About

Multichoice Africa is a leading internet and video entertainment company with a significant presence on the African continent. The company’s legal team provides support across four distinct regions: South Africa, East Africa, West and Central Africa, and Nigeria. The legal department employs general managers in the four regions to align legal with the operations of the company and to contribute to its strategic goals. The legal team has aligned with Multichoice’s business strategy, ensuring that the business is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. The team has built a formidable reputation in Africa for its ability to introduce impressive technical innovation to its business methods. In particular, it has been able to successfully implement digital signatures to ‘enable our executives to sign contracts’ anywhere and at any time, according to Rebotile Bopape, legal general manager. A contracts and transactions dashboard is also currently being developed to enable executives to review transactions concluded by the company. The aim of this dashboard is to assist the company with its corporate governance initiatives, as well as to give an overview of the business.

Over the past few years, the team has been involved in a diverse range of litigation matters across Africa – many of which are related to the switch from analogue to digital television. Specifically in Kenya, the legal department was recently involved in a litigation matter brought by certain media houses against the regulator and other broadcasters, with the matter eventually going to the Supreme Court of Kenya. Additionally, the team impressed with its work on the introduction of a legal compliance programme in East Africa augmenting the existing programme that has already been implemented in other regions in Africa. ‘This is a detailed legal audit of the companies that operate in East Africa to determine whether they are compliant with the rules, laws and regulations of the relevant jurisdictions as well as their third party agreements. Remedial action is now being taken to address identified gaps’, Bopape clarifies.