NBCUniversal International Television has announced that it is bringing Telemundo to continental Africa, where it will be available in 48 countries throughout the continent on MultiChoice’s digital pay-TV satellite platform, DStv.

The African launch will mark the first time that the pay-TV Telemundo service will be available outside of Latin America, where it is present in 21 countries.

Telemundo is scheduled to launch in Sub-Saharan Africa primarily (including South Africa) on August 12, with the tagline “Telemundo: Feel the Passion.”

What to expect? The network will be exclusively dedicated to telenovelas, with full dubbing of Spanish-language programming in English, as well as in Portuguese especially for Angola and Mozambique – both former Portuguese colonies.

“The addition of Telemundo to our portfolio of channel brands is an exciting development for Universal Networks International and our channels’ business in Africa,” said Belinda Menendez, the president of international television distribution and Universal Networks International at NBCUniversal. “We are constantly being approached by our platform partners to help them to reach a broader and more diverse demographic—and we are confident that the unique content on Telemundo will attract new viewers in a multi-channel environment. We are thrilled to be bringing the channel to audiences in 48 African countries, and building our presence in this dynamic pay-TV market.”

Telemundo Africa will be the name-brand, as the pay-TV service extends its footprint beyond Latin America via Universal Networks International, with their very successful original telenovelas, which are already syndicated in over 100 countries around the world.

Although I should note that telenovelas are already quite popular in many African countries – Nigeria especially, with its own brand of telenovelas, we could call them.

I was reminded of this CNN report I posted on the old S&A site about 3 years ago, on the culture of Brazilian telenovelas in Nigeria: