Expanding Iroko in French Speaking Africa (FSA)

When Canal+ invested in Iroko, a bunch of people in the English speaking Africa world kinda scratched their heads. Canal who? Little did we know that Iroko had been distributing dubbed content across FSA since 2013. In Nigeria, for the most part, French Speaking Africa never really comes up in casual conversations. Unless we are talking domestic staff (especially cooks) and going to Cotonu to buy imported cars, we, as a people, are so inward looking that we don’t really bother to remember that both Nigeria and Ghana are literally surrounded on all sides by French speaking countries. Granted they are all pretty small, but being ~180m people in Nigeria vs ~230m across FSA one can understand a degree of naval gazing. I was guilty. I had been to Paris/Cannes x10 times in 2015 alone, but had never been to an FSA country in my life. Post the Canal+ deal, I now go several times a year. This doesn’t violate my Lagos first rule btw. It’s Lagos 1st. Maybe 2nd too. But a 100% focus? I love being ...