Towards Tomorrows Feb 2017 | Page 11

THE DIGITAL CONTENT JUGGERNAUT IN AFRICA

Africa has , for all intents and purposes , emerged as a poster-boy of the global economic market . It has silenced its critics in several fields , including ( but not restricted to ) banking , education , agriculture , activism , etc . The continent ' s digital content space is no different . The segment has , over the years , grown by leaps and bounds , all while emphasising on the adage , “ Content is King ”. To illustrate-according to Statista , revenue from the digital media space in Africa and the Middle East is currently pegged at $ 882 million ( 2016 ). The largest segment within this market is video games , with market volume of $ 522 million . Equally sought after are online television , video streaming , gaming and social media . By 2019 , as per Ovum , this order is likely to change to mobile based e-commerce and health and video applications .
So , what is driving this juggernaut ? In a nutshell , a combination of rapid smartphone uptake and high demand for fast and accessible data are responsible . As is well known , the smartphone has made quite a splash in Africa . This is , as per industry reports , largely owing to a rapid decline in the average selling price of these devices . The bottomline is this-the availability of sub $ 100 smartphones implies that customers for whom devices such as desktop computers , laptops and tablets were financially out of bounds earlier now have the option of accessing data through smartphones . The result ? Mass market adoption of smartphones , of course ! Moving on to the larger Things picture have , this , needless is expected to say to have , changed a three-fold rather impact dramatically since then . Let ' s take a closer look at the numbers to understand on smartphone how . Shortly availability-to after the the announcement tune of 540 , digital payments company , Paytm , registered over 7 million transactions million devices worth in Rs 2020 1.20 . Meanwhile billion a day , the . This number propelled its gross merchandise value to over $ 5 billion . Of course , every of mobile digital broadband payments company connections in the in country Sub-Saharan left no stone unturned to leverage this opportunity to the fullest . And , they Africa succeeded is also set quite to increase admirably from , if the 24 numbers per cent are in anything to go by . To cite another example , MobiKwik also witnessed 2015 to a 57 200 per per cent cent by increase 2020 . in downloads and added over 200,000 customers on a daily basis ! That apart , the
It company stands is to well reason on its way that to on-boarding the increase
1 million in merchants in a span of 45 days . No small numbers , these ! smartphone demand will lead to a spike in the As a brief side-note , I feel that it is pertinent to highlight the example of Akodara , a village situated 60 miles from demand for fast and accessible data . This is overtly Ahmedabad . What makes this example so special is the fact that it is India ' s first digital and cashless village . Most true , in Africa ' s case , at least . According to of the 1,200 strong population there execute daily transactions-value notwithstanding-through digital payments . industry reports , African countries have been Of course , the intent of this piece isn ' t to wax eloquent on how these companies managed to set their cash registers developing high performance networks with at ringing least ,
41 in the countries aftermath already of demonetization using commercial
. Instead 3G
, the question is-is this a short-term surge or will the Indian