What are your activities? MTV Staying Alive Foundation (MTV SAF)
is an international organization that has been working for 20 years to stop the spread of HIV among young people. The Foundation creates and distributes original media content, MTV Shuga,
through MTV channels and third-party broadcasters, while funding initiatives led by young leaders who are fighting the epidemic on the ground within their communities.
Can you tell us about the MTV Shuga series project?
MTV Shuga is a sexual and reproductive health awareness and education campaign aimed at young people aged 15-24.
The campaign aims to:
- Raise awareness among young people about how HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are transmitted in order to reduce transmission.
- Strengthen prevention and screening measures.
Since 2009, this campaign has been highly successful in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Seven seasons have already been broadcast, reaching 720 million people. Studies have shown that people who have seen the series are twice as likely to get tested for HIV.
Why did you choose to adapt a French-language version from Côte d'Ivoire?
In Africa, one in two people do not know they are HIV-positive.
In 2018 in Côte d'Ivoire:
- 460,000 people were living with HIV (93% adults, aged 15 and over)
- 56% were women
- 73.37% of 15-24 year olds were unable to correctly identify the means of preventing sexual transmission of HIV.
*Source: UNAIDS
Therefore, as part of our awareness-raising mission, with financial support from Unitaid, we decided it was appropriate to produce the first French-language version of Shuga in Côte d'Ivoire.
As a reminder, UNITAID is an international organization that invests in finding ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria more quickly, more effectively, and at lower cost.
Our work in Côte d'Ivoire complements the mission of the international solidarity NGO SOLTHIS, which will provide HIV self-testing kits in the field.
What are your ambitions for this project? Will it be replicated in other African countries?
We want the MTV Shuga Babi campaign to reach as many people as possible, especially young people, and to contribute to the cultural influence of Côte d'Ivoire abroad.
Thanks to funding from UNITAID, two Ivorian seasons are planned. In the medium term, we also plan to subtitle and dub the series into other languages.
In terms of direction and production, do you call on local expertise?
We always work with local production companies. For French-speaking Africa, we collaborated with Keewu
and On Est Ensemble,
who called on local screenwriters and directors such as Siam Marley, Daouda Coulibaly
,
and Cédric Ido.
MTV Shuga Babi is also a multimedia campaign. Can you tell us more about that
?
In addition to the television series, the MTV Shuga Babi campaign is complemented by:
- A radio series
- A digital campaign
- A comic book based on the stories from the television series
- A series of educational events in the field.
On which channels will it be broadcast?
Since November 29, 2019, MTV Shuga Babi has been broadcast on the Ivorian national channel RTI 2 and is also available on Orange TV, our website, and streaming platforms (YouTube). We are currently in discussions with other channels for broadcast in 2020.
Any news to share?
MTV Shuga Babi continues to be broadcast. To stay up to date with all our news, subscribe to our various accounts:
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.
