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In Africa, Chinese applications are fighting for the digital eldorado of the South-Sahara. And the one on the continent right now is called Vskit. This online video channel started in the spring of 2018; she passed the mark of twelve million users.
From our correspondent in Beijing ,
It is the most downloaded application today in Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia. A year after its launch, Vskit continues to gain an audience according to these designers, a start-up based in Shenzhen in southeast China, which is none other than a subsidiary of China's smartphone maker Transsion. one in Africa. The platform is used in twenty-seven countries on the continent, with videos in Swahili, Bambara, French, and English.
" Come and have fun on Vskit ! "
"Vskit" is the "V" of video and victory, and "Skit" comes from English and can be translated as burlesque aside, or short sequence of humor made by amateurs, which fits perfectly in the spirit of the chain. We laugh a lot on Vskit. There is for example this mom who puts his socks to his child while watching a series on his phone. The child retreats, pushes a chair, the mother obsessed by his screen ends up putting the sock at the foot of the chair. Sketches good kid still like the one who wants to drink from the bottle and forgot to remove the cap, the one who puts on heels too high and falls to the ground. We also have the parody of film scenes.
Among the sequences that work well: that of the Titanic fan, the arms in the cross, we replay the scene of Kate Winslet in the film of James Cameron, but on a balcony with a full-face fan to inflate the hair back. There is also the charmeuse of belt, who plays the flute in front of a buckle of leather ... And magic: the belt recovers. There is always the snake that comes to slip into the spokes of a bicycle, the gag of the sleeper who comes out of his sleeping bag by opening it from the inside with a machete. And then things, much less funny, including a man in a green shirt pursued by a car with young people sitting on doors, and skidding in the dust right in front of the persecuted person, we also have scenes a little vulgar. In short, there is drinking and dining, but overall the spring is still humor, parody and satire with videos of fifteen seconds maximum filmed in everyday life, especially in English-speaking Africa.
On Vskit, there are also challenges like the Africa Food Challenge, teens who dance as competitors. But Vskit also wants to discover new talent. Example including Shez Cute, a Nigerian student noticed on the platform, earns her living as a model in online ads and on television. She has 150,000 followers on the platform. And Vskit claims to have helped to discover 500 new stars in Africa.
A serious competitor, TikTok
Since April, the favorite app of teens around the world, 500 million active users, many in under 15 years, the social network TikTok landed in Africa last April tells the ChungDaily . The online news site recalls that the penetration rate of smartphones on the continent exceeded 44% in 2017. There is therefore a market for this type of platform of online services. While Vskit is primarily present in Nigeria, TikTok is primarily targeting South African youth. The limit to the progress of these apps is the speed of the network - we are still 3G except in some luxury hotels and restaurants - and the price, subscriptions 3G remain relatively expensive.