September 22, 2017//-Tanzania’s total E&M revenue stood at US$504 million in 2016, but is set to more than double to US$1.1 billion in 2021, a 17.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the coming five years.
The symbolic crossing of the US$1 billion mark is set to occur in 2021. This is significant growth from 2012 where the industry stood at just US$175 million.
This is according to PwC’s ‘Entertainment and media outlook: 2017 – 2021: An African perspective’ released yesterday.
Tanzania’s total E&M revenue stood at US$504 million in 2016, but is set to more than double to US$1.1 billion in 2021, a 17.2% CAGR over the coming five years. The symbolic crossing of the US$1 billion mark is set to occur in 2021—impressive growth from a country that stood at just US$175 million in 2012.
The Internet market is extremely healthy in Tanzania, overwhelmingly led by mobile, where operators have accelerated their investments in data network expansion to meet user demand. WCDMA and LTE will be the leading technologies by 2020, having overtaken GSM in 2017.
Pay-TV revenues are particularly strong, with pay-TV households increasing 20% in 2016 to reach 603 000, and forecast to hit 1.1 million in 2021.
This will, in turn, account for a rise from US$125 million to US$234 million in pay-TV revenues. There is also high demand for OTT video services in Tanzania following the launch of Netflix and ShowMax. Mobile and fixed 4G LTE broadband networks are used to support these services as optical fibre networks remain largely underdeveloped.
Elsewhere, meaningful revenue is hard to come by, with seven segments standing at US$16 million or below in 2016. Video games are seeing some of the fastest growth, aided in no small part by the transformative effect of appbased social/casual revenue and the online/microtransaction model on PCs.
Smartphone uptake is increasing rapidly and there are even the beginnings of a domestic game development scene, with Germanybased Cultural Games creating Kawaida’s Journey, funded by NGOs with the aim of educating and addressing themes such as deforestation and environmental protection.
Steady development for advertising market
Total advertising revenue is forecast to rise from US$115 million in 2016 to US$159 million in 2021 at a 6.6% CAGR. Radio is one advertising success story. Radio in Tanzania has many of the advantages of neighbouring Kenya—the accessibility of radio is hugely important in a country where relatively few have access to the Internet and even television is far from universally available.
Advertisers can also benefit from targeting by locality or language, a good way of reaching the 80% of Tanzanians who live in rural areas. Commercial station Clouds FM, which broadcasts in Swahili, sees 7.8 million listeners tune in at peak times.
Literacy is relatively high in Tanzania, and thus newspapers and magazines draw in advertisers. Relatively insulated from digital competition due to low Internet penetration, their forecast CAGRs would be the envy of much of the rest of the world, even if they begin from low bases.
OOH, meanwhile, benefits from the relative underdevelopment of the advertising ecosystem, as expanding GDP, higher disposable incomes and increasing urbanisation make the medium a highly attractive prospect.
Finally, TV takes a sizeable chunk of overall revenue—though concentrated on terrestrial TV at present, rising numbers of pay-TV households are leading to a spike in multichannel ad revenue.
African Eye Report
