Johannesburg has joined London, Lagos and New York as the latest office base for Nigeria’s IROKO Partners - the world’s largest online source for African entertainment.

iROKO burst onto the global scene last year with its internet Nollywood TV streaming service, dubbed iROKO TV, which hit 500,000 subscribers in just six months.

The firm also has an online music offering, iROKING, which it claims is West Africa’s number one music distribution platform, with over 350,000 songs from 400 artists streaming to over 100,000 subscribers. Late last year the company said that iROKING had hit one million mobile music downloads.

Furthermore, the Nigerian outfit partnered with South African mobile company mobi.lity last year to provide its music streaming services as part of a train commuter mobile website targeted at 3 million daily passengers in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

And in a move to expand its presence in South Africa, the company has told ITWeb Africa that its new office in Johannesburg’s downtown Maboneng Precinct is already up-and-running.

The Joburg office has between 2 to 5 staff joining the firm’s approximately 100-strong workforce who are based in Lagos, London and New York, says Jessica Hope, iROKO Partners global communications manager.

Hope has further told ITWeb Africa that in terms of iROKO Partners’ Joburg office, the firm “had people on the ground since late last year”.

“It is now open, headed up by Genevieve Dumorne, who has been with iROKO since June 2012,” says Hope

“It's a regional hub for the company and allows us to have an on-the-ground presence in South Africa to work directly with the ad agencies and tech partners we want to be affiliated with going forward.

“We will hopefully look to start bringing some South African content - movies and music for our respective platforms, iROKOtv and iROKING - into our catalogue in 2013,” she adds.