Moby Group launches in Ethiopia
February 15, 2016
By Chris Forrester
Dubai-base Moby Group, best known for a clutch of TV and radio channels beamed into Afghanistan, is to launch a new TV channel in Ethiopia
Moby, in which Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has a stake, is entering into a joint-venture with Kana TV. This will be Moby’s first African project, and the business is tapping into new broadcasting opportunities in the country.
Moby Group is a media and entertainment company with a focus on emerging and frontier markets extending from Central Asia to the Middle East and beyond. The group currently operates 16 businesses in six countries in broadcasting, production, publishing, music, and strategic communications. The group was founded in 2003 by the Mohseni family as a privately held company.
Elias Schulze, MD at Kana TV, says the idea for the station came up two years when of its co-founders was thinking about the market potential of Ethiopia: “I visited Ethiopia and fell in love with it. The Ethiopian market has a lot of latent demand. We did a study of the market and got the other two co-founders together. I was approached by the Moby Group and formed that partnership.”
Kana TV is joint venture between Moby Group and a group of entrepreneurs in Ethiopia including Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Elias Schulze, Nazrawi Ghebreselasie and Addis Alemayehou. The local vehicle is BeMedia, a fully Ethiopian owned and operated entity led by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari as the GM and will be Kana TV’s exclusive media production company.
“Moby Group is the technical and operating partner. BeMedia is an exclusive local production partner to Kana Television – this means BeMedia helps produce for and sells to Kana Television much of the content which it airs on Kana via Nilesat,” says Kana TV.