Lebara Nigeria Teams Up with BytePlus to Bring Seedance AI to Nigerian Filmmakers, Creators and Brands

Lebara Nigeria, the international mobile network trusted by millions of customers worldwide for affordable, high-quality connectivity, has partnered BytePlus, the enterprise division of ByteDance, to bring the Seedance AI model to Nigeria.

Lebara Nigeria plans to bring the Seedance AI model through LebaraPlay Studio, a creative suite inside LebaraPlay that helps Nigerians turn an idea or a script into a visual story for film, television, microdrama, advertising and digital platforms.

The deal pairs Lebara’s affordable and reliable connectivity with one of the world’s most closely watched AI video models, and marks one of the first moves by a Nigerian telecom operator to fold generative AI directly into a consumer entertainment offering rather than treat it as a back-office tool.

CEO, Lebara Nigeria, Teni Stuffman, said: “Nigeria’s creators have never lacked ideas. What was missing was fast, affordable access to the tools to tell them. With LebaraPlay and Seedance AI, we’re closing that gap, putting the power to go from script to screen in minutes directly in creators’ hands, so they can reach an audience and turn their creativity into income. That’s the real promise of this partnership: connecting Nigerians not just to the internet, but to opportunity.”

AI Partnerships, BytePlus, Sarah Muna Kasule, said: “Lebara’s innovative leadership understands the power of Nigeria’s creative industry. Today, studios of every size can use Seedance AI-powered cinematic VFX alongside real actors, bringing Nigerian stories to the global stage without limits.”

LebaraPlay Studio is built for the full range of people and organisations who make Nigerian content: aspiring and established filmmakers, producers, directors, scriptwriters and actors; TV and film production houses; skitmakers, video and UGC creators; and independent storytellers with an idea to tell. It is also built for brands and large corporations that want to produce advertisements, branded content, product videos and other marketing assets in-house. Professional production teams can use it to develop and visualise projects faster, businesses can create more of their content internally, and emerging creators can take an idea to a finished visual with fewer of the traditional barriers of cost, crew and equipment.
The Studio brings together three distinct offerings, each suited to a different way of working:
Dramagic is the AI-powered creation environment for storytellers. Users can develop ideas, visualise stories, build scenes and experiment with video formats, from a single microdrama episode to a sequence planned for the big screen.

Lumina is an AI creative workspace that gives users another route to generate and develop visual content, so they can work in the way that best suits their project.

Lebara Studio (Freestyle) is Lebara’s own AI-powered creative studio, built on BytePlus models. It brings image generation and a flexible, open-ended digital canvas together in one workspace, where users can generate images, test different visual concepts, arrange and develop ideas, and bring visual elements together in one place.

Freestyle is designed to give creators, designers, marketing teams, advertising agencies, production companies and large corporations more flexibility in developing visual content. Teams can use it to explore campaign concepts, create advertising visuals, develop brand assets and prepare visual references, bringing ideas to life without relying entirely on traditional design and production workflows.

BytePlus technology, including Seedance, sits at the core of the Studio experience, giving Nigerian users access to globally recognised generative video and image models through a platform built around local creators and connected by Lebara.

The partnership also opens up a bigger opportunity for Nigerian film. With Seedance-powered cinematic visual effects (VFX), productions can take a hybrid approach: real actors, real locations and local storytelling, combined with AI-assisted VFX. That makes it more practical for filmmakers to attempt ambitious action sequences and on-screen spectacle that would otherwise be expensive or difficult to shoot, and to test production ideas before committing budget on set.

For the Nigerian film industry, more accessible tools could help raise the scale and ambition of local action films and support the return of big-screen action experiences to Nigerian cinemas. Compelling local films give audiences more reasons to buy a cinema ticket, and stronger attendance can benefit cinemas, production crews, talent and the wider creative economy. Lebara Nigeria sees this as an opportunity the partnership can help unlock.