MTV Nishedh: African series on safe sex and family planning to be remade for Indian audience

Viacom 18’s award-winning African drama MTV Shuga that deals with safe sex, family planning and HIV is soon to get an Indian version and will be titled MTV Nishedh.

Viacom’s Viacom International Media Networks unit revealed this development at the Family Planning 2020 summit in London on 11 July. The series was originally created for sub-Saharan Africa, and with MTV Nishedh, it will be the first time that the series will cross borders, reports The Hollywood Reporter (THR) .

The series is a bona fide collaboration of Viacom’s MTV International and the MTV Staying Alive Foundation in order to make the African youth get access to knowledge and behavior relating to HIV.

In one of it’s previous report, THR had also said that according to the preliminary results of a study in Nigeria by the World Bank, the show has had a positive impact on the audience. The report furthered that twice as many viewers of MTV Shuga wee likely to go for HIV testing.

Not only that, there was a 58 per cent reduction of chlamydia among female viewers, safer sex and improved knowledge about HIV transmission and testing were also found.

In India, MTV Nished aims to target 176 million young people and would tackle “locally relevant issues, including child sexploitation and HIV”. The show will be launched by Indian joint venture Viacom 18, as reported by THR.

Not only India, the show is also going to launch an Egyptian version in Arabic language, making it the first version of the show in a language other than English. The Egyptian version will throw light on issues pertaining to family planning issues, including demand for contraception, gender-based violence, child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The African version starred Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o, in its initial two seasons.