Friday, June 8, 2012

Alison Ngubuni Is Bringing Kenyan Soap Operas To Africa (And The World)


Alison Ngubuni owns a communication company that trying to make engaging Kenyan soap operas to compete with dominant foreign imports. She hopes the soaps will help put Kenyan television on the global TV market.

At the moment her company is recording MALI ("wealth" in Swahili), a drama about what happens when the patriarch of a family dies and would-be heirs start popping up. It is Kenya's first soap opera filmed completely in a studio.

"At the back of my mind I've always been really upset with the amount of Mexican and foreign television on our screens," she said in an interview on AFRICAN DREAM.

"I sort of thought, you know, what is it, why are you trying to tell us - as broadcasters - that Kenyans don't want to see Kenyans on the screen, that we are so razzmatazzed by the Mexicans, the Spanish, the Nigerians, that we really don't have our own to showcase on the screen?"

Ngubuni said that with Mali she wants to tell "an African story that is different, that can travel across the continent".

Watch an interview with Ngubuni on BBC's AFRICAN DREAM here.

1 comment:

  1. I've seen soaps from various countries-- from the U.S., Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and I would love to see what a soap from Kenya provides in entertainment. Hopefully Ms. Ngubuni will have the ability to stream her show online or do work with a young network like Bounce TV (Bounce frankly needs all the help they can get, content-wise) to partner up with.
    Good luck to her and hope to see her work sometime soon.

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