Why Netflix In Nigeria: The Challenge
Netflix recently made its services available in over 140 countries in the world, including Nigeria. Some Nigerians were happy with these development, however, some others were smart enough to know the truth: Most Nigerians would not get to enjoy the benefits Netflix presumes to offer and this is a challenge for the company.
Why?
Well, here are some reasons:
Poor internet connection
Even though Nigeria has one of the largest number of internet users in the world. The internet service in smaller countries such as Rwanda, and Ghana is way faster than that in Nigeria.
This would make streaming movies from Netflix a very boring task.
Expensive internet data plans
The cost of paying for internet data plans in Nigeria is just insane. Look at this simple example:
In 2013, I paid about 5000 Naira for an unlimited internet data plan during my stay in Togo. However, in Nigeria—and at that time— 5000 Naira would only buy me about 7 Gb internet data plan.
How cool is that? It sucks, I know, and that is the problem.
The internet service providers in Nigeria make a ton of money from Nigerians by charging them higher rates for internet access than what is usually charged in other African countries. They may blame it on the electricity situation in the country and all that, but I know it is mainly because of their pockets.
No unlimited internet data plans in Nigeria
Streaming videos online is not a child’s play, as it uses a lot of data. So it is even better to download a video than to stream it online. However, this does not matter in countries where unlimited internet data plans are available and cheap.
I was able to learn a little bit about WordPress in 2013 during my short stay in Togo. This was due to the fact that I was able to watch videos on YouTube about web development using WordPress.
I did not bother about my internet data plan finishing as most Nigerians would worry about when doing the same thing in Nigeria.
Conclusion
Except something is done about the internet situation in Nigeria, I do not believe Netflix would achieve a wild success in the country.