It hasn’t happened yet. The South African print media groups moving into Africa require larger forces if they are to alter the ecology of the continental landscape. But the manoeuvres of the beachhead teams betray a determination to push further, and could result in both concentration of ownership and increased diversity of media products in the coming years.
The major incursion teams are those of South African behemoths Johncom and Naspers – and both have confirmed they’re set on claiming bigger slices of a market teeming with potential. Moving hand in hand with these big-time content producers is a small army of media agencies and research firms, also seeking their share of the pie.
Appointed in 2003 to head Johncom’s expansion into African markets, former Sunday Times editor Brian Pottinger appears satisfied with the group’s activities in East and West Africa thus far. The acquisition of Business Day Nigeria in August 2004 (to facilitate the deal Johncom bought a 51 percent stake in Nigerian company Business Day Media Ltd) has cleared the way for the development of a business content platform throughout the continent. This strategy, says Pottinger, will be carried out “first in Anglophone countries and then in Francophone and Lusophone Africa.”
Johncom already has an investment portfolio to the tune of R60-million on the continent. This includes, in addition to Business Day Nigeria, four cineplexes recently established in Kenya (with two more due to open in Nigeria next year), as well as flagship media stores selling books, music and home entertainment in Nairobi and Lagos.
The company is also constructing a CD, VCD and DVD manufacturing plant in Nigeria, and has registered a mapping business which recently concluded a licence agreement with the Nigerian federal government. Further, a book publishing operation is underway in Lagos.
By comparison, Naspers has been treading relatively cautiously over the last year. Douw Steyn, head of Media24 Africa, says the major project for the company this year was the launch of weekly soccer newspaper Goal in Nigeria. The title, says Steyn, is based on the successful Soccer Laduma in South Africa. On other projects Steyn is guarded, saying only that Media24 “will expand its investments in selected African countries over the next five years.”
During the 2004/2005 financial year, Media24 Magazines launched a number of editions on the continent. According to the Naspers 2005 annual report, the new editions included a Nigerian edition of True Love, Kenyan editions of True Love and Drum (in partnership with the Aga Khan’s media group Nation Media), a localised Cosmopolitan for the East African market (with Media24’s South African joint venture, Jane Raphaely & Associates) and test issues for the Angolan market of a Portuguese magazine, Ana Maria (which has since been discontinued – see below).
While Steyn seems reticent to expand on the health of the surviving titles, the annual report states: “Trading and market conditions are different to those in our local [South African] market, and we appreciate that it will require long-term investment to grow healthy magazine markets in these territories.”
Beverley Branford of Naspers investor relations expands. “It’s a trial and error thing”, she says of the current approach, “we’re not making a big investment because we aren’t sure of the market size.”
But Naspers is in Africa for the long haul. Taken together with the Johncom strategy, several scenarios for the African print sector – arising from the involvement of South African conglomerates – are likely to emerge.
The first scenario would amount to a reproduction of the current South African ownership model, where three major groups are increasingly dominating across the spectrum. A veneer of diversity of content and products will be created, but with a predominant focus on specific types of media. Already, a look at the operations of the two groups spearheading the continental drive shows a bias towards entertainment, sports and business news. According to the new market orthodoxy, this is the content that sells.
Globally, the focus on less politically sensitive, more business-oriented and popular entertainment content is not new. The death of the serious “political” print vehicle has been mourned ad nauseum, and what’s likely to happen in Africa is therefore a phenomenon the rest of the developed world witnessed ages ago.
The high entry costs into the African media market are likely to deter the smaller entrepreneurs, which could well result in the major actors assuming dominant positions. Says Pottinger: “If you want to enter these territories you must take a long term view and have deep pockets, there is no quick kill.” Besides restrictive entry costs, the new players are also likely to face restrictive regulatory regimes in some countries. Pottinger admits to a “high level of inflexible bureaucracy, often an inappropriate and changing regulatory environment, as well as infrastructural weaknesses.” Stronger, better resourced companies are likely to stay the course in these conditions.
But just how is this expansion being received on the continent? Franklin Awori, the Daily Nation‘s bureau chief for Kisumu, Kenya, said South African media’s incursion into Kenya was causing “some excitement, as well as jitters in the Kenyan and East African markets in general.” Excitement because of increased competition, which could result in better and varied media products in a region traditionally dominated by Kenya. But also jitters because, according to Awori, “most people view South African business enterprises as aggressive and big in money, thus posing a threat to local businesses.”
Another scenario which may result from the current media expansion could be the integration of media across the three regions and countries whose media systems emerged and developed differently according to their English, French and Portuguese colonial traditions. While Johncom sees entry into Francophone and Lusophone Africa as the next stage in its expansion programme, Naspers already has its tentacles dug deep. In the past year, the media group added 11 French and 9 Portuguese channels on its Multichoice Africa bouquet, and identified Angola as the fastest developing market for its pay-TV business.
But successes in television and the internet will not necessarily replicate themselves in the business of print media. Naspers recently discontinued Ana Maria, the Portuguese language magazine it had launched in Angola under a Brazilian licence, citing viability problems. “The project simply wasn’t working,” says Branford. She decried the absence of reliable readership statistics, but stressed that the media group would not give up. “We’re waiting and seeing. If there’s some improvement, we can even build a printing press on the continent.”
The scenarios for change in the ecology of the African media are also likely to be driven by the changing profile of the markets themselves which, although not properly documented, retain an enigmatic attraction for South African media investors. For Rob Phillips of African Extension – a media placement and management firm that operates in most parts of the continent – there are unlimited opportunities. He talks of “an environment of countries and societies which are undergoing rapid social, political, educational and lifestyle changes.”
Pottinger agrees: “One of the most important changes has been the unstoppable growth of an African middle class, as opposed to merely an African elite.” This emerging middle class, he adds, “now disposes of significant discretionary wealth; it is very discerning and is prepared to pay for a quality product or quality experience, whether it’s a world-class newspaper or a legitimate as opposed to pirated VCD.”
In the past year, African Extension saw a 38 percent growth in the volume of media spend from its new business clients and agencies on the continent. Phillips views this as an expression of confidence in the growth of the African media market.
Africa has already experienced two “winds of change”, namely the decolonisation process that started in the late 1950s, as well as the democratisation and deregulation processes that followed the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. In both cases, the media were rapidly influenced by the political upheavals.
While the two previous winds of change were largely instigated by events and processes outside Africa, the third winds are likely to be driven by pan-African media investment projects from the southern tip of the continent.
These changes look more and more likely to result in the dominance of a few powerful players across the continent, a consolidation of the media market, and a pre-eminence of business, sport and entertainment news. As Awori argues, with reference to East Africa: “Business news is becoming big. There is a bigger captive market in the East African community. There is also a vacuum in entertainment news, especially in print.” And Pottinger sees “opportunities for business news, intelligence and education, popular mass-based papers and high-level magazines.”
Wallace Chuma is formerly editor of the Zimbabwe Mirror and Deputy Chairperson of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) (Zimbabwe). He currently teaches Media Studies at UCT.