This Year’s MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMAs) Goes down South

 

This year, the MTV Africa Music Awards better known as MAMA will be held in South Africa for the first time, since they launched in 2008.

The 2014 ceremony will be held in the coastal city of Durban come June 7, at the ICC.

Eligible music videos must have been released between March 20 last year and March 19 this year.

The inaugural awards ceremony was held in Abuja back in 2008 when the channel announced the event. Nigeria and celebrate  contemporary African and international genres including hip hop, hip life, R&B, afro pop, afro house, kwaito, boomba, bongo flava, coupé décalé, dancehall, soul and rock.

The following year, the ceremony was moved to Nairobi, Kenya. After that, the awards ceremony was halted for three years.

According to Alex Okosi, the Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) Africa,  the three-year gap between the last time the awards show was staged and this year to, among several reasons, the “economic downturn”.

So far, Wahu, Nameless, Amani and Daddy Owen have won a MAMA award for Best Female Artist (2008), Best Male Artist (2009) as well as Listeners’ Choice Awards; Best Female Artist (2009) and the inaugural Best Anglophone Award respectively.