According to figures from Dataxis, Africa pay-TV subscribers were approximately 18.7 million at the end of 2016, which is a rise of approximately 2 million subscribers compared to 2015. DTH subscribers amounted to 14 million and the remaining represent mostly pay-DTT with limited cable and IPTV deployments.
Estimates for pay-TV revenue for last year, are $4.4 billion and are forecast to reach $6 billion by 2021. Key players for the Sub Saharan region are Naspers (approx. 56%), Canal+( approx.15%) and StarTimes (approx.9%).
Full transition to digital terrestrial TV is still ongoing with one of the main issue being the distribution of DTT set-top boxes to low income households. Dataxis predicts that the DTT process should be completed in the Sub Saharan African by 2021.
Dataxis has analysed over 1000 channels to check their content type. The results show that 25% of the channels are generalists, 19% are movies and fictions and 9% are sport channels.
