MTN One TV Wants African Stories That Can Travel. The Next Battle Is Market Scale

For years, one of the biggest questions around Africa’s film and television industry has been how to get more African stories in front of African audiences. The next question is becoming more complicated:

Can those stories travel?

MTN One TV is now presenting that opportunity for African stories and looking for projects that can help answer that question. The telecommunications group has opened a call for African film and television projects ahead of FAME Week Africa 2026 in Cape Town. It is looking for bold, authentic and commercially viable projects aimed at youth and mass-market audiences, but there is a particularly important requirement buried in the brief: the stories should be locally rooted while having the potential to resonate across African markets.

That distinction matters because MTN is not simply asking producers for good African stories. It is looking for stories that can function in a multi-market African entertainment business.

And that could become increasingly important as platforms, broadcasters and telecom companies look beyond individual national markets for content that can travel.

MTN Already Has the Distribution Infrastructure

The timing of the call makes sense when viewed alongside MTN One TV itself. MTN launched One TV in June 2026 as a digital entertainment proposition designed to give customers across African markets access to local, international and live content, with viewing and payment models that can vary by market. Depending on the market, the proposition can include free-to-view, advertising-supported, pay-as-you-watch and subscription models, with payment potentially supported through airtime and Mobile Money.

That gives MTN something many individual African production companies do not have:

an existing continental distribution ecosystem.

The company already operates telecommunications businesses across multiple African markets. One TV gives it another layer through which content can move across that footprint. So the question is no longer simply whether African audiences want African content.

It is whether producers can create content that makes sense for audiences in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Zambia and potentially beyond at the same time.

Those four countries are specifically identified in MTN One TV’s pitch brief as priority markets, alongside broader Pan-African potential. The primary audience is 18–34-year-olds and mass-market consumers.

That tells producers quite a lot about what MTN is looking for.

The Story Can Be Local. The Business Has to Be Bigger.

There is an interesting tension in the brief. MTN wants projects to be culturally authentic and locally rooted. At the same time, it wants those projects to resonate across markets. That means the answer cannot simply be to strip African stories of everything culturally specific until they become generic enough for everybody. In fact, that could defeat the purpose.

The opportunity is in finding stories with local texture and wider emotional or commercial relevance; family, ambition, identity, and resilience. These are among the universal themes referenced in MTN One TV’s terms.

The setting, language, characters and cultural details can still be distinctly African. But the underlying story needs to give somebody in another market a reason to keep watching. That is an increasingly important skill for African producers.

A story about a particular Nigerian family, for example, does not have to become less Nigerian to appeal to a Ghanaian or Zambian viewer. It needs to make the emotional stakes understandable enough for that viewer to care.

That is the difference between local content with export potential and content that was simply made locally.

MTN Is Also Betting on Different Ways of Watching

Another interesting part of the call is the range of formats being considered.

MTN One TV is accepting:

• Limited series of 6–8 episodes
• Scripted series of 13 episodes
• Unscripted series of 13 episodes
• Micro-dramas of approximately two minutes per episode across 30 episodes
• Feature films between 60 and 90 minutes

Genres can include drama, reality, comedy, action, thriller, romance and animation.

The inclusion of micro-drama is particularly revealing. African television has traditionally been built around relatively familiar formats: feature films, soap operas, television series and long-form drama.

But audiences are increasingly consuming stories through phones and social platforms, often in shorter sessions.

MTN’s own One TV proposition is designed around flexible digital consumption. Its pitch call therefore isn’t asking producers to assume that every viewer will consume content in exactly the same way.

A two-minute episode and a 90-minute film can exist in the same content ecosystem.

For producers, that creates another commercial question:

What is the most effective format for the audience and business model you’re targeting?

Not every story needs to be a feature film, not every idea needs eight episodes and not every audience needs to sit down for an hour.

This Is Also a Commercial Pitch

The language around the call is worth paying attention to. MTN is explicitly asking for projects that are commercially viable.

Applicants have to provide information about their audience, commercial potential, budget and financing, as well as details about their production company and lead producer. The submission also requires a pitch deck, project artwork and producer/company information.

That is important because the African screen industry has spent years talking about the need for more financing but financing does not happen simply because a project is culturally important.

• Someone still has to believe there is an audience.
• Someone has to understand the production budget.
• Someone has to know how the project will be delivered.
• Someone has to understand the rights.
• And increasingly, someone has to see how the project can work beyond one country.

That is the language of a content business, rather than simply a creative project.

The Opportunity Is Bigger Than One MTN Commission

There is also a reason producers should pay attention to the wider context around this call.

FAME Week Africa has become a meeting point for producers, distributors, broadcasters, investors and other parts of the entertainment ecosystem. Its 2026 program includes pitching platforms designed to put African projects directly in front of industry decision-makers.

The MTN One TV pitch session is therefore part of a broader shift in the African screen industry: the pitch is increasingly becoming a route to market, not just a creative showcase.

A producer walking into that room is not only selling a story. They are effectively selling a potential audience, format, production model, market opportunity and piece of intellectual property.

That changes what it means to be “pitch ready.” That means a good logline is no longer enough and a beautiful deck is no longer enough. The producer needs to understand the business behind the story.

There Is a Bigger Industry Question Here

Africa does not necessarily have a shortage of stories, it has millions of them. The harder problem has often been converting those stories into commercially sustainable intellectual property that can move between markets.

That is where initiatives like the MTN One TV call become interesting. If a Nigerian drama can find an audience in Ghana and Zambia, that changes the potential economics of the project.

If a South African unscripted format can be adapted for Nigeria, that creates another business opportunity.

A Ghanaian comedy can travel without losing what made it culturally distinctive, the addressable market becomes much larger.

And if a micro-drama can work across multiple markets on mobile devices, the traditional economics of African television begin to look different again.

None of this is guaranteed. MTN’s pitch terms explicitly state that participation does not guarantee a commission, funding or commercial agreement but the direction is significant.

The market is beginning to ask African producers a different question. Not just: “Is this a good African story?” but: “Who else can watch it, where can it travel, and can the business model travel with it?”

That may be one of the most important questions for the next phase of Africa’s screen economy because the next big opportunity for African film and television may not simply be producing more content.

It may be building African intellectual property that can cross borders without losing its identity.

The opportunity

The MTN One TV Pitch Session opened for submissions on September 14 and closes on October 5, 2026. Shortlisted producers will pitch their projects live at FAME Week Africa in Cape Town from October 28–30. The call is aimed at established African producers and registered production companies, with specific eligibility requirements set out in the official terms.

For producers, the bigger opportunity may not simply be getting onto One TV. It is understanding what the platform is signaling about the future of African television: local stories are valuable. But stories that can travel are becoming a much bigger business.