Netflix is working on original African content and here’s why you should be excited!

The online streaming giant is looking to broaden its audience base as a result of market diversification. Companies like Apple, Disney, HBO, and others are launching their own streaming applications and taking content and subscribers from Netflix.

In light of that, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and a team of high-level executives took a week to travel around Africa, recruiting talented filmmakers and actors in order to position African as the next entertainment hub.

Netflix Head of African Originals, Dorothy Ghettuba, has led the charge for the company to produce its own African content which will now begin to see the light of day.

Its first Original, ‘Queen Sono‘ was just premiered in South Africa last week. It features South African actress, Pearl Thusi as the titular character.

“It’s been an exciting week to crisscross the continent and be reaffirmed that we really have stories to tell,” Ghettuba told Variety about the company’s trip to Africa.

Apart from South Africa’s ‘Queen Sono’, Netflix also revealed – after launching their Netflix Nigeria social media account – that Original content from Nigeria is also on its way.

The six-part untitled drama series is set in Nigeria and shot in Lagos. It follows tells the story of Kemi, a goddess reincarnated as a human to avenge her sister’s death.

“We know that Africa is a wide region…but we really have to be very deliberate in our approach,” Ghettuba said. “We are trying to find the best way to work, and we are learning along the way. Can we do better? Can we better? That’s really the objective for our company, and we are learning from our partners (and) taking it one step at a time.”

For people who have been clamouring for more groundbreaking stories to be told by our filmmakers, this could be the long-awaited turnaround they have been waiting for.

Nigerian filmmakers are among the best in the world, but with a recent cry for bigger budgets, and more predictable scripts in movies, this collaboration with Netflix may be what is needed to take Nollywood from good to amazing.

We will just have to wait and see, maybe from the very first production in which way this collaboration will go – up or down.