Zimbabwean and regional artists set to benefit from Canal+’s acquisition of the MultiChoice Group
BY NATHAN GUMA
French Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Paul-Bertrand Barets, says Zimbabwean and regional artists are set to benefit from his country’s multimedia group Canal+’s acquisition of South Africa-based MultiChoice Group through the creation of local content.
This comes at a time when France is moving toward a mix of private investment and economic partnerships across the continent.
Last year, Canal+ acquired control of MultiChoice, which runs DStv, in a landmark deal announced in September 2025, creating a combined media giant with over 40 million subscribers across Africa, Europe, and Asia.
The acquisition consolidates Canal+’s position in francophone Africa with MultiChoice’s strong foothold in English and Lusophone markets, with expectations of expanded sports and local productions.
Zimbabwe and Southern Africa’s creative industries continue to face funding, distribution, and infrastructure challenges despite growing demand for locally produced entertainment and storytelling.
In an interview at the French Embassy in Harare, Ambassador Barets said this new economic partnership is going to benefit Zimbabwean and Southern African creators by empowering them to tell their stories.
“So, Canal+ is a French holding specialised in TV, entertainment, it’s very much covering all the sports events, for example, cultural, artistic events,” Ambassador Barets said. “And so it’s not only in France, it’s in many countries, and it was very active in Africa, but it has really upscaled recently its presence in Africa by purchasing MultiChoice DSTV, that is a Southern African, mostly based TV group, as you know.
“And so now, Canal+ is going to develop the activities of MultiChoice, and also as they do everywhere else in the world, they are going to promote local contents, so local sports events, local artistic events, local productions of series, of movies, and so on.”
He said the partnership, a promising deal between a French and an African company, is going to transform storytelling.
“Now, this specific new economic partnership between Canal+ and MultiChoice will be a new avenue to promote this very vital, very lively milieu of artists in Zimbabwe also, but not only, all over southern Africa,” he said.
He said Canal+ will reach out to local content providers to highlight them in its programmes.
France in Zimbabwe has been connecting local artists to France as part of cultural exchange programmes.
“Indeed, you have a very vital artistic and cultural environment, and it’s the promotion of the Zimbabwean artists, for example, and the support to the Zimbabwean artists to discover Europe, to discover France, to network with the French artistic milieu, is very much at the heart of our French-Zimbabwean relationship,” he said.
“Throughout our French alliances, throughout the embassy, we try to support the contacts and the relationships between Zimbabwean artists and French artists, and French artistic and cultural institutions, museums, galleries, and so on.”
Ambassador Barets said France has been connecting Zimbabwean artists to music festivals.
“We sent recently a Zimbabwean singer to a music festival in Bordeaux, we sent a Zimbabwean painter to a French gallery in southeast France, we supported the head of Harare’s gallery to network with a French gallery in southeast France, recently in Marseille, so you see, that’s very much at the heart of our diplomacy.” – IOW Data.
