African vendor Côte Ouest moves into production

African distributor Côte Ouest has launched a production division and been commissioned to create its first programmes, one being a comedy detective series.

To this point, Côte Ouest has sold shows to channels around the African continent. It has now moved into production with Africa Zapping, a compilation of short extracts from various French-speaking African channels broadcast in the previous 24 hours that depict aspects of Francophone Africa; and SABURI, a 13x48mins comedy detective series for South African free-to-air net SABC2 coproduced with Dv8 Films.

Mike Dearham, the Côte Ouest’s senior VP, said: “These are exciting times for Côte Ouest and the African TV sector in general. For the first time in the continent’s history of television, we are witnessing an unstoppable combination of technical push and commercial pull. Therefore the production and distribution plan for SABURI and the other Côte Ouest productions will be responsive to this important shift.

“Given the fantastic growth in the African media sector, our decision to move into production was a natural progression. The Côte Ouest production strategy aims to deliver a variety of pan-African audio-visual products intended for global distribution across a variety of traditional and digital platforms.”

Côte Ouest will sell SABURI on the global market.