fbpx

iRoko Rules As Africa’s Entertainment King

iRoko Rules As Africa’s Entertainment King

British-born Jason Njoku got the inspiration for iROKO Partners three years ago, when he was unable to find Nigerian movies online for his mother.

Today, iROKO is the world’s largest distributor of African entertainment, including Nigerian-made movies — otherwise known as Nollywood films. Now considered the ‘African Netflix,’ the company enjoys a global customer base of more than 6 million users from 178 countries, according to its website.

Buoyed by its Nollywood successes, iROKO Partners recently branched out into other ventures: a movie streaming platform called iROKOtv; iROKING, a platform showcasing Nigerian and West African musicians; and SPARK, a $1 million-backed company to support and develop aspiring Nigerian tech and Internet entrepreneurs, as reported on African business news site Ventures Africa.

Njoku said a strong foundation of Internet connectivity is essential to the company’s success, particularly iROKOtv. Njoku has spent a great deal of time and money to insure the capability of uploading the enormous amount of content the platform holds. In January of 2012, iROKOtv was launched and under six months attained 500,000 registered users.

“Over 50 percent of our traffic comes from the U.S. and U.K. alone,” he said. “But when Africa comes online and Internet is not only faster but less prohibitive financially, the iROKOtv business will look completely different. We know the thirst for the African content is there, it’s just a matter of ensuring as many people as possible can access it.”

Njoku acknowledged the emergence of the mobile phone industry throughout Africa, and said iROKO Partners has been researching ways in which the company’s content might be available on mobile phones. In January of this year, an iROKOtv mobile app was launched in partnership with mobile phone giant Nokia, which sought to develop a product optimized for Nigeria’s networks. Much was accomplished, he said, to make it feasible on 3G networks.

“Our sister company, iROKING, has a loyal mobile gathering thanks to the fact that we provide free music downloads on the vast majority of our 35,000 tracks,” he said. “iROKING also works with some of Africa’s biggest SMS mobile platforms, including 2Go and Eskimi, pushing out our songs to their millions of users who use their mobiles to chat and socialize.”