In Kenya, Netflix and Showmax are the most popular SVOD (streaming video on demand) options available. Netflix has a wide selection of movies, thousands of older TV shows, and a number of highly successful Netflix originals.
Netflix’s primary business is its subscription-based streaming over-the-top service which offers an online menu of films and television programmes. Its success across the world has been driven in part by its focus on building local content as well as licensing popular Hollywood fare for markets around the world.
Licensing African shows intermittently to date through a role with deep knowledge of the production landscape, both the creators and the distributors and the ability to identify appealing series and films early in the life cycle has been a power muscle for Netflix.
More than 27 shows from Africa’s most populated country (Nigeria) have been on Netflix’s list of contents at one time or another. Nigeria has been enjoying the biggest share of series and movies whose rights have been bought by the on-demand distributors.
There was yet to be a Kenyan production to take up growing international hunger for African stories until Netflix, world’s leading internet entertainment service, signed up filmmaker Dorothy Ghettuba to Produce Netflix International Originals.
She took to Instagram to share the good news, ” Telling our African Stories. Onwards and Upwards,” she captioned.
What a milestone for a fierce hard worker and a go-getter woman! Dorothy Ghettuba is a woman of substance. She co-founded Spielworks Media, a local production, content creation company that has had numerous productions that have aired in Kenya, and television stations across Africa, that won three Kalasha Awards and one Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards.
In 2011 she appeared in Business Daily’s Top 40 women under 40 list. Her contribution to local production and content creation has been impactful. Her role as Netflix International Original will help Kenyan Filmmakers struggling to get their shows streamlined on such a platform, to find their way about it while selling the creative industry in Kenya to the world.
