Al Jazeera and Arewa 24 Monday said they had concluded arrangements to beam Al Jazeera English documentaries and series, in Hausa, to Northern Nigeria viewers.
The agreement entails the dubbing of the Al Jazeera documentaries into the Hausa language and beaming it to “Arewa24’s 40+ million viewers in Northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon through a new Distribution Agreement” between the two companies.
The distribution agreement will make Al Jazeera’s English language programs available via AREWA24’s Free-to-Air Satellite channel and via the region’s major PayTV services: DStv, StarTimes, CANAL+ and TSTV and on AREWA24’s global streaming service, “AREWA24 On Demand.”
The acting Executive Director of Global Brand and Communication Division of Al Jazeera, Ramzan Alnoimi said: “We’re very pleased with this agreement as it makes Al Jazeera English’s content available to new audiences in a large part of Africa in their own language.
“We’re looking forward to expanding the distribution of Al Jazeera content dubbed in other languages in the future.”
On his part, AREWA24 CEO, Jacob Arback, said: “The Al Jazeera brand and its outstanding programming will be very well received by AREWA24’s Northern Nigerian and West African audiences.
“We couldn’t be more excited about this new partnership and about being the first television network to broadcast Al Jazeera’s high-quality programs in Hausa, a language spoken by over 90M people in Nigeria and West Africa.”
He noted that AREWA24 and its production arm, AREWA24 Productions, was launched in 2014 to fill a glaring void of authentic, locally-produced and high-quality Hausa language entertainment and lifestyle programming.
He said: “The AREWA24 television channel reaches more than 40 million Hausa speakers in Nigeria and West Africa and the Kano and Lagos-based Company is now among the leading Pan-African television, production, content-distribution and media companies.”
