MTN Group has launched One TV, a pan-African streaming platform that bundles local productions, live television, and international content under four pricing tiers — free-to-view, ad-supported, pay-per-view, and subscription — and lets subscribers pay via airtime or Mobile Money.
The service is rolling out across MTN’s 16 African markets, though the company has not said which countries come first. MTN reported 307.2 million subscribers at the end of 2025, giving One TV a distribution base no regional streaming competitor can match at launch. Pricing and content availability will vary by market, with local productions sitting alongside live TV channels and international titles under a single interface.
Payment flexibility is One TV’s most consequential design choice. Streaming services across Africa have struggled less with content selection than with payment rails: most platforms require credit cards or bank-linked digital accounts that exclude large parts of the market. By routing purchases through airtime billing and MTN MoMo, One TV targets the segment that Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video have found structurally difficult to reach at scale. Selorm Adadevoh, MTN Group’s Chief Commercial, Strategy and Transformation Officer, said the launch is meant to use “the scale of our connectivity, fintech, and digital capabilities to make relevant content more accessible while creating new opportunities for Africa’s creative and digital economies.”
MTN’s history in streaming is mixed. Its South Africa-focused FrontRow service launched roughly a decade ago and never gained traction. The company later built Ayooba, a super-app that bundled streaming with other digital services — that too was shut down. One TV is a cleaner attempt: a standalone entertainment brand rather than a feature inside a larger digital wrapper, and one backed by a clearer payment strategy than either earlier product had.
The platform’s most direct competitive target is MultiChoice, which operates DStv linear pay-TV and the Showmax streaming service across more than 50 African markets. MultiChoice is managing Canal+’s ongoing takeover — regulatory approval remains pending into 2026 — while simultaneously trying to hold its pay-TV subscriber base against cord-cutting pressure and scale Showmax against better-capitalised global platforms. MTN’s airtime-billing infrastructure and mobile money ecosystem give it distribution advantages MultiChoice cannot replicate. MultiChoice’s head start on local content rights and live sport — Showmax holds the continental Premier League streaming rights — is the asset MTN will need to match to retain subscribers over time.
The launch fits a pattern across Africa’s large telcos. MTN, Safaricom, and Airtel have all been extending digital services verticals — fintech, cloud, enterprise software — on top of their core connectivity businesses. Entertainment is the latest layer. It carries a recurring revenue argument (subscriptions are stickier than data top-ups) and a traffic argument (streaming is one of the biggest drivers of mobile data consumption). For African content creators, One TV adds another distribution channel at a time when demand for locally produced content is growing faster than global platforms have invested in it.
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