Most African countries are unable to answer this question and are not able to give a definitive, clear and accurate answer. Since TV households are the currency to determine viewership which again helps to set advertising rates, that is one of the biggest reasons why Africa's TV market is lagging behind the rest of the world.
''It's very difficult - and I'm sure I'm not the only one here - to find out how many TV households we have in Africa. The majority of African TV markets can't answer this question,'' says Christoph Limmer, the senior director for market development Africa at satellite provider SES. He was speaking at the AfricaCast 2011 TV summit in Cape Town as part of the 14th AfricaCom conference. SES provides satellite services for multiple pay TV operators across Africa, such as TopTV in South Africa.
''We conduct a lot of research to try and find figures for TV households that are accurate and trustworthy. We have devised methodologies, successfully used in Europe, and now applied to Africa, to find out how many TV homes there is in a country.''
''This is very important because in a country like Nigeria for instance, you will get a figure ranging from 7 million to 16 million. What is the right number? For advertiser-based broadcasting, advertisers and broadcasters want to know exactly how many people they're dealing with; how many TV households?''
Christoph Limmer said that Africa now has about 81,6 million TV households in total.
