MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia was never simply a concert tour. It became one of the first great physical expressions of what we believed MTV Base could be: an African music network that moved between cities, crossed borders, connected artists and audiences, and placed Africa itself firmly at the centre of the story.

When we launched MTV Base across Africa in 2005, there was something we understood almost instinctively: launching a television channel was not going to be enough. If MTV Base was genuinely going to belong to Africa, it could not remain something transmitted into people's homes from somewhere else. It had to leave the television screen. It had to travel into the cities, clubs, beaches, arenas and cultural spaces where African music was actually being created and lived. It had to meet young Africans in their own environments and allow those environments to become part of MTV itself.

That thinking became MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia.

Heading Events, Marketing and Digital Media for MTV in Africa at the time meant that I was already working across the different worlds that had to come together to make an idea like this possible. MTV Base LIVE! brought all of those worlds into one enormous project. I produced and creatively directed the campaign, but for me those responsibilities were never separate from actually making the events happen. From the earliest stages I was designing the logo and brand identity, developing the creative language and creating the campaign materials that would live across our different platforms, while at the same time building the production that would eventually have to work in real venues in different countries across Africa.

What began on a screen as a logo, a graphic language or a campaign idea eventually had to become physical. It had to become a stage in Accra, an entrance sequence in Kampala, screens at Carnivore in Nairobi, a production environment on Kunduchi Beach, a branded world on Ilha da Luanda, or a live television show unfolding inside The Vault in Lagos.

That journey from idea to reality was part of what I loved most.

I directed the events throughout the campaign, headed the production and staging, and then moved into the live machinery of each show as showcaller, calling the cues that brought the artists, lighting, screens, cameras, music and stage movements together. The same creative thinking therefore travelled all the way from the first design through to the moment an artist stepped onto the stage in front of an audience.

There was never a clean dividing line between design, production and direction.

To me, they were all storytelling.

The logo, the venue, the screens, the lighting, the staging, the artist entrance, the camera angle, the audience and the television programme ultimately had to feel as though they belonged to the same world. The audience should never have been standing there thinking about production design, brand architecture or showcalling. They simply needed to walk into the venue and feel that they had entered MTV Base LIVE!

Nokia came onboard during those formative months as one of the important founding partners around MTV Base, and together we built an integrated live and television platform that could physically move across the continent. The weekly MTV Base LIVE! television programme and the touring events became connected parts of the same idea. We would travel with cameras, production teams, presenters, artists and DJs, bring leading talent from the host country together with artists from elsewhere in Africa and selected international performers, create an MTV experience inside that city, and then carry what happened there back onto television for audiences elsewhere across the continent.

Every destination forced us to reinvent that world.

Accra could not look or feel like Johannesburg. Kampala should never have felt as if somebody had transplanted a club from London into Uganda. Nairobi did not have to resemble New York in order to look good on MTV. Dar es Salaam could remain Dar es Salaam, Luanda could remain Luanda and Lagos could be unapologetically Lagos.

The MTV Base LIVE! identity I had created needed to be strong enough to connect those places without overwhelming them. That became one of the most important creative principles of the entire campaign. We were never arriving with an enormous international template and covering Africa with it. We were entering African environments and asking how the MTV Base identity could live inside them.

The venues, architecture, coastlines, nightlife, music scenes, audiences and even the limitations of each location became part of the creative process.

We were not taking an international format into Africa and asking Africa to fit around it. We were building an African platform and inviting the rest of the world into our story.

The live journey had really started several weeks earlier with the extraordinary MTV Base 100th LIVE! concerts in Abuja and Johannesburg. They were separate from the formal Nokia touring series that followed, but they established much of the ambition and philosophy that would define everything we were about to do.

MTV Base was MTV Networks' 100th television channel globally, and there was something enormously significant about the fact that this milestone belonged to Africa. The launch could never simply be a press conference or a television ident. It needed to feel physical, emotional and unmistakably African.

On 15 April 2005, that story came alive at the Nicon Hilton in Abuja, Nigeria, where thousands of people gathered around a line-up that placed African and international talent on the same stage: Ludacris, 2Face Idibia, Aṣa, JJC & 419 Squad and DJ Jacob.

There was a profound difference between discussing the arrival of MTV in Africa from a boardroom and actually standing there in Abuja surrounded by African artists, audiences, media, crews and music while the idea became real in front of us.

MTV wasn't discussing Africa from somewhere else anymore. We were there.

Five days later, on 20 April 2005, the scale grew dramatically in Johannesburg. We transformed the extraordinary Ster-Kinekor Top Star Drive-In on the old Ferreira mine dump, high above the city, into an enormous MTV live environment. Johannesburg itself became part of the visual story, its skyline stretching beyond a stage that brought together Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff, Ludacris, Lebo Mathosa, Mandoza, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Skwatta Kamp, Bad Boy T and DJ Fresh.

It was a formidable international line-up, but that was never how we understood the story. Will Smith and Ludacris were entering an African moment, not creating it. Around them stood Lebo Mathosa, Mandoza, Skwatta Kamp and Seun Kuti, artists representing completely different strands of contemporary African music, culture and identity.

The international stars added enormous excitement, but the centre of gravity remained here. MTV Base had arrived in Africa. Now we needed to take that energy onto the road.

The formal MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia journey began in Accra, Ghana, on 28 May 2005, when we took over Warehouse Nite Klub for the first official stop.

The line-up immediately reflected the kind of cultural exchange we wanted the platform to represent. Ghanaian artists Obour, Batman — later known internationally as Samini — V.I.P, Mad Fish and Tic Tac were joined by South Africa's Skwatta Kamp, while New York's DJ Ruckus brought another layer of international DJ culture into the night. MTV Base presenter Nadia Bitar hosted the event.

Accra was also the first time the MTV Base LIVE! world we had been building really existed around an audience.

For months I had been moving between campaign ideas, design, brand identity, production plans and the practical reality of what we would need to build when we arrived in another country. Suddenly all of those pieces were no longer theoretical. The logo and creative identity I had designed were living inside a venue. The stage had become real. The screens were running. Artists were backstage. The audience was coming through the doors.

And then the show began.

At that moment the nature of the work changed completely. Creative direction became live direction. Production drawings became actual structures. Running orders became cues. The music, artists, screens, cameras, lighting, stage changes and audience all had to begin moving together.

Showcalling these events put me right inside that machinery. It meant listening to different departments simultaneously while watching the stage and feeling the room — deciding when something needed another few seconds, when the next cue had to move immediately, when an audience reaction should be allowed to breathe and when the entire production needed to accelerate.

When it worked properly, none of that effort was visible.

The show simply seemed to happen.

That invisibility was part of the craft.

The cameras were everywhere in Accra. We filmed performances and backstage activity, but we were equally interested in the audience: how people dressed, how they danced, how they responded to the artists and what contemporary Ghanaian youth culture actually looked and felt like at that moment.

Through elements such as the What's Up Africa camera booth, the people attending the event could become part of the television experience rather than simply appearing as an anonymous crowd behind the performers.

We weren't merely recording concerts.We were documenting African youth culture as it was happening.

For that night, Warehouse wasn't simply a nightclub hosting MTV. Accra itself became MTV Base.

A month later, on 25 June 2005, we travelled east to Kampala, Uganda, where the next MTV Base LIVE! event took place at the Basement Club at the Equatoria Hotel.

The headline attraction was 2Face Idibia, whose African Queen had become one of the defining records of that moment in African popular music. It was his first major live appearance in Uganda, but rather than construct the event around the idea of a Nigerian superstar arriving to perform to Uganda, we built the night around exchange.

Uganda's Peter Miles and Klear Kut joined the bill alongside Senegal's Daara J, with DJ Ruckus again on the decks.

Suddenly artists from Nigeria, Uganda and Senegal were occupying the same stage, while people who might previously have known one another only through music videos, radio or reputation were now standing backstage together.

That was one of the hidden powers of the entire journey.

The performances mattered, but so did everything happening around them. Artists met other artists. Managers exchanged numbers. DJs discovered records from other countries. Producers began conversations about working together. Friendships developed. Africa's musical geography started becoming smaller.

Every new city also required us to effectively begin again. We carried the campaign identity and creative language with us, but nothing else could simply be copied and pasted. Another venue meant another stage, different dimensions, different entrances, different equipment, different sightlines and a completely different relationship between the performers and the audience.

Heading the production and staging across the campaign meant continually translating the same MTV Base LIVE! idea into these very different physical realities, while directing the shows meant ensuring that once the lights went down, none of those differences felt like limitations.

They became character.

That constant reinvention became part of the adventure.

Before that period, many of Africa's contemporary music industries still existed almost as separate islands. Nigeria had Nigeria. Ghana had Ghana. Kenya had Kenya. Tanzania had Tanzania. South Africa had South Africa. An artist could be enormous in one territory and still struggle to cross the next border.

MTV Base began helping to build corridors between those worlds.

Kampala was another piece of that map.

By the end of July we had reached Nairobi, Kenya, and on 29 July 2005 MTV Base LIVE! took over one of the city's great entertainment institutions, Carnivore.

Carnivore already had an unmistakable identity, which was precisely what made it interesting. I had never wanted the campaign to arrive in another country and erase whatever made that place distinctive by rebuilding exactly the same show we had done somewhere else. The visual identity and campaign creative gave us continuity; the venue gave us personality.

Carnivore needed to remain Carnivore.

The line-up brought together Necessary Noize and Kleptomaniax, two acts deeply connected to the growing confidence of Kenya's urban music scene, with Kaysha, while DJ Devo and DJ Sarah Love brought another dimension to the night.

Nairobi had an energy completely its own. There was no reason to translate it into something supposedly more familiar to an international television audience.

Our job was to amplify what was already there.

Necessary Noize and Kleptomaniax represented a generation creating contemporary Kenyan music on its own terms.

Kaysha connected another part of the continent into the story, and the DJs broadened the musical conversation beyond the live performances.

For one night, Nairobi did not need to become somewhere else in order to qualify as MTV.

Nairobi was MTV.

From Nairobi, the journey continued south along the East African coast to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where in August 2005 we staged MTV Base LIVE! at Kunduchi Beach.

The location transformed the production immediately.

There was no conventional theatre or arena surrounding us. We were on the Tanzanian coast under the night sky, and the beach itself became part of the visual language.

Those were the environments I particularly loved directing because they forced us to stop thinking like people making a conventional concert.

A beach gives you almost nothing.

There is no theatrical frame, no backstage infrastructure waiting for you, no architecture conveniently directing the audience's eyes toward a stage. You have to create all of that through production, staging, lighting, sound, screens and movement.

But the temptation could never be to build so much that Kunduchi Beach disappeared.

The fact that we were there mattered.

The production needed to reveal the location rather than replace it.

The international artist that night was Pras Michel of the Fugees, but the musical heart of the event was unmistakably Tanzanian. Around him were Ray C, Juma Nature and T.I.D., three artists who represented the extraordinary growth of Bongo Flava and the changing sound of East African popular culture.

Pras wasn't being brought to Tanzania so that we could create an American concert on an African beach.

He was entering a Tanzanian story.

Ray C, Juma Nature and T.I.D. already belonged to a movement transforming their country's youth culture. MTV Base could help amplify that energy across Africa, but we didn't need to manufacture it.

Against the backdrop of Kunduchi Beach, the night became simultaneously a concert, a television production and a portrait of Dar es Salaam itself.

Taking MTV Base LIVE! to Luanda, Angola, mattered for another reason.

There was never any possibility of honestly calling MTV Base pan-African if our cultural map stopped at English-speaking Africa. Africa was multilingual, multifaceted and enormous. Lusophone Africa had to exist inside the story.

Our Luanda event took place at Miami Beach on Ilha da Luanda, stretching out along the Atlantic beside the city.

The environment was completely different again, and with it came another opportunity to reinterpret the creative world we had built.

The logo and brand identity travelled with us. The visual language remained recognisable. But the staging and production had to respond to Luanda, to the beach, to the city and to the people who would actually inhabit the event.

That became almost a creative discipline throughout the tour: never force the location to conform to the brand; find the place where the two could meet.

The performers included Johnny Ramos and O2, bringing Lusophone African R&B and contemporary Angolan music directly into the MTV Base narrative.

O2 would become part of another significant MTV moment later that year when they were nominated for the inaugural MTV Europe Music Awards Best African Act, alongside artists including 2Face Idibia, Kaysha, Kleptomaniax and Zamajobe.

Luanda expanded the map.

Miami Beach on Ilha da Luanda now belonged inside the same MTV conversation as Warehouse in Accra, Carnivore in Nairobi and Kunduchi Beach in Dar es Salaam.

By October we were back in Nigeria, this time in Lagos, and by then something had already changed around MTV Base.

The channel was still young, but audiences were beginning to understand what an MTV Base event meant. There would be artists, DJs, cameras, television, spectacle and the sense that something happening inside that room tonight might soon belong to audiences across the continent.

On 14 October 2005, MTV Base LIVE! took over The Vault in Lagos.

The line-up brought together Pras Michel, 2Face Idibia, P-Square, Aṣa and Jazzman, with an extensive DJ programme that included DJ Big Ted, DJ Humility, DJ Fresh Wave, DJ Jimmy Jatt and DJ Leon, performing as part of Pras Michel's show.

The Vault was packed.

Lagos was one of those nights where the difference between producing a show on paper and directing it in real time disappeared completely.

Once the first cue went, there was nowhere to hide.

Artists change things. Audiences react in ways nobody predicted. Performances run longer or shorter. A camera needs another few seconds. Somebody appears somewhere they weren't expected. A technical problem has to be solved without the audience ever knowing it existed.

You make decisions in seconds and keep moving.

That immediacy was part of what I loved about directing and showcalling the campaign. Having already lived with every event from the creative and production side, I knew what the show was supposed to feel like before we ever opened the doors. But once an audience entered, the show developed a life of its own.

The job then became protecting the original idea without suffocating that spontaneity.

Pras understood the energy instinctively and brought people directly into his performance, inviting audience members onto the stage to dance, sing and rap. Nokia became part of those moments through audience competitions and handset giveaways.

Today we would probably call that experiential branded entertainment.

We were simply trying to make Nokia genuinely part of what was happening rather than reducing the relationship to another sponsor logo hanging around the room.The music reflected how quickly Nigeria itself was changing. P-Square were becoming one of the country's defining new pop acts. 2Face was rapidly transforming into a continental superstar. Aṣa represented a completely different Nigerian voice. Jazzman brought another strand of the local scene, while Pras connected the night into the global hip-hop lineage of the Fugees.

During his performance, China Black joined him for the Lauryn Hill vocal part of Killing Me Softly. It was precisely those contrasts that made Lagos so exciting.

There was never going to be one sound capable of defining contemporary Africa.

The final chapter of the MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia journey brought us back to South Africa in December 2005, and this time we brought John Legend to Africa for the first time. His debut album Get Lifted had only been released the previous year, and he was rapidly becoming one of the most important new voices in contemporary soul. Bringing him to Africa at that moment was exciting, but we had no interest in making the story simply, "American superstar comes to Africa."

We wanted John to enter the African narrative we had spent the year building.

The MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia finale consisted of two MTV productions: Johannesburg on 15 December and Cape Town on 17 December 2005. The Durban concert that followed on 18 December was John's own event and was not an MTV Base LIVE! production, so it does not form part of this story.

On 15 December 2005, we staged the Johannesburg concert at the Standard Bank Arena, with John Legend, Lebo Mathosa, Skwatta Kamp and Leela James sharing the bill.

It was a remarkable combination.

Lebo Mathosa was one of the most fearless and important voices to emerge from post-apartheid South African popular culture. Skwatta Kamp represented the explosion of South African hip-hop and had already been part of our journey elsewhere on the continent. Leela James brought another strand of American soul into the evening, while John Legend was experiencing an African audience for the first time.

By then I had watched MTV Base LIVE! travel thousands of kilometres across Africa, and hundreds of thousands of kilometres across the rest of the world. Something that had begun with creative development, designing the logo, building the brand identity and imagining what the campaign could look and feel like, had become a succession of real stages, cities and audiences.

Each time we arrived somewhere new, the creative had to become architecture and production again. Johannesburg took us into an arena environment, changing the scale of everything, but not the principle behind it.

The stage could be bigger. The production could be bigger. The audience could be bigger.

But the production itself could never become the protagonist.

The artists were the story.

And Africa was the story.

John Legend was not bringing legitimacy to an African stage. The more interesting idea was that one of America's most exciting emerging artists was arriving on a continent with its own stars, audiences, genres, histories and rapidly growing cultural confidence.

He was coming to us.

Two days later, on 17 December 2005, we brought MTV Base LIVE! into one of the most extraordinary environments of the entire journey: the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town.

The principal line-up featured John Legend and Skwatta Kamp, but the location changed the meaning of the night completely.

The Castle carries centuries of difficult South African history within its walls. To bring a young, predominantly Black audience into that space to celebrate contemporary African and African-American music created a collision between history and the present that no purpose-built arena could have given us.

It was exactly the kind of place that reinforced my belief that creative direction, production and event direction were inseparable.

Before we had added a stage, light or screen, the Castle was already telling a story.

So we had to listen to it.

The staging needed to belong inside the architecture rather than overwhelm it. The lighting could reveal the textures and scale of the place instead of flattening everything into a generic concert environment. The production needed to feel completely contemporary while allowing the history around us to remain visible.

This was where all those different parts of my role came together most naturally. The person who had designed the campaign identity was also standing there directing the event. The production decisions, staging, visual language and showcalling were all serving the same story.

Standing inside the Castle after months of taking MTV Base LIVE! from one African city to another felt like an extraordinary full circle. The old stone walls framed John Legend's first journey into Africa while Skwatta Kamp represented a new generation of South African artists confidently defining its own present. For one night, a place deeply associated with the country's colonial past was occupied by another sound, another generation and another energy. It was an extraordinary way to close the MTV Base LIVE! year.

Looking back from where African music stands today, it can be difficult to remember just how different the landscape was in 2005.

There was no Instagram or TikTok. Spotify didn't exist. YouTube had only just been created. The smartphone had not yet transformed every audience member into a broadcaster. A performance in Accra could not instantly be watched in Nairobi, Johannesburg, Kampala and Lagos before the artist had even left the stage.

Music industries remained heavily local. Radio was local. Television distribution was fragmented. Touring between African countries could be complicated and expensive, and an artist could be a household name in one market while remaining almost completely unknown only a few borders away. The continent was culturally connected, but the infrastructure through which African popular culture moves so effortlessly today simply didn't exist.

So we physically moved it.

That is perhaps my clearest memory of MTV Base LIVE!

We travelled with an entire world in pieces.The logo and brand identity I had created travelled with us. The campaign artwork travelled. The screen content travelled. Production information, staging concepts, technical plans and every other piece required to reconstruct that world travelled too.

Then we arrived somewhere else and built it again. Another empty venue. Another stage. Another set of production challenges. Another rehearsal. Another running order. Another series of show cues. Another group of artists. Another audience waiting outside the doors.

Then the lights came up.

For me, heading the campaign production while leading Events, Marketing and Digital Media at MTV meant that I could follow that story all the way through rather than handing one part of it over and disappearing from the process. I could design the identity, develop the creative, build the production around it, direct the event and finally put on the headset and call the show.

There was something beautifully physical about that cycle.

The cameras travelled. The artists travelled. The DJs travelled. The presenters travelled. The producers and crews travelled. We entered one African city after another, built something together with the people who belonged there, turned the cameras on and carried that experience onwards.

Then television completed the journey.

A young viewer in Johannesburg could begin to understand the energy of an MTV night in Lagos. Someone in Ghana could discover Skwatta Kamp. Ugandan audiences could experience 2Face alongside Peter Miles and Klear Kut. Viewers across the continent could see Ray C, Juma Nature and T.I.D. performing at Kunduchi Beach.

Nairobi could see itself represented through Necessary Noize and Kleptomaniax rather than interpreted through somebody else's cultural lens. Luanda could enter the continental MTV conversation from Miami Beach on Ilha da Luanda.

Every event joined another piece of the map.

The Nokia partnership belonged perfectly to that moment.

In 2005 the mobile phone was rapidly becoming one of the most transformative objects in African life, particularly among young people. It was changing communication, relationships and business, but it was also becoming part of identity. The handset somebody carried, the ringtone they chose and the way they communicated increasingly said something about who they were. Long before smartphones transformed phones into complete entertainment ecosystems, it was already possible to see music, mobility, technology and youth culture beginning to converge. That was why Nokia made such sense inside MTV Base LIVE!

Because the partnership was part of the campaign from the beginning, I could build Nokia into the creative world rather than add it later as a sponsor badge. The identity, campaign materials, event creative, screens, staging, branded moments and audience experiences could be developed as parts of one system across all the different platforms on which MTV Base LIVE! appeared.

That mattered to me.

A sponsor's presence should never make an audience suddenly feel that the entertainment has stopped and advertising has begun.

The relationship needed to belong inside the experience.

Nokia handsets became part of competitions and audience interactions. Artists could participate in those moments.

The events generated television content, and that content carried the partnership to people hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.

Looking back, it sounds surprisingly contemporary: artists, audiences, brands, technology, live entertainment, behind-the-scenes content and multiple distribution platforms orbiting one cultural idea.

But in 2005 those worlds were only beginning to converge.

In many ways, we were building an analogue version of the connected entertainment ecosystem that would eventually become digital.

Perhaps the most important principle running through MTV Base LIVE! was the way we approached international talent.

Of course we wanted major global artists to come to Africa. Their presence created excitement, visibility and extraordinary cultural encounters.

But we never believed that an international artist arriving somehow gave African artists or African audiences legitimacy.

Africa already had legitimacy. The global artist was coming because something important was happening here.

Will Smith and Ludacris entered a Johannesburg story that already belonged to Lebo Mathosa, Mandoza, Skwatta Kamp and Seun Kuti. Ludacris entered Abuja alongside 2Face and Aṣa. Pras Michel entered a Tanzanian story with Ray C, Juma Nature and T.I.D., and later stepped into Lagos alongside 2Face, P-Square, Aṣa and Jazzman. John Legend came to Africa and stood on MTV stages with Lebo Mathosa and Skwatta Kamp.

The international talent was always built around an African narrative, African artists and African audiences, never the other way around. That belief also shaped the creative choices behind the campaign.

Design is never neutral.

Neither is staging.

Neither is a running order.

Where somebody appears on a bill, how an artist is presented, what appears behind them on a screen, how long the audience remains with them and how the show moves from one performance into another all communicate hierarchy, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I never wanted the visual language or staging of MTV Base LIVE! to make an African artist feel like scenery around a visiting international act.

The shows needed to say something different.

Africa was the protagonist.

We were never trying to build an African imitation of an American or European music channel. We were trying to create a platform through which Africa could see itself as contemporary, ambitious, complicated, young, creative and culturally powerful.

And then, ultimately, we wanted the rest of the world to see it too.

When I think back on that first MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia journey — Accra, Kampala, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Luanda, Lagos, Johannesburg and Cape Town — I don't remember eight stops on a tour itinerary.

I remember a map slowly joining together.

Warehouse in Accra. The Basement in Kampala. Carnivore in Nairobi. Kunduchi Beach in Dar es Salaam. Miami Beach on Ilha da Luanda. The Vault in Lagos. Standard Bank Arena in Johannesburg. The Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town.

I remember creating the logo and campaign identity and then watching those ideas leave the computer screen and travel across Africa. I remember walking into empty venues and trying to imagine what they could become. I remember stages slowly rising where there had been nothing hours earlier, rehearsals beginning, production problems being solved, artists arriving and audiences eventually filling spaces that had started as drawings and plans.

And then there was always that moment when everything changed.

Comms Headset on.
House lights down.
First cue.

From there the production no longer belonged to the plan.

It belonged to the night.

Afterwards, everything would come down again. The staging was dismantled, the equipment packed, the creative and production moved onwards, and somewhere in another African city we would begin the process again.

Different languages, different music scenes, different crews, different audiences and completely different landscapes became part of one larger African cultural conversation.

We didn't have the digital tools that connect Africa today, so we connected it in the most direct way we knew.

We went there.

We designed it. We built it. We produced it. We directed it. We turned the cameras on and carried the story from one African city to the next.

That, for me, was what MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia was really about.

It was never just a series of concerts or parties. It was part of the earliest physical architecture of an idea that would become increasingly powerful in the years that followed: that contemporary African music was not a collection of disconnected local scenes sitting somewhere at the edge of global popular culture.

It was one enormous, diverse and increasingly interconnected cultural force.

And Africa itself was always the headliner.

MTV BASE LIVE! WITH NOKIA
TAKING MTV INTO THE HEART OF AFRICA

My MTV Story Written and Recollected by
Jandré Louw

First person documented recollections and experiences as a member of the founding MTV team in Africa and as MTV Head of Events, Marketing and Digital Media at the time, Producer and Creative Director during the formative launch years of MTV base in Africa.

Jandré Louw
Head of Events, Marketing & Digital Media, MTV Africa
Producer & Creative Director, MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia
Event Director
Head of Campaign Production
Head of Event Production & Staging
Show Director / Showcaller
Creator & Designer, MTV Base LIVE! Logo & Brand Identity
Creative Lead - Campaign, Events & Cross-Platform Creative

Talent Department, Management and Bookings:
‍
Richard Dimosi
Gordon Hagan
Christine 'Seven' Mosha
‍MTV Networks Africa
‍
Bianca Acca
Jasmine Dotiwala
‍MTV Networks Europe

CAMPAIGN PARTNER: NOKIA
Founding commercial and technology partner of MTV Base LIVE!, supporting the development of the integrated pan-African live music and television platform during the formative launch year of MTV Base.

CAMPAIGN LEGACY

MTV Base LIVE! with Nokia formed part of the earliest physical architecture of MTV Base in Africa: a travelling platform through which African cities, artists, DJs and audiences could encounter one another directly and then share those experiences with viewers across the continent through MTV. From Accra to Kampala, Nairobi to Dar es Salaam, Luanda to Lagos, and Johannesburg to Cape Town, the campaign helped turn the idea of a pan-African music television channel into something audiences could physically enter, experience and make their own.

MTV NETWORKS INTERNATIONAL & EUROPEAN LEADERSHIP

‍Bill Roedy
Vice Chairman, MTV Networks
President, MTV Networks International

‍Brent Hansen
President, MTV Networks Europe
Creative President, MTV Networks International

‍Simon Guild
Chief Executive Officer, MTV Networks Europe

‍Alex Okosi
General Manager and Vice President
MTV Networks Africa

Dudu Qubu
Head of Production, MTV Networks Africa

MTV BASE LIVE! WITH NOKIA: AFRICAN TOUR

Accra, Ghana
28 May 2005
Warehouse Nite Klub

Kampala, Uganda
25 June 2005
Basement Club, Equatoria Hotel

Nairobi, Kenya
29 July 2005
Carnivore

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
August 2005
Kunduchi Beach

Luanda, Angola
September 2005
Miami Beach, Ilha da Luanda

Lagos, Nigeria
14 October 2005
The Vault

Johannesburg, South Africa
15 December 2005
Standard Bank Arena

Cape Town, South Africa
17 December 2005
Castle of Good Hope