Canal+ completed its R35 billion acquisition of MultiChoice Group in September 2025 — the largest media deal in African history, creating a combined subscriber base of more than 40 million across 70 countries. The integration has been underway since. The visible consequence was the closure of Showmax. The less visible consequence is now being named publicly by South African producers.
Commissioning decisions for shows on M-Net, kykNET, and Mzansi Magic — decisions that were previously made within the local South African structure, by commissioning editors and content teams who knew the local market from the inside — now pass through Paris for final approval. Multiple producers described a frustrating stretch earlier this year during the Joburg Film Festival in which several projects remained in limbo, with locally approved contracts stalled waiting for sign-off from Canal+ headquarters in France.
This is a structural consequence of any major international acquisition, and Canal+ executives have been explicit that it reflects intentional policy. Centralising oversight of budgets and editorial direction is standard post-acquisition practice. The acquiring company needs visibility into what it now owns. The question is not whether centralisation is happening — it is — but what it costs the African television industry for commissioning decisions that previously took days to now take weeks or months while they wait for approval from executives who have different reference points, different market instincts, and different cultural frameworks from the producers pitching to them.
The Numbers Behind the Concern
Canal+’s most recent published subscriber data tells a specific story. Strip out the 14.4 million subscribers that came with the MultiChoice acquisition, and the Canal+ base grew to 28 million subscribers from 26.9 million the previous year — growth driven by markets outside Africa. The African business itself moved in the opposite direction: MultiChoice lost 0.5 million subscribers over the same period. The arithmetic is uncomfortable. Growth sits outside Africa. The region that once anchored the pay television model is contracting, not expanding, inside the company that now owns it.
Canal+ is planning to list shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange before September 2026 — becoming the first French media company to trade there, a commitment made to South Africa’s Competition Commission as a condition of the acquisition’s regulatory approval. The listing signals continued institutional commitment to the African market. The centralised commissioning structure signals something more complicated: that institutional commitment and operational trust are not the same thing.
What “Local Autonomy” Actually Built
The South African television industry developed its creative character around a degree of local autonomy in commissioning. The shows that defined South African television — Isidingo, Generations, the Mzansi Magic slate, the original Showmax commissions — were developed by commissioning editors who knew their audience from inside the culture. The specific editorial judgement that enabled Spinners, Wura, Khaki Fever, and Diiche was the judgement of people who understood what South African and Nigerian audiences would watch and why.
Routing that judgement through Paris does not eliminate local knowledge from the commissioning process. It inserts a layer of institutional distance between local editorial intelligence and the decisions that act on it. That distance is the thing producers are describing as the slow-motion crisis. Not the dramatic closure of Showmax — that was fast and visible. The slow accumulation of stalled contracts, delayed approvals, and projects that existed in the limbo of local approval without headquarter sign-off. That is the damage that is harder to see and harder to reverse.
Canal+ has said publicly that it will continue investing in local language programming. Afrikaans content on kykNET stays in place. The eight-per-year African originals target for Canal+ Originals remains the stated ambition. Whether those commitments are fulfilled at the creative quality the industry needs — or whether the Paris approval layer produces a conservative filter that strips out the editorial risk that made the best of those shows possible — is the question the industry is watching.
— Lerato Dlamini. RollCallAfrica, Johannesburg. 19 May 2026.
Sources: TechTrends Kenya (16 March 2026 — “Canal+ Streaming Strategy After Showmax Shutdown”), Variety (6 March 2026 — Canal+ MultiChoice/Showmax), Canal+ official subscriber data (2025/2026 annual results), Competition Commission of South Africa (MultiChoice acquisition conditions), NFVF.
