East Africa TV penetration 23%
April 17, 2015
The five countries of the East African Community (EAC) had a total population of 146.89 million end-2014, with 33.61 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 23 per cent, according to research from Dataxis.
Kenya is the most developed market in the region with 12.04 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 32 per cent. Uganda has 7.35 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 25 per cent, followed by Tanzania with 7.35 million households and a TV household penetration rate of 17 per cent.
Pay-TV services accounted for approximately 1.61 million households meaning that free-to-air broadcasting is still the primary access method in over 79 per cent of TV households. Tanzania has the largest Pay-TV base in the region with 592,700 users accounting for 36 per cent of the EAC total. Kenya was second with with 561,000 users, followed by Uganda with 359,000, Burundi with 62,500 and Rwanda with 38,000.
DTT has an overall 53 per cent market share of total Pay-TV users, followed by DTH with 43 per cent and the remainder on CATV systems in Kenya and Tanzania. StarTimes edged MulitChoice in terms of overall market share with 39 per cent against 38 per cent. The largest single platform was StarTimes DTT with 34 per cent market share, followed by the MultiChoice DSTV satellite offering (20 per cent) and its GOtv DTT service (18 per cent). StarSat, the StarTimes DTH offering, accounted for a further 4 per cent.
There were 6.16 million FTA users across the EAC end-2014. Analogue terrestrial was by far the largest access method accounting for 68 per cent of total users. DTT had a 26 per cent market share, followed by DTH with 6 per cent. Rwanda was the only country to have completely turned off analogue, although Tanzania was scheduled to go digital-only in February, 2015, followed in March by Kenya.