Do the Right Thing: Two key African Governments make clear commitments to liberalizing their telecoms sectors

23 August 2019

News in this week confirms that the tentative steps taken by Angola and Ethiopia to liberalize their telecoms sectors are now being turned into internationally recognized programmes of implementation. Russell Southwood looks at why things have changed. In April this year I looked at the flawed bidding process for the fourth mobile license in Angola. In a nutshell, the bidding process (that had included recognized African mobile operators like MTN being on the shortlist) ended up with the license being given to local unknown Telstar. And the shareholders in Telstar? 90% is held by General Manuel Joao Carneiro and 10%…

Online platform Avails Africa wants to lower programme rights costs by online transactions and shared licensing costs

14 August 2019

The declining strength of African currencies means that international rights costs are now extremely expensive. Avails Africa wants to bring them down through a combination of automating transaction processes and shared licensing costs. Russell Southwood spoke to Co-Founders Adam Lotz and Francois Schreuder about the platform they have developed. The idea for Avails Africa came out of Francois Schreuder’s experience working in the industry, particularly as Head of Channels for AfricaXP:”The idea came from hustling in the industry for so many years and trying to find content for no money for channels. It was often 3rd or 4th window stuff…

Sub-Saharan Africa's Broadcasting Landscape

Balancing Act is pleased to announce the publication of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Broadcasting Landscape and Nine Key Markets. The report is a joint publication with one of the continent’s leading providers of mobile-based research and insights GeoPoll.