by Thinus Ferreira
South Africa's Bonang Matheba and Nigeria's IK Osakioduwa will co-host 2022's 8th Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards (AMVCAs) on Saturday 14 May in Lagos, Nigeria which will be done as a live broadcast across M-Net's various Africa Magic channels on DStv.
MultiChoice and M-Net West Africa's AMVCAs, marked year after year by shockingly bad production values, problems and amateurish on-air gaffes, return after a year's absence due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
MultiChoice and M-Net West Africa last held its Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards, the 7th edition on 14 March 2020 with a packed hotel auditorium audience, after which MultiChoice had to warn its thousands of MultiChoice and M-Net guests who physically attended in Lagos, Nigeria that they were likely exposed to Covid-19.
In 2021 MultiChoice and M-Net didn't organise any Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards due to Covid-19 and never officially announced that it's cancelled for this year.
MultiChoice didn't have the AMVCAs in 2019 and revived it for 2020 after a year's absence, meaning that the pan-African awards show for the continent's film and TV industry has been an on-off, on-off event for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Although the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards is supposed to include and represent the entire film and TV industry of sub-Saharan Africa, the MultiChoice and M-Net awards remains an overwhelmingly West African and specifically Nigerian-centred exercise with the 2022 nominees across categories once again stacked with talent favouring predominantly Nigerian television and film.
The Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards continues to get little exposure and publicity effort in East and Southern Africa with many producers in the pan-African industry outside of Nigeria not aware when entries open or that they can enter work.
Although called the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards, viewers get to decide only a third of the category winners since MultiChoice doesn't think viewers make the best decisions.
2022's 8th Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards now has a total of 33 categories, with a whopping 21 categories decided by the AMVCA panel of judges. Only 12 categories are voted for by the public - 36%.
Although still shockingly low, this is an improvement on the 25% of 2018 in which Africa's viewers only got to decide the winners in 7 out of the 27 categories at the AMVCAs.
Saturday's 8th Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards (AMVCAs) will be the first time that Bonang Matheba is co-hosting this awards ceremony, with returning AMVCA presenter IK Osakioduwa.
The 2022 awards will honour work done between 1 December 2019 and 30 November 2021 - a two-year period that is bigger than usual due to the shutdowns and interruptions which were caused by the Covid-pandemic.
Busola Tejumola, MultiChoice's head of content and West African channels, says in a statement "We are excited to have Bonang join IK as co-host for the 8th edition of the AMVCAs".
"They are both extremely talented and have attained continental acclaim having both hosted some of Africa's biggest shows. Together they will keep the crowd entertained on the biggest night to celebrate African film and TV stars."
Bonang Matheba in a prepared statement says "It's always such an honour to host live productions and I think after Covid we haven't had the opportunity to be outside to have these big, big productions with live studio audiences".
"So it's lovely to have all of that back. It's also an honour. Any single stage I get to step on is an honour. I've always wanted to work with IK. I am a huge fan of his. So, I'm looking forward to that too."
IK Osakioduwa says "I feel really honoured to be hosting the AMVCAs again. I'm also really excited about the decision to honour the social media content creators with a category of their own. Trust me when I say, without a doubt this year is going to be another amazing outing for the African film industry."
