In Kenya, MTV Tries to Make Fighting HIV Cool

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-08-04 13:54:00 UTC
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The story has all the requisite staples: sultry women, city lights, emotional backstabbing. But MTV's Shuga is more than that. For its target audience in Kenya, it's also a compelling meditation on HIV/AIDS.

We've written before here about various development efforts that are using TV to educate villagers in countries as far-flung as Brazil and Mozambique on issues like climate change, global health and more.

Now, as U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby puts it, MTV is helping bring the "cool factor" to the fight against HIV/AIDS. After all, worldwide, youth between ages 15-24 are among the most vulnerable to the disease, accounting for 40% of all new HIV infections.

The exciting thing about Shuga is that so far, it seems to be working. An overwhelming 60% of youth in Kenya watch the program, which weaves in concrete lessons alongside the emotional drama — one character, for example, cheats on her boyfriend with a man who pressures her into having sex without a condom. The man turns out to be HIV-positive.

"What Ayira can teach young people is the harm that multiple concurrent partnerships can do; it's physically risky but also emotionally damaging to you, and people you care about," Lupita Nyong'o, who plays one of the main characters, tells IRIN.

And the show's audience is evidently paying attention to the substance. According to one evaluation, 90% of young Kenyans polled said that Shuga had impacted the way they thought about HIV. (The show was evaluated by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.)

Here's hoping for a sequel.

Photo Credit: gabriele

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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