MultiChoice Group, now a CANAL+ company, is looking for its next African premium drama. The invitation sounds straightforward: bring a bold, contemporary series that can hold viewers at home and travel across borders.
The real brief is more demanding.
The company wants an action-driven, commercially compelling drama of between eight and 12 episodes, with each episode running approximately 50 minutes. It must feel authentically African, work across at least two African territories and remain financially realistic without depending on an expensive international co-production structure.
That is not simply a call for a good television idea. It is a request for a project that has already solved several of African television’s hardest problems before it enters the room.
The commission starts as a producer’s expense
The MultiChoice Group and FAME Week Africa Premium Drama Call for Projects opened on 12 August. Applications close on 18 September, with selected producers invited to pitch before representatives of MultiChoice, CANAL+ and STUDIOCANAL at FAME Week Africa in Cape Town from 28 to 30 October.
Applicants must submit a creative treatment covering the series overview, logline, synopsis, story world, tone, characters and visual references. They must also provide an estimated production budget. Only producers, production companies and rights holders based in Africa can apply, and they must control the intellectual property being submitted.
Then comes the less glamorous part. Shortlisted producers must attend the pitch in person and pay their own travel, accommodation and associated costs. The live pitch forms part of the editorial evaluation and does not guarantee a commission.
This arrangement is common at markets. It is still worth examining.
Developing a competitive series proposal is work. A producer may pay writers, designers, researchers and financial advisers before a commissioning editor sees the project. A trip to Cape Town adds flights, hotels and time away from paid work. For a producer travelling from Accra, Nairobi, Kigali, Lagos, Lusaka or Dakar, the opportunity is not free simply because there is no application fee.
The producers most able to absorb that risk are likely to be the ones who already have capital, industry relationships or other projects keeping their companies alive. The call is open across Africa, but access to the final room will not cost every African producer the same.
“Pan-African” is doing a lot of work
The brief says proposed series should resonate naturally across two or more African territories. Stories may be told in any African language, English or French, and applicants are encouraged to preserve cultural identity.
That sounds like a welcome rejection of the idea that African television must be made in English to travel. But the phrase “resonate across territories” introduces another pressure. Producers must show enough local specificity to feel authentic and enough universality to satisfy a multinational buyer.
Those two demands can coexist. Some of the continent’s strongest dramas have travelled because their worlds were precise, not because their edges were removed. The risk begins when cross-border appeal becomes a request for stories with recognisable African surfaces but fewer politically, linguistically or culturally difficult details.
The best submission will not necessarily be the least local one. It should be the project that makes a specific world legible without flattening it.
The format reveals the commercial ambition
An eight-to-12-episode order at roughly 50 minutes per episode is substantial. It is closer to the scale of a returning premium television property than a limited digital experiment. The call is also clear that the drama should be contemporary, aspirational and action-driven.
That combination points towards a programme capable of carrying subscriptions, schedules and international sales. It asks producers to build a long-running world while controlling costs. It also places considerable pressure on the writing. A premise that works for a 100-minute film can collapse when stretched across ten hours.
The development question is therefore not only whether Africa has enough ideas. It is whether producers will receive enough time and money to turn the selected idea into television at the requested scale.
A premium brief needs premium development. That includes a writers’ room, research, episode breakdowns, script editing and enough revision time to test the engine of the series. If the winning proposal is expected to move quickly from pitch document to production, the buyer may save money early and spend much more fixing structural problems later.
Where will the winning show live?
The call arrives during a major restructuring of African pay television. MultiChoice now sits inside CANAL+, while STUDIOCANAL adds a large international production and distribution operation to the panel assessing the projects.
That gives selected producers access to a more powerful group of commissioners and potential distribution routes. It also leaves important questions unanswered in the public brief.
Will the eventual series be commissioned for an Africa Magic channel, a broader MultiChoice service, a CANAL+ outlet or another destination? Which territories and languages will be prioritised? Will the producer retain any underlying or sequel rights? Is there paid development before a final greenlight? What happens to a shortlisted project that is developed through the process but not commissioned?
Those details matter because a pitch opportunity and a producer-friendly deal are not the same thing.
A real opportunity still deserves harder questions
There is clear value in putting African producers directly before MultiChoice, CANAL+ and STUDIOCANAL. Too many commissioning processes remain closed, relationship-driven or geographically narrow. A public brief tells the market what a major buyer wants and gives producers a deadline around which to organise.
But the industry should judge the initiative by what comes after the Cape Town presentations.
How many projects will receive paid development? How quickly will decisions be communicated? What rights will be requested? What percentage of the budget will be covered by the commissioner? Will the finished programme receive a serious marketing commitment across the territories it was designed to reach?
Africa does not lack ambitious drama proposals. It lacks enough transparent pathways that carry those proposals from a producer’s laptop to a properly financed writers’ room, a sustainable production and an audience.
The call may help create one of those pathways. For now, African producers are being asked to build the bridge, price it and pay their way to the first meeting.
