By Roger Gertze
In the African broadcast and content industry, technology is both an enabler and a risk. It offers almost limitless opportunities to enrich the lives of our people.
But if not used intentionally, it can also be a threat to businesses, to individuals and to society.
Cybersecurity is an eternal challenge for a technology business – around the world, and in Africa especially. The hacking of customer data, and the compromising of personal information is never acceptable.
For content businesses, measures must constantly be put in place to ensure that we keep our data – and our environment – secure. Security has a compliance and systems-defense component, and both require ever-evolving technology deployment.
Fighting cybercriminals and digital piracy syndicates is a technology arms race; with tech teams trying to anticipate attacks, thinking like hackers, identifying vulnerabilities and addressing them.
As a content business, one of the main MultiChoice focus areas will always be the fight against content piracy, in collaboration with Partners Against Piracy and our colleagues at cybersecurity leaders Irdeto.
Our content is often targeted, but we’re taking the fight to the pirates. Piracy destroys the livelihoods of film and TV professionals across the continent. Technology is our most powerful tool in addressing it – through back-end and front-end content protection, watermarking, take-down requests, law-enforcement engagement and other methods.
Payment technology
On the flipside, technology can enrich and enhance the ability of users to enjoy the benefits of our content. To make it easier for our customers to access our shows, MultiChoice has long been an innovator in the payments space, having built a pan-African network of subscribers, support offices and payment partners.
In an ambitious move, MultiChoice recently launched a proprietary digital payment platform – Moment – to make payments as easy as possible, right across the content.
It’s an aggregate solution that makes it easy to onboard and authenticate payment providers; to manage and monitor payments; and to scale and integrate bulk payments in real time. With a dedicated payment ecosystem, subscribers can also change packages, make or stop payments as they wish – within 60 seconds. Its customer-centric technology in its very bones!
The AI dividend
Looking forward, the OTT television revolution will continue to shape viewing habits. In the production space, generative AI will see a growing influence – though always to enhance the human component of storytelling.
AI will even have a role in how we produce sports content over time. For instance, highlights packages can now be edited together in real time, while a match is happening, for sharing on multiple platforms the minute the final whistle blows.
All of these tech innovations come with ethical and governance considerations, and we are at pains to ensure that these concerns are factored into our strategic decision-making at all times. It’s about the human factor – considering our customers; considering our staff.
African solutions
The African approach to technology is similar to that of the rest of the world, although there is a behavioural difference in how we implement our tech solutions.
Here is an example. Nowhere are cost-of-living concerns more important than in Africa. In a developed market, a subscriber might stay on the same postpaid subscription product for decades. But in the African environment, a customer’s financial position can change drastically from one month to the next.
To cater to the needs of these subscribers, MultiChoice is trialing a short-term subscription package in our Ugandan market. This package would allow customers to buy a GOtv or DStv subscription for a period as short as seven days.
The technology solutions to support it have all been rolled out, and the “micro-subscriptions” product is being embraced by many of our customers in the heart of Africa. It’s likely to see wider adoption if initial uptake is anything to go by.
It is a privilege to be able to support our customers in this way. As fellow Africans, we understand the value of technology innovation, and we are mindful of the needs of our people.
In Africa, innovation is not just nice to have – it’s a survival mechanism.
To encourage this kind of life-saving creative technology innovation in our region, MultiChoice also sponsors regular hackathon events on the continent. We partner with universities, incentivising students to devise AI solutions to customer problems in the content and broadcasting space.
It’s about encouraging our youth to be not just early adopters of technology, but drivers of it, customising technology to the needs of African people.
Technology, after all, must be used to serve the needs of people. Africa is the home of this kind of efficiency-centric innovation – finding solutions to make life more manageable in the face of innumerable challenges.
* Roger Gertze is MultiChoice Namibia Managing Director
