Latin American telenovelas and African screen media: from reception to production

Latin American telenovelas began to be widely broadcast on African
screens between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and today are
among the most popular entertainment products on the
continent. The content, aesthetic and narrative format of
telenovelas have become a model for many African video film
producers, who have incorporated some of telenovelas’ defining
elements in their productions in order to attract local audiences.
This special issue analyses the impact of telenovelas’ circulation in
Africa by focusing on the ‘uses’ African audiences and media
producers make of them. Why do telenovelas travel so well
around sub-Saharan Africa? How do African audiences make sense
of them? And what impact do these media products have on local
media entrepreneurs and on the aesthetics and narrative aspects
of the contents they produce? In this introduction we provide
some background and data about the history and the political
economy of telenovelas’ circulation in Africa, and answer the
questions raised above by connecting the finding of the essays
included in the special issue to ongoing debates on the global
circulation of melodrama, on the transformation of African screen
media, and on the performative dimension of African audiences’
engagement with foreign media forms.