Mo Abudu  Talks About Africa’s Media Influence with CNN

“We’ve got incredible talent here and the world needs to know.”

 This week, CNN’s ‘African Voices’ features Mo Abudu, one of Africa’s most prominent media figures, who has operated across both television and film in her career. Reporting from Lagos, Nigeria, the programme joins Abudu in her studio, where she serves as CEO of EbonyLife Television and EbonyLife Films.

Explaining how she began her career in media, Abudu tells ‘African Voices’: “I wanted to be known for something. I wanted to do something that would change the world, but I just couldn’t figure out what it would be.”

In 11 years, Abudu has moved from hosting her own TV show to owning and running one of Nigeria’s most premier television networks and a film studio.

Abudu explains to ‘African Voices’ how significant she feels it is to be operating at the highest level of her industry: “It’s incredible the impact that media has on our lives. It’s important for us, as people of colour and as a black person sitting here today, I know how important it is to have people I can look up to that represent me in media.”

Growing up, Abudu lived between Nigeria and England, which eventually shaped her future goals in media, despite experimenting with many different hobbies during her childhood.

Abudu explains to ‘African Voices’: “At one point I wanted to dance, I wanted to be a model, I wanted to write. It’s interesting that I’m doing what I’m doing now, because you go all the way around in life doing different things, until you finally get to a point where you know you have found that thing that God wants you to do.”

The programme hears how her first foray into media began with a talk show in 2006 called ‘Moments with Mo’, where Abudu interviewed the likes of Hillary Clinton, Christine Lagarde and several notable heads of state from across Africa.

‘African Voices’ accompanies Abudu around the studios of EbonyLife Television, which she founded in 2013, and Abudu explains the differences she found between serving as a host and a media owner.

Abudu tells the programme: “The hardest part about the work of what we do is that sometimes people don’t see the vision the way you see the vision. I know I have a responsibility to share the vision and communicate it for them to see it so they can buy into it.”

EbonyLife Television airs in both the United Kingdom and across the Caribbean, whilst some of the films produced by the network have taken place through deals with global brands such as Disney.

For Abudu, the success of EbonyLife just further demonstrated the potential within Africa: “We’ve got incredible talent here and the world needs to know. 

That’s why it’s important for us to ensure that EbonyLife Television as a platform can sit in a global space because the world must respect us, they must see us and must understand who we are as Africans. Especially this generation… There are so many stories that we have not told in Africa that I think that we can share with the world.