MTN looks to muscle in on Showmax’s territory with its announcement of plans to launch a streaming service for its African customer base. The company announced the project recently, only sharing its collaboration with a European software firm, emphasising its intention to provide diverse and localised content for its wide-ranging audience across the continent.

MTN’s revenue stream

The service will be built with European cloud-based broadcasting company Synamedia, which will develop the software infrastructure. MTN also says the service will have a “diverse monetisation model,” entailing tiers like subscriptions, ad-supported content, and free streaming channels with targeted advertising. Beyond that, details on the platform remain sparse. Not even a codename.

MTN says that the streaming service will adapt to different markets around Africa, offering content representing its African base’s multitude of languages and cultures while also adapting to more general viewer data like viewing habits and preferences.

Synamedia CEO Paul Segre added, “By taking advantage of the breadth of our integrated, cloud-based portfolio to quickly deploy new services at scale, MTN will be able to create a ground-breaking set of offerings for customers and viewers that will drive new revenues.”

With Africa’s increasing digitisation, MTN stands to benefit, continuing to leverage its brand into new technological ventures. While the company has already probably paid Synamedia truckloads of money for the infrastructure, there’s still more money to be spent populating the platform with content. More importantly, the kind of content people want to watch and would be willing to pay for.

Will MTN start spending millions on African creators or start licencing already-made content? That remains to be seen. Both are likely to cost the company if it hopes to capture a significant audience in the ultra-competitive attention economy.