Uganda has one of the highest birth rates in the world. It also has some of the most dedicated soap opera watchers anywhere in Africa.
Now a group of enterprising Ugandans is aiming to tackle the former through the medium of the latter. Soap operas are expensive to make, however, so they plan instead to “hack” a Venezuelan import, recutting the existing series and overdubbing it with Ugandan actors.
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Using content originally from Nacer Contigo (Reborn), the new show has been rescripted and turned into a programme titled Love & Wealth. It will feature episodes in which a female character undergoes tubal ligation as a method of contraception. There are other storylines on sexual health and the stigma around discussing sex with parents and in couples, plus the pitfalls of polygamy.
Talks are under way to determine which African country Love & Wealth will make its screen debut in, but it is hoped the show will be distributed to as many English and French free-to-air channels as possible on the continent.
“Issues of sexual reproductive health, or gender, affecting youth as well as adults, cut across all sub-Saharan Africa, therefore we believe this show will be well received by and relevant to a wide audience on the continent,” said Gosia Lukomska, the director of integrated media at Peripheral Vision International (PVI).
She said her team had intentionally watched Nacer Contigo with muted audio, so that even those who understood Spanish would not know the original plot and dialogue.
“This way, the footage was sort of ‘tabula rasa’ [a blank slate] to us, we were not influenced by the original story and could create our own from the visuals available,” Lukomska said.
When PVI tested the show in east Africa, viewers did not find anything unusual about a Venezuelan actor having a Ugandan name such as Wasswa, and remembered the characters’ titles well, according to the NGO.
Sex education is a controversial topic in Uganda, where the average woman has more than five children. Civil society groups have launched a lawsuit against the government over its failure to issue a comprehensive sex education policy in schools, after a crackdown on reproductive education.
A report recently linked a lack of sex education to a rise in teenage pregnancies and new HIV/Aids infections in adolescents.
Telenovelas have proved to be successful imports in sub-Saharan Africa.
Robert Mawerere, the head of programming at NTV, one of Uganda’s most popular broadcasters, said Ugandans loved telenovelas, whether they were Mexican, Filipino, Indian or Chinese, “as long as they are romantic, dramatic and with fantasy”.
William Nyombi, the program manager for Marie Stopes Uganda, said they could be an effective way of getting across messages related to social behavioural change.
“A young person (or) a lady will tell you a whole story of a telenovela, so it has impact,” he said.
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