MTV Base has been in Africa for just two years and already they are kicking major ass. Plus, it’s fast becoming the go-to block for new acts and music videos across the continent.

In the last eight months also, Ghanaian artists have enjoyed great airtime on MTV Base’s terrestrial block and that’s about to go into over drive this year. The channel is going big on the African continent and in the coming months a series of promotional projects will take off in Accra that will plug new artists and mainstream acts on the channel. This would include distribution deals, rights collection, and extensive touring around Africa and the US.

Gordon Hagan, in charge of Talent/Artist relations for MTV Base Africa, laid out plans to support and expose Ghanaian artists to the rest of the world.

“In the last two years we’ve been in legal discussions with rights collection agencies to figure out a way to allow African artists access their royalties, at least the ones they make off appearing on MTV Base,” he said. “Piracy is a major problem in Africa and we need to create structures that will protect the artist from other people robbing them of their intellectual property.”

Sony BMG and South African record labels have expressed a lot of interest in West Africa largely because they are losing out on revenue collection in areas that were not traditionally profitable to them. International record companies are now looking for ways to protect their music in these areas and also create new markets. MTV Base is taking the first step in a multi-phased project to promote Ghanaian artistes through unique programming.

The catch is that a lot of new artists who aren’t necessarily big in Ghana are getting large-scale exposure, which they otherwise wouldn’t have. Rap duos like ‘Backbone’ and Scizo are amongst the A-list artists to benefit from the project. Scizo spent weeks in the MTV Base top 20 African video charts a few months ago. It’s amazing how nobody heard about that until now. A production crew will be flying into the capital on the 26th of this month to film interviews and shows with the select artists who include Samini, Ayisoba, Wutah and Tic Tac.