups: the EU Established to focus on the U.K., Germany, Italy, France, and Spain markets and the EU Emerging to oversee operations in Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), the Nordics, and Central and Eastern Europe, the report said
In a sharp turn of events, the shakeup comes months after Prime Video claimed to have laid out a strategy to become the biggest video streaming player in Africa after it signed multi-year licensing agreements with production companies and set up teams in Nigeria and South Africa.
Ebuka Turns Up Africa is produced by Rapid Blue Productions, and executive produced by Ziyanda Ngcaba and Erika Klopper, and will debut next year.
“Nigeria and South Africa are both unique, special places, and homes for storytelling with incredible talent,” said Mitchell. “Just in the past year alone, Gangs Of Lagos was our sort of signature opening hello to the world for Nigeria,” he added of Amazon streamer Prime Video’s first African original, the crime drama feature that debuted in April.
As Africa’s third-largest video streaming platform, Amazon Prime Video aimed to strengthen its subscriber base in emerging markets by launching localized plans. While similar plans were introduced in South Africa, the platform had not commissioned any original content in the Middle East. The strategy included increased investment in local production, unveiling slates of localized originals, and offering discounted Amazon Prime memberships to customers.
The platform’s foray into Africa for original and licensed content garnered attention and success, with movies such as “Breath of Life” and Jade Osiberu’s “Gangs of Lagos” achieving critical acclaim and commercial success, respectively. At its peak, Prime Video had over 600,000 subscribers in Africa, according to Digital TV Research, with plans to add 1.5 million new subscribers over the next four years.
Prime Video’s withdrawal from producing local content leaves a significant void in the streaming landscape, where competing platforms are vying for Africa’s projected 15 million video-on-demand subscribers by 2026. As such, the new development could reshape the dynamics of the region’s streaming industry as platforms dedicated to creating local content, mainly Showmax, Netflix, and Canal+, capitalize on Prime Video’s reduced presence and potentially gain market share in the ongoing streaming war for African content and viewership.
During an event in Lagos in January, Opeoluwa Filani, Showmax’s country manager for Nigeria, said the company has launched a new app — developed in collaboration with Comcast — which does not have these issues. “We have made it easy to find interesting movies by searching [for something] as small as a text in a movie,” he said.
Showmax’s biggest advantage is parent company MultiChoice’s vast network: It runs a cable TV business and has been building TV channels across Africa since 1995, Marie Lora-Mungai, founder of consulting firm