Amazon Prime is scaling back its operations in Africa. The streaming platform is restructuring its business, reducing local content production and laying off staff in Africa and the Middle East to focus on European markets.
This comes after Amazon Global announced that it was laying off hundreds of employees across its Prime Video and MGM studio teams. Although Amazon will still be present in Africa, it will only concentrate efforts on areas that “drive the highest impact and long-term success”.
Ambitions take a turn: Amazon Prime’s retreat comes after big plans to become the top streaming platform on the continent.
Marked by a hiring spree and inked partnerships with at least four local production studios, the platform had set up dedicated teams for their two biggest markets: Nigeria and South Africa. In 2021, the streaming platform was estimated to have 575,000 customers in sub-Saharan Africa, and they were projected to hit 1.9 million by 2026.
Africa’s streaming market: Tech-focused professionals are financing and creating Nollywood content for international platforms, with Netflix’s The Black Book as an example, which was watched more than 70 million times in less than three weeks on Netflix.
While Africa’s streaming market has seen growth, challenges persist. IrokoTV, Africa’s oldest streaming service, had only 46,000 active users in December 2022, a 76% decline from the beginning of the year. Last year, Netflix with its 1.2 million subscribers, also lost its market leader position to Showmax, MultiChoice’s streaming service, which now has 1.4 million subscribers on the continent.
Techcabal
