Hi,

Happy Wednesday.

How many Nigerian movies have you watched this week? Someone needs to know. In short, someone is hoping that you watch 3-5 hours of Nigerian movies a day!

In 2016, when Netflix announced its expansion into Africa, Jason Njoku, founder of Iroko TV, was dismissive of the threat. "Netflix being in Nigeria has zero impact on iROKO," he declared confidently on his blog.

"If it's Nollywood fanatics, you know those guys can watch 3-5 hours per day, so Iroko Tv is still the only place they can find most of what they are looking for."

But the question is how much Nigerian movies can a person watch? And why even bank on people spending 3-5 hours of their 18 useable hours on one's business?

It sounds diabolical anyway, but Njoku's reasoning seemed sound at the time. As Africa's first major streaming platform and the self-proclaimed ‘home of Nollywood,’ Iroko TV had carved out a unique niche serving both local audiences and the African diaspora worldwide. With 55% of its subscribers coming from the African diaspora in the US and UK—Netflix's traditional strongholds—the platform appeared untouchable.

Yet, nearly a decade later, the irony is devastating. The platform that once confidently dismissed Netflix's threat is now teetering on the brink of collapse, its mobile app has disappeared from app stores, its website offline for months and its user base has shrunken by 76% from its 2022 peak of 192,174 active users to just 46,000. A court recently ordered Njoku’s accounts to be frozen.

This week's feature article chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of 'Africa's Netflix', starting from attracting $42 million in investment and building a global audience to facing the issues every Nigerian business has to deal with: currency devaluations that halved subscription revenues, among others, including technical failures that have left the platform struggling to survive.

This is the story of how quickly confidence can turn to crisis and how even the most pioneering platforms can fall victim to the very forces they once believed they could conquer. Sometimes, betting everything on people's insatiable appetite for home-grown content isn't enough when the fundamentals collapse beneath you.

Now, off to Liberia.

In 1991, the Nigerian Army joined the Ecomog peacekeeping force assembled by the West African states to intervene in the First Liberian Civil War. This bloody conflict would claim over 200,000 lives in a nation of just 2.1 million people.

In typical Nigerian style, the soldiers sailed to 'sweet Liberia' with their party dresses and dreams of partying on Liberia's beaches and meeting beautiful Liberian girls. They expected a quick victory against rebels who would surely flee at the sight of 'the Nigerian commandos who had defeated the Biafrans,' thanks to the BBC’s propaganda in their support. But upon their arrival, they were treated to a most hostile welcome. The war started out at the very port where the ships carrying them berthed.

The man for whose sake they came to Liberia, President Doe—a friend of Babangida who had invented the ECOMOG intervention—was kidnapped from under their noses and brutally executed. What followed was a nightmare of child soldiers, ethnic massacres and atrocities that would haunt the region for decades. The Monrovia Church massacre alone saw 600 civilians slaughtered in a single day.

For the next five years, ECOMOG forces dealt with a wily Charles Taylor and his rebels and watched as more than 15,000 children were forced into combat, drugged and trained to commit unspeakable acts. The peacekeepers themselves, found their mission transforming them from idealistic soldiers and officers into "grave robbers, diamond miners, family men and alcoholics."

In the end, Charles Taylor exhausted West Africa, including Nigeria, so thoroughly that Abacha donated heavily for his election campaign just to end the conflict. The soldiers left behind thousands of children, severely looted Liberia and returned to a world that no longer had any use for them.

But this war also created a generation of survivors whose resilience would reshape the world in unexpected ways. Among them was thirteen-year-old Adenah Bayoh, who fled through dense jungle with her grandmother and twenty other villagers, an experience that would forge the grit she needed to build a $250 million real estate empire and become New Jersey's first Black female affordable housing developer.

Her remarkable journey from refugee child to real estate mogul is featured in this week's newsletter. It bears witness to how human resilience can transform the deepest trauma into extraordinary purpose. Sometimes the most powerful business stories begin not in boardrooms, but in the crucible of survival itself.

We hope you enjoy!

The SimplVest Team

Iroko TV Is On the Verge of Collapse – A Decade After Bragging It Can Compete With Netflix

In January 2016, when Netflix announced its expansion into Africa, Jason Njoku, the founder of Iroko TV, was defiant. Writing on his blog, he declared that Netflix being in Nigeria had “zero impact on iROKO” and their “vision for the future.”

His reasoning seemed sound at the time: “If it’s Nollywood fanatics, you know those guys can watch 3-5 hours per day, so Iroko Tv is still the only place they can find most of what they are looking for.”

The irony is palpable today. Nearly a decade later, the very platform that once confidently dismissed Netflix’s threat is teetering on the brink of collapse.

👉 Full Story here: Iroko TV Is On the Verge of Collapse – A Decade After Bragging It Can Compete With Netflix

Adenah Bayoh: From The First Liberian Civil War to Real Estate Empress

In 1989, thirteen-year-old Adenah Bayoh, her grandmother Jenneh Viskinda and twenty other villagers fled through a dense Liberian jungle in the middle of the night. The images from that harrowing escape from armed rebels terrorizing their homeland, remain vivid in Bayoh’s memory decades later.

She remembers: “I still have images of little kids being pulled to walk faster; mothers carrying kids on their backs with stuff on their heads.”

Today, that refugee child has transformed into New Jersey’s first Black female affordable housing developer, owns a $250 million real estate portfolio, operates multiple restaurant franchises and employs nearly 300 people.

👉 Full Story here: Adenah Bayoh: From The First Liberian Civil War to Real Estate Empress

Till Saturday,

If you loved what you read, be sure to forward it to a friend. If you have any thoughts, you can leave us a comment by replying to this mail. We would love to hear back from you.