Showmax and Netflix battle for high-octane drama - African style

"At eight, lights out. "No sex here," a teacher in the fictional South African boarding school Youngins informs a new pupil.

The Showmax series, which releases a new episode every week on the South African-based subscription streaming service, is a crazy ride full of excitement, danger, sex, and violence. However, viewers have been discovering that rules are meant to be broken.

The drama's head girl, Kealeboga Masango, tells the BBC, "I would describe the show as captivating, relatable, authentic, fun, funny, and fresh - but like South African fresh."

And that's the important part: Showmax's ambitious business plan is built around the show's African authenticity, which the creators hope will set it apart.

"We really go deep into the different cultures of South Africa - it's very beautiful watching not just black bodies being represented on screen, but South African bodies being represented," Themba Mfebe, the director of Youngins, tells

Thus, it seems like the child of my sister and my neighbor. I feel as though I know these folks. Additionally, they converse in South African languages the majority of the time."

Showmax, which also provides Premier League football and documentaries, hopes to increase its market share in the African subscription video-on-demand market because 70% of sub-Saharan Africans are under 30.

Other global streaming giants such as Amazon Prime are reducing their investment in Africa and have cut jobs on the continent and restructured to focus on the European market.

But Showmax, owned by the MultiChoice group - one of the continent's biggest pay TV operators - is doing the opposite by ramping up production with 21 new original African shows recently released.

Its chief executive Marc Jury says the target for their parent company, with millions of dollars of investment in new productions, is to expand to 50 million consumers across the African continent by 2028: "Our ambition is to be the number one streaming platform in Africa."

Rival streamer Netflix has also been steadily expanding its presence in Africa's video streaming market. Between 2016 and 2022, it invested $175m (£139m) in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

In 2020, it also signed a lucrative multi-title deal with Nigerian production company EbonyLife, founded by acclaimed producer Mo Abudu, to create multiple original Netflix series and films.

Revenge thriller The Black Book, which it recently acquired, became the first ever Nigerian film to soar to number three on Netflix's worldwide film charts - watched by more than 20 million people in its opening weeks last year.

Netflix says it has created around 12,000 jobs on the continent and plans to continue to invest in local creative economies and support more African storytellers.

"We are still in many ways at the inception stages of our investment journey, so it's doubly exciting to know we are poised to deliver even greater impact if we maintain our current momentum," Shola Sanni, Netflix's policy director for sub-Saharan Africa, has said.

But streaming technology can face challenges in African markets.

"There are not too many flat rate plans and a single movie consumes quite a lot of data," explains Ivan Biljan, from European video streaming company UniqCast.

He tells the BBC the lack of affordable and reliable broadband access and internet piracy are also significant hurdles for companies that want to sell video on-demand.

However, he is optimistic: "I think the future is bright for Africa because they have a lot of things that other markets, such Europe and America, don't.

"In the coming years, they will have 400-500 million new young tech-savvy customers who are new potential users and subscribers."

MultiChoice's Showmax hopes to take advantage of this by using new streaming technology, in a partnership with NBCUniversal and Sky, and is also partnering with mobile phone company MTN South Africa to make streaming services more accessible with data bundle offers.

Over the next 12 months Showmax says it will launch more than 1,300 hours of original programming - a 150% increase in production output compared to the year before.

Among their most-anticipated new series is Red Ink, created with Bomb Productions, the company behind the Oscar-nominated film Mandela.

There is also a 10-part crime series called Catch Me a Killer starring Game of Thrones actress Charlotte Hope about South Africa's first serial killer profiler.

To enable this boost in production, MultiChoice supports a 12-month programme to develop emerging African TV and film talent through hands-on industry experience.

"When I started out, it was the first year of it," says Mfebe about his training in 2018.

"I was a camera assistant and you learn from all the different departments. I also met a lot of people that I still work with today throughout the industry."

This African-centred approach to storytelling appears to be resonating with local audiences.

In 2022, nine out of Showmax's 10 most-streamed titles in Ghana were African-produced. In Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, the majority of the top 10 titles were also African-made.

Showmax, which for the last nine years has operated in 44 sub-Saharan countries and currently produces original series for three core markets - South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya - will unveil its first original series from Ethiopia and Tanzania later this year.

The love expressed for the high school drama might be summed up by actor Lebohang Lephatsoana, who portrays Tumelo in Youngins: "Africans always aim to tell authentic stories that the audience is going to relate to."

"Africans have exquisite storytelling skills. We tell stories from the moment we are born, if anything," he says to the BBC.

Using the official 2010 World Cup single by South African duo Freshly Ground and Shakira, the artist uses music to convey his message: "It's time for Africa." Mina Tsamina, huh? "Waka waka eh eh."