The coverage of African television in the English-language trade press concentrates, almost exclusively, on drama series. The commissioning wars, the streaming wars, the Showmax closure, the Canal+ pipeline — all of it is about scripted drama. What that concentration obscures is a parallel tradition of African cultural television that has been doing significant continental work for years without generating equivalent trade attention: the music portrait format, built around the specific richness of African musical talent and the diaspora’s relationship to it.
Y’Africa is the most ambitious example of this tradition currently in production. Since February 2020, and across three seasons, 91 portraits of African talents have been filmed through Dan Assayag’s lens, celebrating the vitality and diversity of African talent. Season 4 launches May 24 and is, for the first time, fully dedicated to music — the previous three seasons covered cultural talent broadly; this season narrows and deepens its focus to the continent’s musicians specifically.
The broadcast footprint for Season 4 is the most geographically distributed the series has achieved. Each week, an episode will air on four Trace channels: starting May 24 on Trace Urban in English-speaking Southern Africa; then on May 25 on Trace Urban in France, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean (in French); and on May 27 on Trace Africa (in French). Starting in July 2026, three North African channels will complete the broadcast lineup: 2M in Morocco, and two national channels in Tunisia and Egypt.
The series is available online on the Trace+ app and on Orange’s SuperApp, Max it TV, in addition to the linear broadcast.
The North African Distribution and What It Means
From a North African editorial perspective, the July addition of 2M Morocco, and national channels in Tunisia and Egypt is the most significant development in this announcement. These are not niche cable channels. 2M is one of Morocco’s two main public television channels. National channels in Tunisia and Egypt reach the broadest available audiences in their respective countries.
African music television has historically had a split: there is the Anglophone Southern/East/West African tradition (dominated by Trace, Channel O, and various national broadcasters) and the North African tradition (dominated by Arabic-language music programming with a different reference set and audience structure). Y’Africa’s Season 4 broadcast structure places African music portraits in front of Moroccan, Tunisian, and Egyptian audiences who are not typically in the same programming conversation as audiences in Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Lagos. That is a small but genuine act of continental cultural connection.
The Orange-Trace Partnership Model
The structural story beneath the Season 4 announcement is the Orange-Trace partnership itself. Orange is a telecoms company — the parent brand is headquartered in France, the Orange Africa and Middle East subsidiary operates across seventeen African countries. Trace is a music and entertainment channel group built on African music content, operating across the continent, in France, and across the Caribbean diaspora. Their co-production of Y’Africa represents a financing model that is independent of streaming platform commissioning: a telecoms company with subscriber relationships and a content channel with distribution relationships building a co-production around the music talent that connects both of their audiences.
This model does not replace what Showmax did. It does not produce scripted drama or risk capital on creative experimentation of the kind that Khaki Fever represented. What it does do is sustain a form of pan-African cultural programming — the music portrait, the talent showcase, the celebration of African creative diversity — that has genuine continental and diaspora reach without depending on the commissioning decisions of global streaming platforms.
91 portraits across three seasons. Season 4 fully dedicated to music. Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt in July. It is not a drama series. It is the other tradition, doing its work quietly and consistently since 2020.
Y’Africa Season 4 launches May 24 on Trace Urban (English-speaking Southern Africa). North Africa (2M Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt national channels): July 2026. Available on Trace+ and Orange SuperApp Max it TV. Sources: Orange official press release (April 2026). — Nadia El-Rashid. RollCallAfrica, May 2026.
