This August ONE Africa will be back in the Big Brother Africa house with more challenges and surprises.
Big Brother Africa, popularly known as BBA is now in its 8th season and is the most popular reality show on the continent. The show reveals the daily lives of 28 housemates from 14 countries drawn from across the continent, living in an isolated house for 91 days. They are competing not to be evicted by pan African viewers and thereby win a prize of $300,000.
With just three weeks remaining, the aim of ONE’s engagement in the house next week will be to create awareness about African people’s successes and challenges in fighting poverty as the African Union (AU) commemorates its 50 year anniversary.
Housemates will be visited by an African BET Award winning artist, to be revealed on Monday.
They will find out about the importance of individual and collective action in the fight against poverty in Africa. Each day, housemates will be given tasks that relate to ONE’s current anti-poverty poverty campaigns on energy poverty, health and AIDS, food insecurity as well as the role of the AU in fast tracking progress.
This collaboration with Big Brother will allow viewers across the continent to be exposed to the realities, similarities and differences regarding the levels of poverty on the continent through entertaining television from the eyes of the housemates. BBA will a provide housemates with the opportunity to join the discussion on actions that need to be taken by Africans to end extreme poverty in Africa.
Last year saw housemates tackle how Africa can best avoid problems of hunger and poverty. ONE challenged housemates to build their own vegetable gardens and produce their own compost in an effort to symbolise the millions of Africans who suffer from hunger and malnutrition every day and to highlight the benefits of self-sufficient farming.
ONE partnered with successful Nigerian hip hop artist 2Face and had both housemates and the pan Africa audience inspired to join the conversation on ending hunger through ONE’s Thrive campaign. Their actions through Thrive influenced the African Union to declare 2014 as the year of African Agriculture.
The housemates also received shout outs from international stars such as Kenyan pop artist Nameless, South African songstress Zolani Mahola, ONE’s co-founder Bono, American actor Michael Ealy, American music sensation Mary J. Blige, American Hip Hop royalty NAS, Canadian R&B singer Melanie Fiona and multi-talented American Tony Okungbowa .
So you are not going to want to miss out on this year’s BBA End Poverty Week, sending a strong message to the AU for more action.
For exciting updates about activities in the house and who our surprise celebrity guest will be, keep an eye on the ONE Africa blog or follow us on Twitter!
