Category: Blog

Social media has more than doubled as a source of news across Africa in a decade. Yet the share of Africans who regularly follow the news has barely moved. That second number is the one broadcasters should be planning around.

In April, Afrobarometer published Dispatch No. 1173, titled “How Africans get their news is changing – how much they get might not be”. It draws on 50,961 face-to-face interviews across 38 countries in its Round 10 survey (2024/2025), and compares 28 countries that have been surveyed consistently since 2014/2015. The first half of the title is the story most people will expect. The second half is the one worth pausing on.

Radio still leads, by a narrower margin

Across the 38 countries, 59% of adults say they get news from radio every day or a few times a week. Television follows at 53%, social media at 50%, other internet sources at 38% and newspapers at just 13%.

Over the decade, the picture has shifted. In the 28 trend countries, the share who frequently get news from radio is down 10 percentage points. In 2014/2015, only about one in five used social media (22%) or the internet (22%) for news. Social media has since more than doubled. Other internet sources topped out at 42% in 2021/2023. Newspaper readership has fallen from 23% to 13%.

Displacement, not growth

A decade ago, 84% of respondents said they frequently consumed news through at least one media channel. In 2024/2025, the figure is 85%. Afrobarometer’s conclusion is blunt: digital media is having “a displacement effect, as opposed to an amplifying effect”.

Put simply, the phone has not brought new people to the news. It has given people who were already following the news a different door to walk through. The audience is roughly the same size. It is simply spread across more platforms, which means every broadcaster, publisher and platform is now competing harder for the same people.

Who is still outside the room

The overall figure hides wide gaps. Regular news consumption reaches 88% of men but 79% of women, 92% of urban residents but 75% of rural ones, and 97% of people with post-secondary education but 68% of those with no formal schooling. Among those who never go without basic necessities it is 94%. Among those who often do, it is 75%.

This is where radio earns its keep. Its gap between the well-off (62%) and the very poor (55%) is only 7 points, the smallest of any medium. It is also the only medium regularly used by a majority of people in the countryside (60%). Television, social media and the internet each fall to about a third or less in rural areas.

Age tells a similar story in reverse. Adults aged 18 to 35 are more than twice as likely as those over 55 to get news via social media (58% against 28%). For the youngest group, social media has now edged ahead of radio. For their parents, radio remains first by a distance.

Nor is the digital shift even across the continent. Digital news use ranges from 13% in Madagascar to 79% in Morocco, 81% in Gabon and 88% in Mauritius. Afrobarometer points to the reasons: “the highest mobile-data costs of any continent”, the cost of internet-enabled handsets, and government-imposed restrictions. Readers of our August note on Nation Media Group’s month off air in Uganda will recognise that last one.

Pay attention to the flat line

For broadcasters, regulators and funders, the flat line matters more than the rising one. A few implications stand out.

First, social media growth is not audience growth. A station that adds a TikTok presence is not reaching a bigger news market, it is holding on to part of the one it already had. Strategy should be judged on share of the same audience, not on follower counts.

Second, radio remains the public service backbone of the continent. For rural, poorer and less educated listeners it is often the only regular source of news. Transmitter networks, FM coverage and local language programming are not legacy costs. They are the infrastructure that reaches the people everyone else misses, even if radio listening is slowly declining in towns and villages alike.

Third, the gaps are an opportunity. Women, rural communities and people living in poverty are the least served audiences in the survey. Content, scheduling and distribution built around their day, rather than around the urban smartphone user, is where genuine audience growth still exists.

Fourth, the young are already on both. With 18 to 35 year olds using social media and radio at almost the same rate, the question is not which platform to choose but how the same journalism moves between the studio, the clip and the feed.

There is a public trust dimension too. Across the 38 countries, 72% support the media playing a role in holding governments accountable. The appetite for serious journalism is there. The challenge is making sure it reaches everyone, not just the connected.

Quietly important

Most commentary on African media over the past decade has been about disruption: new platforms, new habits, new competitors. Afrobarometer’s data is a useful corrective. The platforms have changed. The size of the news audience has not. The broadcasters who do well in the next decade will be the ones who stop chasing the rising line and start serving the people the flat line leaves behind.

If you are working through what this means for your station, platform or distribution strategy in Africa, get in touch.

Source: Afrobarometer Dispatch No. 1173, “How Africans get their news is changing – how much they get might not be”, April 2026.

This month, instead of our usual market note, we want to point you towards someone else’s writing.

Between 28 June and 28 July 2026, Nation Media Group, one of East Africa’s largest independent media houses, was forced off air in Uganda for a month. It has since resumed operations. Writing in the Nile Post, and republished by AllAfrica, Robert Kigongo uses that month to ask a deceptively simple question: when the voice of the voiceless is silenced, who loses?

Uganda: Independent Media – When the Voice of the Voiceless Is Silenced, Who Loses? – Robert Kigongo, Nile Post via AllAfrica

His answer is that everyone does. He begins with a single story a broadcaster once carried, about a widow evicted from her land, and traces what followed from it being told at all. From there he widens out to government, to business and to ordinary citizens, and to the growing physical risks journalists face in doing the job.

We would not claim to be the right people to make the press freedom argument. Kigongo is, and he makes it well. What we can add is the commercial reading, because a month off air is not only an editorial event. It is lost airtime revenue, broken advertiser commitments, idle production capacity, disrupted carriage deals, and a risk premium that every investor looking at the market quietly repriced. Regulatory unpredictability is a market fact before it is anything else, and it shows up in valuations long after the signal comes back.

It also picks up a thread running through our recent notes. In June we looked at Zimbabwe, where six new licences produced more channels without producing many more genuinely independent decision makers, and where the one clearly independent applicant ended up streaming online rather than broadcasting. Uganda in July shows the other end of the same problem: what happens when a strong independent broadcaster does exist, and is switched off. In both cases the audience does not disappear. It moves, usually to a phone, and the terrestrial business case moves with it.

It is a short read and worth your time. If you are weighing what regulatory risk means for your channel, platform or distribution strategy in East Africa, get in touch.

Don’t overlook South Sudan as a broadcast market. Mention the world’s newest country and most people picture famine appeals, refugee camps and civil war. But that isn’t South Sudan today, as it approaches it’s 15-year anniversary this July. Since independence (9 July 2011), it has built two regulators, passed three media laws, licensed a national broadcaster, and put a working network of FM radio on air across all ten states.

The framework

South Sudan didn’t waste time on the legal side. The Media Authority Act, the Broadcasting Corporation Act and the Right of Access to Information Act were all on the books by 2014, within three years of independence. The South Sudan Media Authority (SSMA) followed in 2016 as the independent regulator for content and licensing. Spectrum and technical licensing sit with the National Communication Authority (NCA). Two regulators, the same split you’ll find in Kenya or Uganda.

The licensing covers both TV and radio under the usual three headings (public, commercial, community), and the Act also gives the SSMA responsibility for online media. The digital side of the framework is still developing, but the regulator is actively building capacity, including a journalist code of conduct launched with UNESCO support.

External recognition is following. In Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 World Press Freedom Index, South Sudan climbed 27 places, from 136 to 109, the largest positive shift of any country that year. For the first time, it ranks ahead of both Kenya and Uganda within the East African Community. So the country most outsiders still file under “too risky” is, on the international metrics that matter, now a better place to operate than several of the markets they take for granted.

Who’s on air

Television matters in Juba, the capital. Radio matters everywhere else. The most-cited nationally representative studies, Internews’ 2013 and 2015 audience surveys, put radio as the most widely accessed and most trusted medium in the country, and that is where the real broadcast sector lives.

Three stations do most of the heavy lifting. Radio Miraya, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) station, has the widest geographic footprint of any FM broadcaster, transmitting from Juba on 101 FM through 26 satellite-linked relays. Eye Radio is the leading independent voice, broadcasting in English, Arabic and a string of local languages. The Catholic Radio Network, anchored by Radio Bakhita 91 FM in Juba, covers remote and conflict-affected areas. The state broadcaster, the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC), runs the national service plus FM stations in nine of the ten state capitals.

Television is a much smaller story. SSBC TV broadcasts around 15 hours a day from Juba in English and Arabic, and is also on satellite. Pay TV serves the wealthier urban audience, with both DStv (MultiChoice) and StarTimes operating locally. MultiChoice is now owned by French group Canal+ following its 2025 takeover.

Where the commercial opportunities are

The ad-funded model that pays the bills in Nairobi doesn’t pay them in Juba, not yet. The opportunities are different, but they are there.

Three look interesting. Donor and development-funded broadcasting is where Miraya, Eye Radio and the Catholic Radio Network already earn most of their keep, and the volume of work is not shrinking. Humanitarian agencies, health programmes, agricultural extension and civic education all need to reach audiences in languages and locations no commercial channel will serve. Diaspora and mobile-first models are a more realistic commercial proposition than a new linear TV channel, given South Sudan’s large overseas community and the youth-led growth in mobile internet. And advisory work for the regulators themselves, the SSMA is building capacity, the digital side of its framework is still developing, and the NCA needs to plan spectrum for whatever the next ten years look like.

Jukwa’s view

Two regulators. Three media laws. A functioning national broadcaster. A radio sector with real reach in every state. That’s more institutional groundwork than plenty of older African broadcast markets can show for themselves.

Showmax was supposed to prove that Africa could build its own Netflix. Instead, CANAL+ is closing it down.

The Market Is Not Enough

Showmax, MultiChoice’s OTT streaming service, was Africa’s big bet on homegrown streaming. It ran into a simple problem: it was just too expensive.

Too expensive for viewers once you add the data bill, and too expensive for its owners, who were paying around 385 to 390 million dollars over seven years to run Showmax on Comcast’s Peacock OTT platform while also funding a heavy slate of originals and sport for the wider MultiChoice group.

On paper, Showmax’s costs looked fine. In South Africa, the subscription sat at roughly 5 to 6 dollars a month, similar in Kenya and Uganda, and a bit higher in Zambia once local pricing and currency were factored in.

But the pool of people who can spare that every month is small once you step out of the leafier parts of Jo’burg, Nairobi, Kampala or Lusaka. Zambia’s true middle class is a thin urban slice. Uganda and Kenya have more salaried workers, but even there, “an extra five dollars every month” is a decision, not loose change. And that’s before the cost of data …

The Man with the Golden Bundle

While the Showmax adverts sell the subscription, the real cost lies in the data.

Imagine someone watching 15 hours of Showmax – think of it as roughly four hours each week for a few movies, matches, or episodes.

In South Africa, that can mean an extra $10 to $20 on mobile data, in addition to the $5 to $6 subscription, unless you’re lucky enough to have a generous fibre connection or a great bundle deal. In Kenya and Uganda, smart use of bundles can help save, but most people still find that their data costs more than the subscription for those 15 hours. Zambia, where data is among the most expensive compared to income, could see costs reach $20 to $30 each month for the same viewing time.

So, what looks like a $5 to $8 service often ends up costing two, three, or even four times that once you pay for enough data. That’s a significant expense in these economies. For many families, it pushes Showmax from a small treat to a question of whether it’s worth it at all.

Dr Non

When CANAL+ took over MultiChoice, it inherited a large multi‑year contract to run Showmax on Comcast’s Peacock OTT infrastructure. It also arrived with its own streaming app, myCANAL, and its own way of packaging channels and sports.

From its French headquarters, the question was straightforward: Is it worth funding two overlapping streaming services in Africa and continuing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in platform fees to Comcast for Showmax’s infrastructure when only a narrow urban slice can comfortably afford the subscription, let alone the data costs every month?

Streaming Never Dies

Showmax shutting down does not mean Africans are not streaming. South Africans binge on YouTube and TikTok. Kenyans and Ugandans watch football highlights and short clips on cheap Android phones. Zambians squeeze video into small, carefully managed data bundles. Streaming is happening; it just does not resemble the always-on, multi-subscription lifestyle that Showmax’s business model quietly assumed.

The lesson from Showmax is that you cannot run a high-cost, imported platform-and-content strategy in markets where a $5 to $8 subscription often becomes $15 to $30 once you factor in a month’s worth of data. Any future African streamer that ignores that gap is likely to end up in the same place.

That is why the real story now may be less The Market Is Not Enough for pay-TV companies and more For Your Data Only – telcos deciding which apps get cheap bundles, which platforms are zero‑rated, and which services, like Showmax, end up as occasional luxuries while YouTube and TikTok become the everyday habits.

Uganda’s TV Screens went black for a month. What went wrong?

In broadcasting, a few seconds of black screen and silence is a disaster. In October 2025, every free-to-air television station in Uganda went dark for nearly a month. The national signal distributor, Signet Uganda, could not get its hands on its own transmitters. The equipment sat in customs at Entebbe because the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), Signet’s parent body, could not pay the import taxes. UBC owes roughly UGX 30 billion (around $8 million). The state broadcaster underpinning the entire free-to-air (FTA) system is functionally bankrupt.

That collapse came after a year in which the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) had been cracking down on piracy and unlicensed content. While the regulator chased copyright infringers, the infrastructure carrying every FTA signal in the country was quietly going broke.

Too many stations, too few viewers

As of December 2024, UCC listed 65 licensed television stations. That is extraordinary for a country where only a third of households have a working television. The advertising market cannot sustain them all. Television captured 51% of above-the-line ad spend in the first half of 2025, but that money flows to a handful of established stations. Uganda has no reliable audience measurement, so advertisers are largely guessing. For smaller FTA stations, the struggle is existential.

Piracy was the business model

For years, local FTA stations filled schedules with pirated Hollywood, Nollywood and Latin American content, with no licensing agreements. One commentator for The Independent Uganda described finding a Hollywood blockbuster on a local channel, fresh from its box office release. Piracy in broad daylight.

In February 2025, UCC banned pirated movies, soaps and dramas from local stations. But what would replace them? UCC mandates 70% Ugandan content in prime time, yet the local film industry produces roughly 200 films a year with minimal funding. You cannot mandate content into existence. The Uganda Federation of Movie Industry estimates the government lost UGX 12 billion in pay TV taxes by end 2023. The Uganda Registration Services Bureau puts the annual cost of piracy at $110 million.

A story from the field

One of Jukwa’s team encountered a similar situation in a neighbouring country. A local cable operator was downloading films from The Pirate Bay and airing them on its paid network. We met the national regulator. After discussing enforcement, the staff asked us for a lift to the town where the cable station operated. They did not have money for diesel. It is hard to enforce piracy laws when you cannot afford to drive to the offender.

Local politicians reportedly enjoyed the blockbusters too, making a shutdown politically awkward. Everyone knew about the piracy. No resources and no political will meant nothing happened. Piracy enforcement existed on paper but not in practice. That is not unique to one country. The same dynamic plays out across the continent, and Uganda is no exception.

The pay TV battleground

Three foreign-backed operators dominate. StarTimes (Chinese-owned) offers packages from UGX 14,000/month (roughly $4) and holds 39% of the East African pay TV market. France’s Canal+ acquired MultiChoice (DStv/GOtv) in 2025 for $3 billion. Azam TV (Tanzanian Bakhresa Group) competes via satellite, with packages starting at UGX 10,000/month (around $3).

All three are fighting over a market where 80% of viewers still rely on FTA. Content rights are the differentiator, with sport the battleground. Pirate Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) boxes unlock exactly that premium content, posing an existential threat to the pay TV model.

Then the infrastructure collapsed

The Signet blackout did not come from nowhere. The PML Daily reported that UBC’s debts stretch back to 2016: UGX 7 billion to the Uganda Revenue Authority, UGX 15 billion to the National Social Security Fund, UGX 3 billion in unpaid electricity, plus smaller amounts elsewhere.

The Monitor added that FTA stations owe UBC roughly UGX 6 billion in unpaid carriage fees. The signal distributor cannot collect from its clients, cannot pay its own bills, and cannot release equipment from customs. The government never implemented the television tax envisaged in the 2005 UBC Act. The state broadcaster has no functioning revenue model.

Jukwa’s view

Uganda’s television market is a cautionary tale. Digital migration happened. The regulator handed out licences freely. Foreign operators moved in. But nobody built a sustainable model for local content, funded the public broadcaster, or enforced copyright until the damage was done.

If Signet enforced payment of carriage fees, many weaker stations would fold. That sounds harsh, but 65 stations splitting a thin ad market means most produce low-quality content because they cannot afford anything else. Fewer, viable stations would command larger audiences, attract more revenue, and actually pay Signet. The market needs consolidation, not more licences.

The UCC’s crackdowns addressed symptoms, not causes. Banning pirated content without an alternative leaves empty schedules. We have not even touched on pirate IPTV boxes cannibalising pay TV subscription revenue. Meanwhile, the three foreign-backed operators continue extracting value, and the infrastructure nearly collapsed under its own debts.

One year on, Uganda has more licensed stations than ever and less money to fund them. That is not a functioning television market. It is a market waiting for someone to build one.

State control in the age of digital disruption – Radio remains the dominant medium in Zimbabwe, reaching over 60% of the population. But decades of state control have left the sector struggling with a credibility deficit. New legislation now threatens to extend that grip into the digital age. Jukwa looks at what is shaping, and constraining, Zimbabwe’s radio market.

The state still dominates the airwaves

Zimbabwe operates a three-tier radio system of public, commercial and community stations. In practice, the state’s hand is never far from the dial. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) runs six stations, four national and two provincial. Its flagship Radio Zimbabwe claims over five million listeners. It broadcasts in Shona and isiNdebele.

According to the 2024 Freedom House country report, commercial radio licences have typically gone to state-controlled companies or individuals connected to ZANU-PF. The two national commercial stations, Star FM and ZiFM Stereo, are nominally private. State-linked media group Zimpapers owns Star FM. AB Communications owns ZiFM. Neither qualifies as independent by any reasonable measure.

As prominent journalist Hopewell Chin’ono has noted, the government controls all radio stations in Zimbabwe, “both directly and indirectly”. There are no genuinely independent voices on the Zimbabwean dial.

Independent commercial radio: locked out by law

This is not an accident. The architects of the Broadcasting Services Act of 2001 drafted it to make independent commercial radio virtually impossible. The barriers are structural, layered, and deliberate.

Section 8 of the Act requires that the authorities issue broadcasting licences only to Zimbabwean citizens or to companies wholly controlled by Zimbabwean citizens. Until 2025, the law prohibited foreign ownership of any kind. The 2025 Amendment relaxes this to 40%, but that change is recent and untested. Section 8(6)(a) still bans foreign donations or contributions towards any broadcasting service. In a capital-intensive industry, that alone shuts the door.

Section 9 originally restricted national free-to-air commercial radio to just one additional licence beyond ZBC. Section 22 requires all directors of any licensee to hold Zimbabwean citizenship. And the Minister retains absolute discretionary power over the granting of licences. BAZ does not decide who gets a licence. It merely advises the Minister, who can overrule it.

The regulator that regulates nothing

As legal analyst Tawanda Hondora concluded, the cumulative effect of these powers does not discourage investment in broadcasting. It prevents it. Licence conditions make the economics unworkable unless the investor has government connections. The ZBC monopoly survives, in his words, “subtly, albeit ridiculously so”.

When asked directly whether the 2025 Amendment Bill would transform BAZ into a genuinely independent regulator, Deputy Minister Paradza was remarkably candid. He stated that BAZ was “wholly owned by the government” and that “the security arm of the government had vested interest in its operations”. So much for independent regulation.

The result is a commercial radio sector where every licence holder is either state-owned or politically connected. That is not a market failure. It is the intended outcome of a law designed to keep the airwaves under government control.

Community radio: licensed, but trapped by design

The Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) began licensing community radio stations in 2020. Fourteen are now licensed across the country. Avuxeni FM in Chiredzi was among the first to go on air in 2022. These stations broadcast in local languages and serve communities in areas like Chimanimani, Chipinge and Matobo. Three of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces still have no licensed station.

The real story, though, is how these stations survive. Until recently, the law prohibited community broadcasters from running paid advertising. It also banned them from receiving foreign donations or grants. That left them with almost no viable revenue model. MISA Zimbabwe warned that without a sustainable funding framework, stations faced serious viability challenges before they even switched on their transmitters.

Into that gap stepped the government itself. The state offered to fund community stations directly, and the state-owned Herald confirmed that stations would benefit from the Broadcasting Licence Fee and Broadcasting Fund. Critics were quick to point out the conflict of interest. The government already competes through ZBC. Funding community stations with one hand while controlling the regulator with the other does not foster editorial independence.

A small concession, but not enough

In July 2025, IMS reported that ZACRAS had successfully lobbied the government, the Zimbabwe Media Commission and BAZ to allow community stations to run paid advertisements. They now have permission for four minutes of advertising per hour. It is a step forward. But in marginalised rural areas with thin local economies, four minutes of ad time will not keep the lights on.

The Al Jazeera Media Institute has noted that roughly half the licensed community stations are under quasi-governmental or ruling party structures. The pattern is clear. Deny independent revenue, offer state funding with strings attached, then ensure friendly operators hold the licences. Community radio in Zimbabwe risks becoming community radio in name only.

New legislation extends regulation to the digital space

The Broadcasting Services Amendment Act, gazetted in May 2025, is the most significant overhaul of Zimbabwe’s broadcasting law since 2001. It formally brings internet-based broadcasting within BAZ’s regulatory scope. That includes podcasts, streaming platforms and social media live streams.

While proponents argue this modernises the framework for a digital age, critics point to serious concerns. The Act’s definition of “internet-based broadcasting” is broad enough to catch citizen journalists, bloggers and individual content creators.

Power cuts threaten the basics

None of this plays out in isolation from Zimbabwe’s crippling electricity crisis. An Afrobarometer survey published in early 2025 found that only 14% of Zimbabweans enjoy a reliable electricity supply from the national grid. In rural areas, the figure falls to just 4%.

Load shedding of 16 hours a day has become routine in some parts of the country. National demand stands at roughly 4,000 MW against production of just 1,400 MW. For radio stations, particularly fledgling community broadcasters without backup generators or solar installations, this is an existential challenge.

Among the few areas reported to enjoy uninterrupted power are those sharing a grid with VIP residences and broadcasters. That tells you everything about the political economy of who gets to stay on air.

Starlink and the connectivity wildcard

Just as in neighbouring Zambia, Starlink’s arrival in Zimbabwe in September 2024 has shaken up the connectivity picture. Terminals sold out almost immediately. The competitive pressure forced existing ISPs to cut their prices. One report recorded a 500% growth in VSAT subscriptions since launch.

Satellite internet remains too expensive for mass-market radio listening. But it is already transforming how diaspora and urban audiences access Zimbabwean stations online. It is also opening the door for digital-first news outlets and podcasters. They can now reach audiences that state radio cannot, or will not, serve.

The road ahead

Zimbabwe’s radio sector sits at an uncomfortable crossroads. The licensing of community stations and the formal recognition of digital broadcasting represent genuine steps towards a more plural media landscape. But the new legislation hands sweeping powers to a regulator whose independence is widely questioned.

This comes at a time when journalists like Blessed Mhlanga face detention and prosecution for their work. Press freedom groups have criticised the 2025 Media Policy, launched by President Mnangagwa, as a framework for control rather than freedom.

For international organisations and regulators looking at media monitoring in the region, Zimbabwe offers both a cautionary tale and a genuine opportunity. But only if the political will exists to let community voices be heard.

Jukwa’s view

Radio remains Zimbabwe’s most important mass medium. It is resilient, trusted by listeners, and uniquely capable of reaching rural communities in local languages. But its potential is being held back by the same forces that have constrained Zimbabwean media for decades. State control of licensing. Political capture of nominally independent institutions. An infrastructure crisis that makes simply keeping the lights on a daily struggle.

The digital disruption now arriving via satellite and smartphone offers a route around these bottlenecks. But only if the regulatory environment allows it. Zimbabwe’s airwaves deserve better.

Zambia’s streaming market takes tentative steps – While South Africa enjoys a content boom (see Mar 2026 update) fuelled by readily available internet and affordable data, Zambia’s streaming market is still finding its feet. Jukwa explores the factors shaping the Zambian streaming landscape, a market with immense potential but significant hurdles to overcome.

Data costs still hinder growth

Internet penetration in Zambia remains a significant obstacle. According to DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report, just 33% of Zambia’s 22 million population were online by late 2025. That leaves roughly 14.8 million people offline.

This limited access is compounded by data costs that remain high relative to local incomes. A 2GB mobile data plan costs around $2.15 (ITU figures). That sounds modest until you consider that nearly 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. For context, 2GB is roughly enough to stream a single HD film, making regular video consumption impractical for many Zambians.

Mobile first, and mobile only

Despite these connectivity challenges, mobile adoption is strong. GSMA Intelligence data shows 19.9 million cellular connections in Zambia at the start of 2025. Over 90% are now on broadband-capable networks (3G, 4G or 5G).

The country’s median age is just 17.9. The next generation of consumers is growing up with smartphones as their primary screen. This mobile-first reality is shaping how streaming services approach the market. Showmax, for instance, offers mobile-only plans at lower price points, recognising that for most African viewers the phone is the television (again, see Mar 2026 update).

The streaming landscape takes shape

The competitive picture in Zambia has shifted considerably. Netflix has been available since 2016 and continues to invest in African content. It recently announced a partnership with CAF to stream AFCON highlights across sub-Saharan Africa.

But the bigger story is Showmax, which has overtaken Netflix as the most popular streaming platform in Africa. Showmax is the streaming arm of MultiChoice, South Africa’s dominant pay-TV company (DStv, GOtv, SuperSport). MultiChoice was acquired by French media giant Canal+ in a $3 billion deal completed in October 2025. The combined Canal+/MultiChoice group now serves over 40 million subscribers across nearly 70 countries.

Showmax is bolstered by partnerships with Comcast, NBC and HBO. Canal+ also brings 4,000 hours of African content in up to 15 languages. Together, they offer a depth of local understanding that global rivals struggle to match. Local platforms like Zamtel Play serve Zambian audiences directly. YouTube remains the default free video platform for millions. Amazon Prime Video, by contrast, has scaled back its African ambitions and halted original content commissioning for the region.

The Starlink factor

One development that could reshape the equation is Starlink. SpaceX’s satellite internet service launched in Zambia in late 2023. It offers speeds of 40 to 220 Mbps at around $32 to $46 per month.

That price point puts it well beyond mass-market reach. However, it is already transforming connectivity for businesses, NGOs and wealthier households in areas where terrestrial infrastructure simply does not exist. The broader significance is competitive pressure. As satellite services drive down the cost of connectivity in rural areas, traditional mobile operators may be forced to respond. More competitive data pricing could follow.

The road ahead

The future of Zambia’s streaming market hinges on three things: cheaper data, better infrastructure and compelling local content.

On the infrastructure front, the World Bank’s $100 million Digital Zambia Acceleration Project (DZAP) aims to expand broadband and last-mile connectivity. Government policy through ZICTA has already helped double mobile internet adoption from 18% to 35% between 2015 and 2021. This progress earned Zambia a GSMA Government Leadership Award nomination.

The content question is equally important. As Netflix and Showmax compete for African audiences, investment in original African storytelling is growing. Netflix’s 2026 African slate includes productions from Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana, but Zambian voices remain underrepresented.

Stay tuned

Zambia’s streaming market is still in its early stages, but the ingredients for growth are falling into place. A young, mobile-first population. Improving infrastructure. Satellite competition putting pressure on data prices. Growing investment in African content. All point in the right direction.

The question is not whether Zambia will stream. It is when the economics will make it accessible to the majority.

Broadcast vendor PlayBox Technology recently interviewed Phil about 30 years in broadcasting. From early roles in news and outside broadcasting, he travelled to Africa to establish Zambia’s first national radio station. Returning to the UK and 15 years in the industry, including one of the first streaming companies, for the last 10 years Phil has run Jukwa, a consultancy that specialises in unusual broadcast and Over The Top projects.

In the podcast you can learn about some of our favourite projects and future predictions, as always, with a focus on Africa.

You can also learn why Jukwa is launching a new Over The Top product – VideoSite. But as a clue, existing OTT platforms really only cater for the top 20, richest broadcasters. VideoSite is aimed at the other 80%, the smaller channels, live event producers and those with compelling stories and educational videos.

Listen here:

🎧 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3G3B97J

🎧 Apple: https://apple.co/3vsFHQf

See the whole series of PlayBox podcasts here.