MIP AFRICA: Jonathan Lett, CEO of Ivory Coast-based distributor Côte Ouest Audiovisuel, discusses the state of the African market, how streaming has changed things and the impact of Mediawan’s takeover of the company.
Jonathan Lett
Launched in 1997, Abidjan-based Côte Ouest Audiovisuel has seen plenty of changes in the African production and distribution business over the years.
Initially distributing Hollywood content in Africa and later South American telenovelas, the company now offers an African catalogue with more than 20,000 hours of content across all genres, including soaps, series, films, documentaries and animation.
As well as distribution, it is active in dubbing and operates its own channel, Nina Novelas, described as the first French-language channel dedicated to telenovelas. Additionally, Côte Ouest owns Short, a shortform VoD platform available in Africa on mobile platforms Orange and MTN.
Côte Ouest was itself in the news after French production group Mediawan took a majority stake in it for an undisclosed fee in 2023. That move saw Jonathan Lett, previously at Côte Ouest’s minority shareholder Canal+, take over as CEO and the company was incorporated into Mediawan Africa.
More recently, Côte Ouest renewed its long-standing partnership with Brazil’s Globo, through which the former will continue to distribute the latter’s telenovelas in Africa, including new Brazilian titles Rebirth and Land of Desire, plus classics such as The Favorite, The Clone, Terra Nostra and India – A Love Story.
The Globo agreement covers more than 50 English- and French-speaking African countries and Côte Ouest will also distribute the Brazilian company’s content in France, Belgium and Switzerland.
C21 catches up with Lett to hear about the state of the African market, how streaming has changed things and the impact of Mediawan’s takeover of the company.
How is the market for acquired content for TV and streamers within Africa changing?
The market is becoming difficult. To face African and global competition as well as the development of new media, traditional media are focusing on content production to be able to offer their customers exclusive content that they will not be able to find elsewhere. Added to this is the increasingly strong desire of national channels to offer content filmed in their country and very often in a local language, which creates a barrier to the export of this content.
What content genres, formats or countries of origin are particularly in demand right now?
Despite what I just said, we see that the fundamentals of broadcasters in Africa remain stable. The most requested genres are quality content that addresses topics that will touch people and long formats that will keep viewers hooked on characters. For this reason, Brazilian and South African content remains in high demand across the continent.
Globo’s new Brazilian title Land of Desire
How is the streaming boom changing demand for content in Africa?
The explosion of streaming is a reality on the continent but an unevenly distributed reality. The most advanced countries on this subject are South Africa and Nigeria, and therefore the platforms are more interested in content from these countries. For other countries, the production and distribution of content is not strongly impacted by the development of SVoD services for the moment. Concerning AVoD services, they are also developing very quickly but do not impact most African countries because some platforms do not allow rights holders to monetise their content.
How is artificial intelligence (AI) dubbing changing the distribution game in Africa?
For now, Al is not changing the distribution business in Africa. Developments in the field of Al have been impressive in recent months, but for now they do not provide the same quality as professional actors supervised by experienced artistic directors. Regarding Côte Ouest, we continue to believe traditional dubbing studios will not be overtaken in terms of quality in the short term. We have our own studios in Abidjan in which we continue to invest. Our studios will be in greater demand in 2024 than in 2023 and we are convinced that they will be in greater demand in 2025 than in 2024. In the short term, we believe Al will rather become a tool to improve and accelerate the work of our recording studios.
What are the biggest challenges facing local content producers in Africa?
Local content producers face difficulties in financing their productions. This difficulty is aggravated by the fact the need for exclusivity of broadcasters does not allow them to find many commercial outlets for their works. They must therefore learn to produce at low costs to make their work profitable while maintaining high quality that will allow their content to be sold outside its territory of origin. This difficulty in profitability is accentuated by countries that set up quota systems to protect their industry but which at the same time close commercial outlets to foreign producers.
How has the declining global economy impacted the TV and streaming sectors in Africa?
The television sector is strongly linked to the global economy sector. When the economy is in crisis in a country, one of the first items of expenditure that is reduced by companies is communication, and therefore the advertising revenues of television channels are reduced very sharply. Many channels have been suffering from this type of problem in their territories for years, which forces them to turn to less expensive programmes such as talkshows.
Côte Ouest shops Globo novelas including Rebirth
How is demand for African content changing from buyers outside Africa?
The demand for African content is slowly changing outside of Africa, but it is changing nonetheless. With the rise in quality of African content, some broadcasters in Europe and America are starting to buy content, first for the African diaspora and then, when they are satisfied with the content, they become more open to considering our productions, but it is a long process.
How has the 2023 acquisition by Mediawan changing things for Côte Ouest?
The acquisition of Côte Ouest by Mediawan first of all allowed us to access a catalogue including nearly 3,000 hours of very varied content – animation, films, series. We therefore have the possibility of offering very rich proposals to our customers. We have also been able to benefit from the expertise and support provided to us by a world-class group present on all continents.
How important is coproduction to African producers – and Côte Ouest?
Coproduction is essential for the development of most works in Africa and project leaders are always looking for coproducers when they embark on this adventure. The difficulty lies in finding coproducers who will ask for rights that will not be in conflict with each other. For Côte Ouest, we rarely do co¬production; it is not our core business. Nevertheless, we support certain talents that we know well, particularly on projects that we have been following for several years.
What are some recent distribution deals that Côte Ouest has agreed?
It is difficult to highlight a specific sale. We have more than 20,000 hours of content available in French, English and many other languages; we have dubbing studios; we edit channels; we have a VoD platform that we market in-house or under a white label; and we have recently launched a consulting activity. We therefore work very broadly with a large number of clients on the African continent, in Europe and in America. And with our inflight sales we can even say that we are as present in the sky as on Earth.
