Mobile Screen Worlds and the Televisual Turn in Africa
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Published:April 2025
We Need New Screens: MTV Shuga Naija, Youth Sexual Agency, and the “Mobile Screen”
The internet is changing the face of screen media across the continent. In this chapter, this change is captured through the lens of a continental television series, MTV Shuga. By exploring how the show adapts its use of the screen to speak to its young audience, the “mobile screen” is redefined. It is not just a screen for viewing but also a screen through which the audience become “moved” to action. Through the new frames, this chapter shows how this new screen is changing not only form but also its audience, who are no longer just passive viewers but also content creators, producers, spreaders, and active participants in the making of the films. Grounded in examples drawn from the television show, the chapter shows how this “new media” is drawing the audience in and birthing a different kind of screen.
Filmography
References
Maîtresse d'un homme marié: Retracing Womanhood in Senegalese Screen Worlds
This chapter seeks to explore the ways in which internet television is transforming the screen media industry in Senegal, through a focus on the first two seasons of the women-led and womanist internet television series Maîtresse d’un homme marié (Mistress of a Married Man), directed by Kalista Sy and distributed online by Marodi TV, through both its YouTube channel and its mobile application. Maîtresse d’un homme marié is an intersectional and complex site of negotiation of feminism in contemporary Senegal, involving producers, actors, and fandom communities alike. The series reflects and creates a Senegalese world, contesting hegemonic global flows of cultural production and distribution. It reclaims these spaces first and foremost for Senegalese women in relation to stories about and for themselves, and becoming both a statement and promotion of the label “Made in Senegal.”
Filmography
References
Netflix: The Enabling Disruptor in Nigeria
The euphoria with which Netflix was greeted among Nigerian filmmakers when it extended its business interest to Nollywood soon gave way to suspicion and controversy by scholars and lawyers. While funding and distribution, two major problems faced by the industry, are improved by Netflix’s investment and global reach, local exhibition companies have their business models disrupted by the streamer. Additionally, local and transnational audiences get quicker access to box office hits due to Netflix’s licensing and acquisitions. This chapter takes up these controversies, using the lens of digital disruption to examine the nature and extent of Netflix’s impact on Nollywood. It uses interviews and social media posts of filmmakers over two years to assess the significance of the conflicting voices, arguing within a media industries framework that digital disruption introduces gains and losses for different actors, while generating new forms of storytelling and censorship typical of international capital.
Filmography
References
Examining the “Opportunities”: M-Net's Zambezi Magic Channel and the Emerging Zambian Film Industry
A recent development in the screen industry in Zambia has sparked optimism. The African entertainment giant M-Net’s launch of the regional television channel Zambezi Magic on the pay-television platform DStv since 2015 has especially been hailed as an opportunity for the nascent filmmaking country. This chapter examines the identified opportunities that Zambezi Magic presents for the film industry in Zambia, taking into account that the channel is an expansion strategy for parent company, MultiChoice, into the southern African regional screen production market. Utilizing qualitative in-depth interviews and document analysis, the chapter recognizes the contributions of Zambezi Magic, arguing that while the channel is an example of a counterflow of global media and culture, it is also representative of the expansionist actions of media firms from the Global South that may also have a threatening impact on local industry players.