The popular streaming platform, Netflix looks to impact Nigeria’s streaming space by unveiling a new Twitter platform called Netflix Naija. It is expected that this will translate to the onboarding of more Nigerian content on the platform.
The Netflix Naija twitter handle is only the second to be launched for an African country. Netflix South Africa was launched in December 2017.
Netflix Naija
✔@NetflixNaija
N is for Naija. N is for Nollywood. N is the 14th alphabet. 14 is also how many great talents you’re looking at. N is for Netflix. But most importantly…hello, Nigeria!
Netflix rapidly onboarding more Nigerian content
Since the first Nigerian film ‘October 1’ was onboarded on the platform in 2015, more Nigerian content have been making their way onto Netflix’s Streaming platform.
These days, onboarding of Nigerian movies and TV shows onto the platform has become more frequent, with popular movies like Lionheart, Merry Men – The Real Yoruba Demons and Wedding Party all featuring on the platform.
However, according to a 2019 report, Netflix has less than 60,000 users in Nigeria. Launching Netflix Naija appears to be one of Netflix strategy to increase the number of its subscribers through social media.
Consequently, Netflix appears to be adding more Nigerian content to drive more Nigerian subscribers to its platform. Nigerian movies on the Netflix platform increased from 23 in October 2019 to 47 in February 2020.
However, most Nigerian movies that make it onto Netflix are only available on the streaming platform for a specific time period. So a platform like twitter with about 30% of Nigeria’s 24 million social media users provides an avenue to advertise when Nigerian content is available on Netflix
Also, Netflix just recently released a new feature that shows the top 10 most-watched movies other people are watching in the country. The feature is expected to make it easier for subscribers to find movies on the platform.
With this new development, Netflix Naija is equipping itself with tools to take on competition like iROKO and Showmax on the local turf in Nigeria. It is interesting however that Netflix has onboarded mostly movies on its platform. Nigerian TV shows and series are quite few on the platform and it remains to be seen if the platform would do more of that category.