Movie distribution service iROKO President Muhammadu Buhari and Nigerian on-line television on Monday announced $19 million worth of new deals, including with French giant Canal, to improve operations and take up across Africa.

The deals for capital financing and content development come just weeks after US streaming giant Netflix enlarged to 190 nations, placing them in direct competition with all the Lagos-based firm.

«We're taking Nollywood content to Africa,» iROKO creator Jason Njoku told AFP within an e-mail, referring to Nigeria's domestic film industry.

«We have strategies to dub content into French, Swahili, Zulu — so we'll stand apart from Netflix in terms of localisation of content. We're not going wide and deep into local content.

»However Netflix entering into the African market is actually exciting, as it reveals the huge potential of the market. For all of us, we are flattered to be mentioned in the same breath as them."

iROKO, whose operation has been dubbed «the African Netflix», said in another statement it planned to make «at least 300 hours of original content in 2016, together with the anticipation of doubling that by 2018».

Cell phone use has exploded in the past few years in Africa and firms such as Njoku's have tapped in to increasing Internet access through smartphones and the popularity of Nigeria's film industry over the continent.

Nollywood is the world's second-largest film industry in terms of production, is estimated to employ some one million individuals and contributes 1.2 percent of Nigeria's GDP.

As portion of the deal that was new, Canal Overseas manager Jacques du Puy joins the iROKO board, the statement said.

The Paris-based company's chief financial officer Fabrice Faux said the investment would cause a «scale-up in French-speaking Africa, with clear ambitions along with the means to reach them».