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BY PAUL GORMAN
Despite the massive size of the African continent, the official music industry is having little impact on the market. Cassette dominates the formats and piracy dominates the business.
In audio industry terms, Africa remains the dark continent, largely unexplored by the major and independent international players and subject to a range of economic and social problems which, combined with rampant piracy and unstable politics, make it a daunting prospect. None of the major record companies operate outside South Africa, which has a comparatively Westernised music market with annual sales in excess of $220 million.
CD hardware penetration is as low as 4% in South Africa, reflecting the fact that sales of the format are still restricted to urban areas where international genres, particularly r&b and reggae, are more popular. Thus Africa's only two CD plants are in South Africa, and both of these are focusing on increasing the uptake of CD rather than exploring the possibilities of VCD, DVD and CD-R.
Cassettes account for at least 50% of South African sales, but in many other countries this rises to 95%. The latest set of statistics from Nigeria underline this dominance. In 1996 there were eight million cassettes sold but just 10,000 CDs in a country with a population of more than 100 million people. According to media research company MTI these proportions are unlikely to have changed as Nigeria's music market has slumped from a value of $30 million-plus in 1992 to just $9 million four years later. Outside of South Africa there are several cassette manufacturing sites, but African music industry veteran Mike Wells reckons that only "a handful" are legitimate.
"In the entire continent north of the Limpopo and sub-Sahara region, there are only four countries with a legitimate music industry: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe - in all the other countries the music business has been abandoned to the pirates," explains Wells, whose company Serengeti Records has pioneered trade with Africa since the early eighties as both licensing representative and cassette manufacturer via deals with associate companies or joint ventures with local partners. The low price tags attached to pirate product has made even this business tough.
"In Nigeria you can buy a pirate tape for US50c,...