ShowMax expands to 36 new African countries

Naspers-owned streaming media service ShowMax is rapidly expanding across the continent, and can now count 36 new sub-Saharan countries to its service list.

The expansion comes just 10 months after the service’s launch, which now boasts “approximately fifteen thousand TV show episodes and movies, totaling almost ten thousand hours of viewing.”

“We’ve been busy testing the service in key locations across the continent and optimising our delivery network,” company CPO Barron Ernst explains.

“Perhaps more importantly, we’ve adapted our apps to address the needs of consumers in Africa, introducing features like downloads for viewing TV shows and movies when not connected.”

Ernst also notes that for the company to make the service as smooth as possible for those in Africa, a few “significant hurdles” had to be jumped.

For one, ShowMax now boasts adaptive bitrate streaming for those with fluctuating and unreliable data connections, and the ability to download up to 25 shows at a time to house on the mobile device.

Along with service improvements, the company has also addressed its content bouquets, adding “Kiswahili and Nollywood shows and movies to our existing class-leading catalogue of Hollywood and British favourites,” Ernst remarks.

The ShowMax service now operates in 65 countries worldwide (with its additional KykNet service counted among those nations) and remains US$7 per month across the continent.