Sub-Saharan Africa offers clear opportunities for AV, but reaching them demands patience, local knowledge, and an understanding that the region is anything but uniform. Anna Mitchell reports.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, banks are investing in collaboration infrastructure; government departments are modernising meeting and command spaces; hotels are upgrading event and signage systems; private schools are exploring smart classrooms; and houses of worship continue to drive demand for audio, video, and lighting.
But the opportunity is not uniform. Nor is it easy to access.
Talk to integrators and distributors working in the region and a consistent picture emerges: demand is growing, but AV is still too often misunderstood, under-budgeted or introduced too late in the project cycle. High import costs, currency volatility, inconsistent infrastructure, limited local skills, and a lack of early AV planning all shape the way projects are designed and delivered.
For international suppliers, the first lesson may be the most important: Sub-Saharan Africa cannot be treated as one market. South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire all present different levels of maturity, different routes to market, and different commercial pressures.
As Sumit Kumar, business manager at Sterling Technology Nigeria Limited (STNL), puts it, Nigeria and West Africa require “a fundamentally different mindset” from more established AV markets. “You can’t simply lift a deployment model from Europe or the US and drop it here,” he says. “Every solution we design has to account for the local environment.”
Where demand is building
Corporate AV is one of the clearest growth areas. In South Africa, Omega Digital is seeing strong activity around Microsoft Teams Rooms, collaboration spaces, and workplace management. Tiens Lange, sales director at Omega Digital, says many systems deployed around five years ago are now reaching a natural refresh point.
“The majority of what we do is Microsoft-based,” he explains. “Those investments have depreciated, assets have been sweated, and technology obviously improves with AI now playing a role. Hardware upgrades are driving a lot of investment.”
Demand is coming from professional services, finance, and the public sector, but Lange is wary of presenting it as one vertical alone. Omega Digital works with major corporates, banks, government clients, and global organisations, and he says investment is coming from across those areas.
Omega Digital’s customer experience centre showcases a range of room types, platforms and vendor technologies
South Africa’s return to office is also shaping demand. Lange says the local market has moved strongly back towards physical workplaces, even where hybrid models remain. That is driving investment in collaboration spaces and workplace management tools, as companies look to make offices more useful, measurable, and connected.
“South African people are very social, they want to see each other,” he says. “There might be a hybrid model, but I would say people would have to be in the office 60% of the time.”
In Kenya, AVCS is seeing momentum in corporate and hospitality. Asif Latif, technical and administrative managing director at AVCS Kenya, says multinationals and regional headquarters are investing in “modern collaboration environments, unified communications, hybrid meeting spaces, and boardroom upgrades.” Hospitality is also buoyant, with hotel developments and refurbishments creating demand for digital signage and event AV infrastructure.
Nairobi remains the hub, but Latif says interest is spreading to other East African cities. International business is a major driver. When global companies set up or refit regional headquarters in Nairobi, they bring established standards with them, and those expectations translate into meaningful AV projects.
In Nigeria and wider West Africa, STNL sees financial services leading demand. Kumar points to banks and fintechs investing in boardrooms, operations centres, and collaboration infrastructure to manage distributed teams. Government and public sector work is also strong, particularly around conference facilities, situation rooms, and command centres. Education is emerging too, with universities and private schools beginning to take smart classrooms more seriously.
“The common thread across all of these? Hybrid work is now permanent, and organisations are investing to make it work properly,” says Kumar.
Investment drivers, but not always obvious ones
Much of the AV investment in Sub-Saharan Africa is tied to real estate, corporate expansion, private education, government modernisation, and sector-specific development.
In Nigeria, Kumar identifies several tailwinds: the federal government’s digital economy agenda, banking sector recapitalisation, commercial real estate development in Lagos and Abuja, and renewed oil and gas activity following the Petroleum Industry Act. “Wherever there’s a new building or a modernising institution in this region, there’s usually a conversation waiting for us,” he says.
In Kenya, AVCS sees opportunities from multinational expansion and large-scale real estate. Developers targeting international tenants are increasingly aware that AV and collaboration infrastructure cannot be an afterthought.
That is not always the case across the region. Boaz Shani, director and AV consultant at Pro AV Africa, says that in many East African construction projects, AV is still missing from the plan or budget until the last moment.
“We find state-of-the-art buildings, apartments, offices, spaces that get completed and just five minutes before handover they notice that they are missing the key technology,” he says. Even in auditoriums, he says, AV provision can be reduced to little more than “two HDMI ports” in the design.
For Shani, this is not just a design issue; it is an awareness issue. He argues that corporate clients, consultants, M&E teams, and architects often do not yet understand what AV can deliver, or when specialist input is needed.
That creates frustration, but it also points to future growth. If AV is still under-specified in buildings, education, houses of worship, and public infrastructure, then the opportunity is not simply to sell more products. It is to raise understanding of the role AV plays in modern spaces.
Growing awareness
Education is one of the clearest examples of untapped potential. Shani says many classrooms across Africa still rely heavily on chalkboards, even as demand for digital transformation grows elsewhere.
“While this presents a significant opportunity for digital transformation, budgets are often allocated elsewhere due to limited clarity on the future direction of education,” he says. “Many policymakers and curriculum developers are not yet fully aligned with emerging technologies.”
Claire Robinson [pictured right], sales and marketing director at Mediatech Africa, a tradeshow in Johannesburg for the AV, broadcast, live events, production, and entertainment technology sectors, also points to education as a growing area, particularly in South Africa’s private sector.
“There is growing demand for AV technology in education, especially around smart classroom solutions, unified communications, campus-wide AV integration, livestreaming, and installed audio systems. Schools and universities are investing in technology that supports both in-person and hybrid learning environments.”
She also notes how much the language and focus of the market has shifted since Mediatech was last held. “In 2019, unified communications was still a fairly niche term in South Africa,” she says. “Now many organisations have dedicated unified communications specialists and teams. It shows how quickly collaboration and communication technology has become part of mainstream business infrastructure.”
It’s an important observation. Once clients have a shared language for collaboration, workplace management, and UC, it becomes easier to explain why systems need to be properly designed, supported, and integrated.
But in less mature parts of the market, education remains central. Shani points to a shortage of formal AV certification in East Africa, citing very low numbers of CTS-certified professionals across Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. For him, this lack of training affects everything from specification to installation quality.
Kumar sees the same issue in Nigeria. “The pool of certified AV and UC engineers locally is still developing,” he says. “When something needs fixing, clients can’t always wait for a vendor to fly someone in. We have to own that responsibility ourselves.”
Houses of worship and live events
Beyond corporate and education, houses of worship remain one of the region’s most distinctive AV markets. They are also one of the most complex.
Shani describes worship as both a major opportunity and a sector that can be difficult to serve because many buyers do not yet understand intelligibility, system design, or long-term support. In Uganda alone, he points to thousands of mosques as evidence of the potential scale. Churches, meanwhile, may receive donated systems from the US, or buy good equipment without the local skills and parts needed to maintain it properly.
Simon Robinson [pictured below], event director and co-owner of Mediatech Africa, also identifies houses of worship as a major market across South Africa and the wider continent.
“The houses of worship market in South Africa and across Africa has always been a really big market for live installation, for fixed installations in charismatic churches,” he says. “There’s a real range in terms of the type of kit that they put in, right from the best of the best… down to smaller ones.”
Live events are another important part of the picture. Robinson says South Africa’s live events sector took time to recover after Covid, but has now returned strongly.
“It’s taken quite some time for the live events sector, which has always been one of our bigger pillars in Mediatech, to come back,” he says. “But I must say it’s come back with quite a big boom. There’s been a lot of investment in new tech and new kit from the production and rental companies.”
The crossover between rental companies and fixed installation is significant. Production and rental businesses are increasingly supporting venues, worship spaces, and other fixed environments, giving them a role beyond live event delivery.
The cost of doing business
If demand is growing, the cost and complexity of serving it remain major barriers.
In East Africa, Shani says logistics, taxes, and pre-inspection requirements add significant cost. He says taxes can reach more than 55%, while shipping into the region is expensive. For distributors selling reliable, professional-grade products, that creates a difficult comparison with low-cost products available online.
“Clients go to Amazon and they think we are making a killing,” he says. “But when you add up all that, and we don’t sell lower-end products, we sell only reliable solutions and brands, it becomes expensive.”
For AVCS in Kenya, import costs and lead times are the most consistent challenge. Latif says most professional AV equipment has to be sourced internationally, so shipping timelines, customs clearance and duties must be planned from the beginning. Fixed opening dates or go-live deadlines can put pressure on this process.
Nigeria adds the further complication of currency volatility. STNL buys in dollars while clients budget in naira, which means exchange rate movement between scoping and delivery can alter project economics.
“Currency volatility is probably the one that keeps us up at night the most,” says Kumar. “Between the time a project is scoped and when equipment actually arrives, the exchange rate can move significantly.”
South Africa is not immune from these pressures. Lange says the rand-dollar exchange rate is a familiar part of doing business, but frequent vendor price increases and long approval cycles are making projects harder to manage. He also points to rising fuel costs and pressure on operational expenditure, particularly around SLA and maintenance contracts.
Simon Robinson adds that South Africa has a specific regulatory hurdle for distributors and manufacturers bringing equipment into the country around letters of authority for powered devices. Products that may meet international certification standards can still face issues at customs if they do not have the required South African documentation.
Designing for reality
Infrastructure limitations shape specification as much as price does. In Nigeria, STNL designs around power instability, connectivity challenges, and the need for local support. Backup power is built into almost every installation because a boardroom or conference facility going dark during a client presentation is not acceptable.
In Kenya, AVCS takes a similar approach. Latif [pictured left] says power conditioning and surge protection are “non-negotiable” on every project. Serviceability is also central: systems must be supportable locally wherever possible.
For coastal deployments in Mombasa and Malindi, AVCS goes further, specifying corrosion-resistant enclosures, conformal-coated electronics, climate-hardened displays and enhanced ventilation. The goal is to avoid specifying systems that look impressive on paper but cannot survive the environment or be maintained over time.
“A brilliant system that can’t be serviced locally isn’t a solution, it’s a liability,” says Latif.
This is one of the most important lessons for the region. At the top end, clients may want global standards. STNL says multinationals, leading financial institutions, and ambitious local corporates in West Africa are asking for Microsoft Teams Rooms, premium videowalls and Crestron or Extron control systems. They do not want a cut-down version of what is being deployed in London or Dubai.
But adaptation is still necessary. That might mean designing for unstable power, selecting products with remote management, simplifying user interfaces, building in maintenance plans, or training local teams properly.
A sign of confidence
Mediatech Africa’s return sits within this wider context. It is not the whole story, but it is a useful signal of where the market is heading.
Simon Robinson says the show began as a broadcast event, then expanded into production and live events before starting to engage more seriously with AV integration. The break after 2019 appears to have changed the balance.
“Having the break with Covid actually has helped us a lot because AV has exploded and so has the AV sector within Mediatech,” he says. “We’ve seen a big uptake of the actual brands taking stands as opposed to just sitting on a distributor stand.”
At the same time, traditional broadcast has declined, while content creation and streaming technologies are becoming more important. Robinson says linear broadcast and satellite have taken the strain across Africa, affecting the distributors that once helped drive the show’s exhibitor base. In their place, AV integration, collaboration, and streaming are becoming more prominent.
Claire Robinson sees the show as part of a wider education and networking role. Mediatech will include presentation areas focused on AV, broadcast, and live events, with short educational sessions. Exhibitors are also planning training on stands, including sessions targeted at specific markets such as houses of worship.
These sessions are important in a region where awareness and skills are recurring barriers. A trade show alone cannot solve those problems, but it can provide a focal point for training, networking, and exposure to technology that many buyers and specifiers may not otherwise see.
Patience, presence, & support
The message from contributors is not that Sub-Saharan Africa is too difficult. It is that success requires commitment.
Kumar says international AV companies often misunderstand Nigeria by treating it as “a smaller, slower version of Europe.” That approach fails because the infrastructure, procurement dynamics, relationships, and support expectations are different.
“Business here is deeply relational,” he says. “Decisions aren’t made purely on specification sheets or price. Trust, presence, and track record matter enormously.”
Shani makes a similar point from East Africa. He argues that Africa offers serious growth for manufacturers prepared to invest in education, marketing, and long-term relationships. But he says too many expect quick targets and immediate returns.
The better analogy, he suggests, is farming: “It takes time to get the fruits.”
For companies prepared to take that long view, the opportunity is substantial. Corporate collaboration is maturing. Hospitality is investing. Education has barely begun its digital transformation. Houses of worship remain a significant market. Live events are recovering. Governments and public agencies are modernising. Across West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa, buyers are becoming more aware of what professional AV can do.
But the region rewards those who understand complexity rather than those who try to simplify it. Projects need realistic lead times, resilient design, local support, client education, and careful commercial planning. Local execution determines success.
Sub-Saharan Africa is not a simple export market. It is a set of distinct, developing AV markets with different levels of maturity and different routes to growth. The opportunity is real, but it belongs to companies willing to invest in the relationships, skills, and patience needed to make technology work on the ground.
Top image: Johannesburg remains one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s key AV and business hubs
Credit: Greg da Silva/Shutterstock.com